Woolf Pack Issue #5

Finally getting my driver’s license was exhausting. Which is a

strange thing to say about driving, a task that chiefly involves

sitting down. For a lot of my friends, it was just that thing they

did around the end of high school, barely even thinking about it.

A lot of my friends don’t have highly strung parents and an

overwhelming anxiety disorder.

For me, it was a six-year process of navigating parents’

anxieties (and my own), bureaucratic labyrinths, driving schools,

myriad sexist microexpressions, and my own dwindling

confidence and bank account balance. All up, between lessons,

my three tries at the test, and paying for the actual license, it cost

$1400, but now I have that small plastic rectangle that allows me

to operate a metal box propelled by an explosion and controlled

by two foot buttons and a circle. It still has the same photo from

my learners though, and it kind of looks like I’m not sure if I’m

pooping or farting.

Early in 2009, soon after I turned 16, my mum took me

for my first driving lesson in my gran’s busted up corolla, which

turned out to have a compartment full of sweets that was only

accessible from the driver’s side, so bonus. We went to a nearby

patch of land that was once

a koala sanctuary; a soon-to-be gated community that hadn’t

installed the gates yet, but had enough roads for an introduction to

driving. I’d gone to protests of the development a few years earlier,

so that’s capitalism for you. world is swarming with children

charging headlong into the streets without a care in the world. Even

though he gave (admittedly useful) information with all the

overblown prophesying of a PSA about underage drinking, he was

still less intense than Mr Susan.

After I’d taken some lessons with Al, my dad got on board

the learning-to-drive hype train. Every weekend we’d drive for an

hour and a half to the Outpost Cafe in Canungra, have coffee and

pancakes, then drive an hour and a half back home. On top of my

own fears, I picked up all of dad’s anxiety as well while I was

behind the wheel. He lost two brothers to a car accident when he

was a teenager, so my dad is a careful driver and a nervous

passenger. My anxiety is high enough at the best of times, but

between them, dad and Al had me convinced that driving in Mad

Max and driving on real roads are basically the same, except it’s not

fun to watch and everyone’s crying and when shit explodes it’s not

awesome.

By the time I was up to 93 hours of driving, dad moved to

Tasmania, but my adrenal gland was so burnt out I didn’t care if I

ever got behind the wheel again.

18 months of not driving had passed by when I saw a van for sale

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painted to look like the Mystery Machine. It was probably a rusty

bucket of garbage under all that paint, but I had never been so

tempted to spend money I didn’t have on something I didn’t

need...until I remembered that I couldn’t legally operate it.

Turns out if I need motivation to do something, I just need

to be presented with the opportunity to make irresponsible impulse

purchases.It was September of 2014, and my learners would expire

in April of 2015. You’d think that would be ample time to get seven

more hours on my logbook, and then book and pass a test, but

you’d be surprised. My driving anxiety was through the roof at this

stage, so as luck would have it, my new instructor was the chillest I

had ever encountered. The new guy, Dan, was a security guard

before he was a driving instructor, and apparently he was

headbutted by Skrillex at some point. I finished my logbook with

Dan, and in an unprecedented event of bureaucratic efficiency, my

logbook was approved four days after it was submitted. It’s

possible that they just felt sorry for me, since my logbook was a

first-edition, and they’re up to like the third.

In between my logbook getting approved and me booking

my test, Dan had left the driving school, and all his students were

passed on to Ben. The first thing Ben said to me was that he was

much more chill than Dan, who was possibly the chillest dude I’d

ever met. Alarmingly, Ben was indeed significantly more chill than

Dan. The night before my first lesson with Ben, I had a bit of a

breakthrough with my driving anxiety. In the middle of panicking

about manoeuvre disasters, I stopped and said to myself, “What am

I so nervous about? I love driving.” It was like someone flicked the

“off” switch on my anxiety levels. At least until I started doing the

tests.

The thing about driving tests is that for all the anxiety beforehand,

they’re very, very boring. My first test was on the third of March in

Rosalie, which everyone told me is a perfect storm of narrow streets,

tricky corners, uptight yuppies, and school zones. I spent the entire

night before panicking

about the test, and about having to wake up so bullshit early for it, so

I wasn’t super confident to begin with. I went in figuring that I’d

either pass, or learn what I needed to do to pass next time.

At the start of the test, the examiner asked for my form, which

I gave him. He then asked for my paperwork. Not sure what this

meant, I mumbled a few confusion noises. He then informed me that

by “paperwork” he meant my medical certificate, which was not as

obvious as his huffing would suggest (as a type 1 diabetic I need a

doctor’s approval to drive, which is a massive pain in the arse). The

examiner spent the entire test with his legs spread all the way apart,

so whenever I had to change gears to first or second, I’d brush his

thigh. I found every excuse I could to stay in third.

I failed the test, largely because I didn’t give way at a

roundabout and the examiner had to use the teacher-break (I don’t

even have an excuse, I was just bored), but also because I stayed in

high gears when I should have shifted down. So I learned what I

needed to do to pass the second time around: give way properly

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and pray to as many gods as I can that the examiner doesn’t need so

much space to air out his giant balls.

