Romance writers along with RWA (Romance Writers of America) have been dealing with bullying woke scolds for over a month now. The fallout from the initial blast has been ugly and doesn’t look to get better anytime soon.

In a nutshell, Courtney Milan, a historical romance writer, ran a series of tweets in August going after long-time romance writer Kathryn Lynn Davis. Davis’s crime? A book she wrote in 1999, that says, according to Milan, bad things about Chinese women and the Chinese culture.

The key here is this, Milan admits she didn’t read the book.

Yet she posted multiple tweets slamming Davis’s writing based on excerpts. And the crowd went wild.

What did Milan presumably want Davis to do? Rewrite a twenty plus year old book? Issue a public apology for something she wrote years ago?

Instead, Davis filed an ethics complaint with RWA. And that’s when it all went really sideways. The organization should’ve handled the ethics complaint per the guidelines and regulations. They didn’t. The fallout from that is on them in my opinion.

The problem I have with all of this? The bullying.

Here’s the thing, Milan took a look at an excerpt from ONE BOOK and went public with her absolute disdain for what Davis wrote. Milan should’ve taken her concerns to Davis privately. But she didn’t. She went public and in doing so opened the floodgates to woke scolds.

This is the same thing we have seen with Ricky Gervais. People wanted him dropped from the Golden Globes because he was going to engage in ‘wrong speak.’ Kudos to the Globes for keeping him on.

His monologue was a thing of beauty and he left a metric ton of butt hurt in his wake.

Gervais won’t ever apologize to the SJW and woke scold mobs, and he’s right not to.

J.K. Rowling was supposed to be canceled or bow to the woke scold mob. Why?

“I assumed J. K. Rowling would cringe, beg forgiveness, and assent to approved re-education techniques after a Twitter mob and the Woke Enforcement Agency that is Vox went berserk during the holiday season about a comment Rowling had made on Twitter. Rowling supports Maya Forstater, a British woman who lost her job simply for stating she believed sex is immutable and binary. This wouldn’t be much of an issue except a British court agreed that it was proper to fire Forstater and chastised her in the bargain, saying she was guilty of creating “an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment,” which “is not worthy of respect in a democratic society.””

Her response to the unhinged demands and GLAAD’s offer to facilitate a discussion between Rowling and trans groups? NOPE, not gonna play. Good for her.

Laura Ingalls Wilder is bad because she wrote mean things about Indians and Blacks, therefore library organizations must cancel her. Never mind that she was writing as a product of her time.

Stephen King dared to suggest that art should be judged on quality, not wokeness or diversity. He was relentlessly dragged and then caved to the mob. 

As for RWA, Courtney Milan, Davis and the entire controversy, it continues to this day. Kathryn Lynn Davis clarified her remarks, made some changes to that one book and also discussed that an editor suggested Davis apologize.

““I didn’t understand what I would be apologizing for unless it were for my 24-year-old book,” she said. “I did not agree with what [Milan] was saying and to apologize for something I did not agree with didn’t make sense to me.””

 Milan’s response?

“Asked for comment about Davis’ new description of what had happened to her, Milan said: “I wish Kathryn Lynn Davis had taken the editor’s advice to apologize from the start. Period.”

Oh. So, if Davis had just immediately caved back in August and apologized to Milan and the romance world at large, the current implosion wouldn’t have happened? From the very first tweet, the die was cast and the scolds went to town.

This is happening far too often these days. One person decides that what was written (even if it was years or decades ago) is wrong/mean/racist according to that person. Therefore, according to the one, it is decided that the only way to handle it is to publicly shame that person.

Are words on a page written twenty plus years ago THAT hurtful that the knives must come out? Objectivity has been lost on this.

As we have seen many times before and now with the Romance Writers of America debacle, inciting the social media bullying mob on what is essentially a personal viewpoint solves nothing and is making things worse for everyone. There are no winners in this and never will be.

Welcome Instapundit Readers!

Feature Photo Credit: Geralt bullying image via Pixabay, cropped and modified