Thread by @thisblackmagic

Going to be taking a line-by-line look at this and breaking out some points of contention/things that I think need further scrutiny or just, you know, need to be pointed out as NOPE. Will be threading here with screencaps of individual sections to leave characters for analysis.

https://twitter.com/courtneymilan/status/1210721424651870215

1.) Immediately starts off with an appeal to sympathy for how hard this is for *him,* disrespecting how hard it's been for Courtney and every RWA board member and general member thrown under the bus. Center's Suede's trials and sets the tone of how we should feel for him.

Which--I'm not inhuman. Getting thrown into this blender as president out of nowhere? Oof. OOF.

But the thing is Suede threw himself into this blender, then turned it on. He's not someone who got blindsided as collateral damage. He participated. So this tack is...mmph. Eeenh.

There's also the troubling framing of placing himself in the moral right from the start. That this is a matter of his conscience, and he feels he couldn't have done otherwise.

This is basically setting the stage that he chose right over wrong.

Wrong here = Courtney.

2.) Asked by whom?

Why does this not clarify the liaison's role? It's basically saying "I didn't do anything, I just stood there."

It's also saying he withheld information that could have been critical to final decisions. Which, confidentiality, yes, but also skewing outcomes.

And again, we're going with voting their conscience.

It's an appeal to sympathy and morality that tries to remove the question of racial or other bias from the proceedings to present these poor people as having to make a hard, but *right* decision.

It's manipulative.

Again and again, this appeal to conscience is an emotional manipulation point that dares you to find fault with people voting their consciences.

Y'all, racists have a conscience too.

And they think they're doing the right thing in discriminating.

Conscience means nothing.

3.) Okay this heffalump of word vomit.

This is going to take me a few tweets.

"There was no calculation in the formation of the group" = "I've seen people saying I engineered this in my favor, and I didn't."

Okay, fair enough. Plausible deniability due to conflict of interest.

But we have a lot of unanswered questions here about who selected the committee slate, who approved them, what criteria were established for selection, WHO THESE PEOPLE WERE.

This is the major question that's bugging a lot of people, and that keeps getting danced around.

The thing with the original ethics committee is that yes, they were appointed by Courtney so they were potentially dealing with conflict of interest...but we also know that they were selected to form a diverse and nuanced group of multiple perspectives to provide balance.

Without knowing who selected the panel or who was on it, we can't trust that the committee who evaluated this complaint had the same mixture of perspectives and balance, save for their word that they guaranteed representation.

What representation? Whose? What is "diverse" here?

And to whom did they attest that they had no conflict of interest? Who investigated and verified that? It sounds like no one did anything, this slate just appeared out of nowhere.

What constitutes "outsiders?" Non-RWA members, or just non-Board members?

Throw in that bit about the high caseload and turnover to emphasize the appeal to sympathy and "it's not our fault, it's just so hard," and it's a whole lot of words to avoid actually having any one person or group of persons named as responsible for grievous errors in oversight.

4.) did you

did you read policy tho

(Policy screenshot nabbed from @TheLizLincoln's tweet.)

Everything in policy says that the medium of the exchange made the accusations not credible or RWA's business; the case should've been thrown out.

BUT ALSO ON THAT NOMINEE THING...

@TheLizLincoln So if RWA policy empowers the sitting president to fill vacancies this way, with the approval of the existing board?

This is a policy gap that needs to be addressed, because it allows the president and board to stack the slate.

There should be a general election. By members.

@TheLizLincoln This policy needs massive overhaul, because this reflects a conflict of interest far more than the conflict with the previous ethics committee.

ALSO.

Nothing addressing why the previous committee was treated so grievously they were forced to resign in protest?

@TheLizLincoln If Suede is aware that people are accusing him of scheming with self-interest in mind, he must be aware of the massive insult to the previous Ethics Committee in that they discovered this entire clusterfuck the same way the rest of us did, and were left to take the fall for it.

@TheLizLincoln Why is there no apology addressing that? Why were they not informed transparently in the first place, and asked to recuse themselves but still retain their positions?

What happened in the process that led to formation of a secret committee?