My second test was an absolute fluke of booking, the 9th of March

(less than one week later) in Sherwood, a favoured location because it

has wide streets and limited tricky corners. At the start of the test, I

confidently rolled my way out of the testing centre, turned a corner and

failed to give way at a pedestrian crossing (you might be noticing a

theme here). The test lasted a total of five minutes, and I challenge

anyone to fail harder and quicker than I did. As far as blows to your

self-esteem go, failing your driving test twice in one week is a big one.

I’ve failed auditions before, I didn’t get into my first-, second-, or

third-choice uni courses, and my year 12 formal date told me a month

before the formal that he wanted to go with someone else (he

specifically described her as “hotter”). But my list of “biggest blows to

my self-esteem” now had a new number 1 placement.

Around the time I finished high school, there was a fairly popular

facebook page called “Passing your driving test on the first try because

you’re not [an idiot]” (the actual title contained an ableist slur, and I

have a conscience). Among some of the more notable people who

liked this page were the girl who thought highway drivers were so rude

for honking their horns at her every time she changed lanes, the guy

who complained incessantly about losing his license for driving while

it was suspended (it was suspended for doing 120 in an 80 zone,

which he maintained was not his fault), and the guy who racked up

so many speeding fines that he just barely avoided a prison sentence.

Failing twice got me pretty introspective. I started noticing bad

drivers everywhere, drivers who, though terrible, were allowed to

drive while I wasn’t.

I don’t recall the context, but I vividly remember a friend

from school delivering an impassioned anti-female-drivers rant one

morning before class. His slam-dunk arguments consisted of

rhetorical questions along the lines of: who’s always 10 below the

speed limit on the freeway? Who’s always stalling at intersections?

Who hesitates at roundabouts? It would take a few years for me to

realise that this was the purest manifestation of the reason I put so

much pressure on myself to be a perfect driver all the time. I wasn’t

just operating a vehicle, I was an ambassador for all women. When I

fucked up, it would be treated as though all women everywhere

fucked up. When I failed two driving tests in one week, every

woman everywhere failed with me. This might sound like a crazy

and egotistical thing to say, but everyone who’s faced some kind of

stereotyping will know how I feel.

In hindsight, I should have realised the guy was an

irredeemable fuckwit at this point, but sixteen-year-old me cared so

much about fitting in that I didn’t say anything.

My third test was with another instructor altogether. I couldn’t get a test

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before Ben went on holiday, and he wasn’t back until after my learners

expired, so he passed me on to Alex, who was new to the driving

school and my chillest instructor yet. This test was on the 7th of April,

13 days before my learners expired, in Greenslopes. This examiner

seemed to pick up that I had no problems driving, it was just exam

stress that was holding me back. He also kept his legs at a reasonable

distance apart, so lower gears weren’t the problem they were the first

time. I stalled twice doing a “turn-around manoeuvre” (which is what

three-point turns are called these days) and again in an intersection,

where I freaked out and stayed stopped for much longer than

necessary. Driving back to the testing centre I was certain I’d failed. I

would have to take a break and let my savings account heal before

trying again, and there was no way I’d get another test in before my

learners expired. When we got back to the centre I was on the verge of

tears when the examiner said, “Well, all I have to do now is tick off

‘Successful’ and we’re done.” I let out a success-laugh, but otherwise

maintained my dignity pretty well. Turns out I’d had less than the

maximum allowable number of non-critical errors, which is pretty

good for someone driving an unfamiliar car on unfamiliar roads (also, I

didn’t fail to give way this time, if anything I gave far too much way).

So I have a license now, that’s a thing. Probably won’t buy a car

though, I’m pretty broke after spending all my money on driving tests.

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Sad Puppies is well and truly over by the time you’re reading this. It’s now mere detritus on the convention hall floor of nerd culture, swept away with the discarded flyers and Pocky boxes. As a campaign to promote the nomination of an approved, ‘traditional’ slate of writers for this year’s Hugo Awards, Sad Puppies’ damage has now been done. And there’s plenty about the faction that is ridiculous, regardless of any damage done. Their belief that the Hugos are ‘too insular’, on the basis that their winners have recently included more women and writers of colour; that the solution to this insularity is a kind of affirmative action for their approved writers; their misty-eyed nostalgia for a time when men were men and so were authors. Did everyone forget that Mary Shelley is often considered to have kicked of the whole science fiction canon?

