Emily, if you’d like to see their original post, check out google’s archive (i made it a tinyurl b/c the url is quite long & i didn’t want it to break or splay all over the place)

http://preview.tinyurl.com/3hmrrw

unfortunately, the archive was snapped when there was only one comment - the rest might be archived elsewhere - the internet archive might have it in a few days

and, y’know, wow - how messed up - i wonder if they took it down themselves or if Perseus made them take it down?

If you have come to the point where you agree with the commenters, or think they have a valid point, then at LEAST replace the post you took down with your new take on it. Don’t just disappear stuff!

I am left with the mean comments on BA’s blog, then a refusal to continue the conversation there, and a reference to a post that no longer exists. Totally frustrating.

They need to post an apology and show some understanding of how incredibly uncharitable their commenting on BA’s blog was. If you start off with the assumption that criticism of you/your company is unjustified, you’re not open to dialogue.

Indeed. What was that about the “soft bigotry of low expectations?”

that said, a handful of books does not a catalog or commitment make - nor does it counteract the overwhelmingly white face they present on their front page - like i said earlier, the amount of books they publish on race is really irrelevant to the matter at hand, i.e., their nasty self-centered behavior, their white privilege, & their unwillingness to own both

But I think we’re being unfair to the Seal Press bloggers when we ask them to respond to something hurtful in a purely professional way… …to ask those employees to react like trained PR flaks rather than like human beings is a bit much. When we blog, we blog — whether we blog as individuals or as part of a business, the line between the professional and the personal is blurry.

I don’t think that’s unfair at all. They presented themselves in an official capacity when they said “Seal Press here.” Even if we accept that there’s a bright line between responding as “trained PR flaks” and responding “like human beings”, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect people who present themselves in a professional capacity to act as professionals. They are professionals, and I don’t see why expecting them to act like it is unreasonable.

And I think there’s a huge double standard in the way in which folks are responding to BlackAmazon, on the one hand, and the Seal Press bloggers on the other. If I worked at Seal Press, and poured my energy and my sweat into making a world-class feminist voice, to hear “fuck you” would piss me off a billion times more than if I were just some hack at Wal-Mart.

Sure. I don’t think- and maybe I’m wrong- that people are suggesting that the women at Seal couldn’t be offended/hurt/upset/sad/whatever by the comments at BA’s site. But, if there’s a “double standard” it’s certainly in no small part because of the different positions being occupied. The comments on a personal blog- both from BA and her readers- are in a different realm than the comments coming from representatives of Seal. Personal versus professional. When you represent a publisher- no matter how small that publisher is- you’re expected to act in a professional manner. If BA comes onto my blog sometime and presents herself as the representative of some business and acts rudely, I’ll be every bit as critical of that as I am of Seal coming on to her blog. But, BA has never, as long as I’ve been reading her, presented herself as a representative of anything but her own words.

http://www.sealpress.com/book.php?isbn=9781580052290

http://www.sealpress.com/book.php?isbn=9781580051958

Not frothy, not light, very groundbreaking.

i’m a white man & i’ve worked in the radical & progressive book world for many years now - bookselling, publishing, distributing, organizing literary events, whathaveyou: the whole shebang - if you do truly put your mind, heart & soul into it because it’s what you believe in then you have an obligation to do the necessary, hard & yes painful work of examining your own privilege & assumptions about all manner of things we are taught to accept as “just the way things are,” especially if you’re white - you can’t just assume that because you work for or with a progressive/radical organization that you are free of the racism, sexism, classism, etal., that we all grow up with & inherit to one degree or in one manner or another - it takes work, consicous work, to deal with & address such matters & it’s pretty much a neverending process - Krista & Brooke, no matter how “heartfelt” & “sincere” you find them to be are using their white privilege in a pretty straightforwardly oppressive manner, i.e., to silence & dismiss the concerns, the voices, & the realities of women of color

and i really don’t see at all what you mean about their recent releases being “substantive, surprisingly deep, and diverse”? they have published some great books in the past, like Listen Up or Colonize This (which again, though both are in print, neither can be found anywhere on their website) & will be publishing some good books soon (like Susan Stryker’s new book) but lately, as Lauren pointed out earlier, they have been heading in a much more mainstream direction, & it’s only gotten worse since Perseus gobbled them up - even their subject listing looks pretty weak - check it
http://www.sealpress.com/subjects.php
note that despite having published books on women of color that “race” doesn’t even merit a subject heading - wtf?

look at their front page & what do you see? i see a book on financial management with a wonderfully paternalistic cover of a (white) woman holding a jar of spare change, a book on weight loss (white model), a pregnancy memoir by a rock-n-roll party girl (white model), a book on sex & bacon (another white face), a book on sexier sex (white model), and a book of erotica for “dirty girls” (gee, another white face) - the only book that has real substance is Amanda Marcotte’s & even here the cover (another white woman) seems to say: don’t worry, it’s really sort of just a joke (please note i’m not saying Marcotte is saying feminism is a joke - i appreciate her ability to deal with sexist bullshit through humor) - in all, though, it seems like pretty frothy & light fare to me - certainly not groundbreaking

but ultimately, while i’m dismayed to see how completely they’ve allowed themselves to be woven into the corporate world (don’t get me started on their amazon links), this all doesn’t really matter - they could be publishing all manner of progressive & radical lit & that still wouldn’t excuse their behavior - you don’t get to stop being white or having white privilege just because you publish books on race, even if you publish a ton of them - that’s just not how it works - quite simply, it’s an issue of power & i’m sure you can figure out who has it here & who doesn’t

ok, time for beer - i’m buying

Epic Fail.

There is no legitimate way to defend The Seal Press Employees in this, even if one takes Hugo’s lead in denying privilege dynamics any importance in the matter. No legitimate way to defend them. None. Zero.

They fucked up and they’re not admitting it and it’s stupid.

And all they had to do was to look to one of their content providers for the right mode of interaction. Whatever one can say about the Yes Means Yes project, Jaclyn Friedman responded to the criticism in exactly the right way from a corporate development point of view. And she was still wrong in a number of places, and she still got criticism. But she did not make things worse just because of a personal snit.

In a public exchange, you listen to the criticism and you respond with the appearance of gratitude whether or not you find the criticism worthwhile and you search the criticism quietly and to yourself for anything you might find relevant or useful and you thank the person for their input, or you don’t respond at all. It doesn’t matter how upset you are, how wounded you are. If you can’t do it, you’re not qualified for the job you hold. Period.

I wrote about equivalence because I get the impression, from what I thought was a heartfelt and sincere blog thread at Seal Press, that Krista and Brooke responded as Krista and Brooke, not as impersonal flaks for a corporation. Seal may be for-profit, but to work for it is to throw yourself, heart mind and and soul, into what you believe in. A “fuck you” at your company very easily becomes a “fuck you” at YOU, in the same way that a “fuck you” at your blog becomes about you as well.

That said, the “personal is political” works both ways — Seal can do more, should do more. But the books they have put out lately have been anything but light and frothy, IMHO — substantive, surprisingly deep, and diverse. And I agree, there’s room to do better.

Deoridhe, a beer for you because i wanted to address “the personal is political” thing & say what you said but didn’t & now i don’t have to because you did it so clearly & eloquently - thank you

ok, time for more coffee