@TheLizLincoln Things like Sarbanes-Oxley and other audit standards requiring a paper trail exist for a reason, and it's to avoid appearance of a compromised organization without documentation and transparency, checks and balances.

You basically just admitted to legal liability.

To be clear: I am not a lawyer. I have been a legal writer in the past and have worked with some audit stuff, but what I'm seeing here is a lack of accountability that can severely compromise the RWA's legal standing.

No paper trail = you can't be trusted by outside orgs.

No paper trail = a lot of he said she said, and that's all we're getting instead of an industry-renowned organization with standards, ethics, and transparency that members pay for.

You expect people to buy your trust, you need to be trustworthy.

I'm tired of this paragraph so just...yeah, more "poor me, I only had good intentions, why are you being so mean when I'm the good guy here" and insistence on the moral right, so anyone questioning must be in the moral wrong. We've seen this already and I'm not eve half through.

Backtracking to point #3:

https://twitter.com/Mojitana/status/1210733114281955328

5.) Except the code has been selectively and inconsistently applied.

@O_Waite has exhaustively documented multiple complaints that never even made it to the committee.

Others have spoken about *years* of reports that were ignored/dismissed.

@O_Waite Fucking god as much as I hate to even mention it because I *hate* these people with every fiber of my being, a group of readers has been consistently harassed by an RWA member with zero repercussions despite multiple reports.

So the only thing consistent seems to be disinterest.

@O_Waite There is no single standard.

That is a bold-faced lie.

Because the only time a case of racism was investigated, it was when a white woman claimed a WOC committed racism against *her.*

@O_Waite So it seems like there's one standard for AOC, and one for white authors.

Darlings, Jim Crow legally ended quite some time ago.

And please don't pretend that second vote wasn't an emergency response to backlash.

@O_Waite 6.) Here's what bugs me on this.

We know who the complainants are.

Suzan Tisdale and Kathryn Lynn Davis.

So confidentiality and integrity here exist only to protect the members of the super-secret ethics panel.

Normally this would be sensible operating procedure. You want to protect the judges from backlash in a decision.

Except...the former ethics committee and many RWA chapter heads and other Board members are taking a drubbing on their behalf.

They didn't sign up for that.

And I can't understand the reasoning here other than to limit liability, but y'all have already shite the bed so much on that front by violating your own policies re: social media outside RWA's purview + critique of works so it's like...just...go all in.

That's been the message of all of this, that policy is an excuse to not make right, and they keep falling back on that.

"Well, we would do the right thing, but we're so committed to *policy* because we're so righteous, and that's a higher moral standard."

It's not.

Many have said that what's right isn't always legal, and what's legal isn't always right.

Your policies are flawed, and you have a chance here to step up and make right since you've already fucked policy anyway.

Do what's right.

THEN FIX YOUR FUCKING BYLAWS.

7.) Last screencap.

Motherfuckers, you should have your lawyers on speed dial by now and shouldn't even *spit* without running things by them first, because you keep digging yourselves a deeper legal hole.

8.) Final wrap-up, as clearly I am making myself quite angry rereading this.

a.) There was no real apology for anything other than a delay in responding.

b.) There was no accountability for mishandling; in fact, utter denial of mishandling at all.

c.) That transparency was as clear as mud.

d.) Members have been vocal in demanding many things, including refunds for dues and RITA entries. That was not addressed.

e.) Neither was preemptive revocation of membership for people who intended to let lapse, vs. cancel.

f.) And lastly, and pertaining to e.)...

The recall vote.

Nothing was said about it, but preemptive revocation of membership affects numbers so people *can't* qualify for a recall.

Why wasn't that addressed at all?

There's probably some stuff I overlooked in that mess, but I'm irritated now and not thinking straight.

Basically it's a bunch of "it's not my fault, it's *policy*" hand-wringing and appeal to sympathy.

If that's your policy, throw out your fucking handbook.

FUCK I forgot about the Dreamspinner shite (and apparently so did Suede).

Nope. Nah. I'm done. And better people than I have already addressed that in detail.

My head hurts.