So it’s easy to write it all off as nonsense, and f fringe nonsense at that. To read a think-piece or two about it, and then move on. And as invested in issues of representation and access we may be, it’s also easy to get jaded by shit like this,

especially post-gamergate, in the face of a thousand micro- and macro-aggressions. But it’s worth taking a look at the primary sources when it comes to movements like these, instead of just gleaning their intent from a scathing io9 article. It’s baffling when people who have loved the same sorts of stories all their lives as you have can see something so dramatically different. There’s insight to be gained there. You can find all the ridiculousness above, and more, in “SAD PUPPIES 3: The unraveling of an unreliable field”. An early blog post by the Puppies’ Brad Torgerson, the post makes the slates’ objectives clear, but it also has a lot to say

about the relationship with popular culture that underlies the movement. Torgerson describes his theory of ‘unreliable packaging’, which he claims explains the ‘brokenness’ of the Hugos. He puts it thusly: “That’s what’s happened to Science Fiction & Fantasy literature. A few decades ago, if you saw a lovely spaceship on a book cover, with a gorgeous planet in the background, you could be pretty sure you were going to get a rousing space adventure featuring starships and distant, amazing worlds. If you saw a barbarian swinging an axe? You were going to get a rousing fantasy epic with broad-chested heroes who slay monsters, and run off with beautiful women. Battle-armored interstellar jump troops shooting up alien invaders? Yup. A gritty military SF war story, where the humans defeat the odds and save the Earth. And so on, and so forth. These days, you can’t be sure. A book has a spaceship on the cover, but is it really going to be a story about space exploration and pioneering derring-do? Or is the story merely about racial prejudice and exploitation, with interplanetary or interstellar trappings?” I originally read this article for several several assignments, and I often struggled to maintain my academic composure. This guy can’t think sci-fi and fantasy were never allegorical, right?

It’s a weird misunderstanding of the

genres on a few levels. Torgerson is

concerned that Fiction About Stuff has

been put too much on ‘permanent

display’ at the expense of the kind of

wholesome stories he grew up on. And

as an example of the good old days, he

gives this quote from Star Trek: ‘To

Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone

Before.’

Star Trek, which brought us roughly

eight thousand episodes about race,

episodes about class, and episodes

about gender identity (or even about

sexuality using gender identity as a

metaphor, in one episode of The Next

the original series where aliens with half-black, half-white faces persecute aliens with half-white, half-black faces—the episode so literal and heavy-handed it inspired The AV Club’s listicle ‘Space Racism Is Bad: and 17 Other Not-So-Subtle Lessons We Learned From Star Trek.’

Generation, which would no doubt have Torgerson’s head spinning with Trainspotting-baby fury). The show with that one episode of

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And the version of the quote Torgerson uses is taken from ST:TNG, in which ‘No Man’ is changed to ‘No One’. He has quoted one of Sci-Fi’s most famous, explicit concessions to equal gender representation. It’s political correctness gone mad. The theory here seems to be that genre fiction was agenda-free before lefties, chicks n’ queers noticed it. And, misunderstandings of said fictions aside, that’s clearly not true. I can see where the confusion is for Torgerson. He longs for the fiction he read in the 60s, 70s and 80s. He sees the generic conventions of fiction from that time— buff or brainy male heroes, beautiful female objects of rescue and desire, aliens or monsters as unambiguous foes—as ideologically neutral. They just are, for their own sake; apolitical enjoyment. But those stories present a worldview as clearly as any leftist tract. Assumed heterosexuality, monstrous otherness and all those other old chestnuts are rendered invisible by their ubiquitous presence in our culture at large. Like a dude painting himself brick-pattern and standing in front of a brick wall. They glide to the reader without tension. That doesn’t make them simpler, or more neutral. Torgerson’s own website banner reads ‘TORGERSON: BLUE COLLAR SPEC FIC’. That’s a worldview you’re peddling, buddy. This is where the tension originates, and it’s the same tension behind Gamergate

YouTube comments. There are nerds who want to keep being given what culture’s always delivered, who are baffled when they’re served something different (regardless of whether that something different has been around all along), and see difference as invasive. Torgerson explicitly describes this with his ‘Nutty Nuggets’ metaphor- they feel like they’ve been sold something for decades, they like it, and they don’t like it when someone messes with the formula. They even see it as sinister. We all like a little nostalgia, but intellectualising it to the extent that other voices are feared and rejected is more than a little masturbatory. I want to hear different stories, from as many different kinds of people as possible, even Torgerson’s- because a larger world of stories has intrinsic value. Not because I feel obliged by historical or current cultural imbalances (and if I feel a need to advocate against them, it’s not some kind or gormless guilt), but because it’s more interesting. I want my fiction as wide and weird as possible, because I love it.

That approach leaves room for revisiting old favourites, in old works and new. Sad Puppies can’t move beyond them, and the fear and insecurity behind it does fiction no favours.

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On Bullshit (with thanks to Harry Frankfurt)

How do you expect me to know I’m talking over you?

we exist only in response We never had that conversation.

to grasp bullshit’s character forbids the indulgence of impulse

I only watched.

but the notion of carefully wrought bullshit is truth’s greater enemy

You’ve always been possessive.

concocts out of whole cloth some kind of laxity in bluffing’s nearness

I didn’t touch her. Only with my hands.

quaint equivalents snuggle the paradigm

humbug hokum buncombe claptrap balderdash

Yes, but I was lonely.

the bullshitter eludes discipline If I am talking, it’s because I feel safe.

There are realms replete with unmitigated bullshit.

There’s nothing I can do to fix that part of myself.

our essential nature is elusive I’m just a bad boyfriend, I guess.

be true to yourself and resist sincerity I wouldn’t know if I were talking over you. You’d have to tell me.

Zenobia Frost

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Woolf Pack Issue #5

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Transcript of Woolf Pack Issue #5