#i know that without him we probably wouldn't have lovecraft's stories around and all the stuff based on them

[genericswordsmaiden]

Found a Derleth story collection at the bookstore and proceeded to insult him for five minutes straight while explaining to my best friend all the bullshit he did

[velvetvexations]

RE: Lovecraft's racism

I don't have anything meaningful to add, just some personal anecdotes.

I started reading Lovecraft from some selected works books, and I didn't see any issue for most of it. I didn't know his reputation, and also I am European so race is not something that I am actively aware about (because POC here are extremely rare and mostly are rich tourists and exchange students rather than minorities). Up until he described Inuits as "dwarfish creatures who call themselves Eskimos".

Later I have read complete collections of his works and saw some absolutely horrific racist sentiments, and also now that I am tumblr-level socialist I can see all problematic innuendos in selected works as well, so it's in no way defense of Lovecraft. Just my addition.

P.S.: I also think that people calling Lovecraft exceptionally racist just didn't read a lot of popular USAmerican fiction of the time. Burroughs is IMO worse, or at least more obvious about it.

P.P.S.: There was a popular joke some time ago like "Lovecraft would go insane if he met me" that was made by white neurodivergent queer people, and I feel that it's weirdly tone deaf. We don't know Lovecraft's opinion on homosexuality or transgenderism, at all. He probably was at least somewhat homophobic considering times, but we just can't prove that he wouldn't have changed his mind if presented with science-based arguments, and autism is definitely not what he considered scary mental illnesses. His entire deal was being racist, not just generally bad person.

P.P.P.S. (wow): Also, not enough people talk about him describing political system of Great Race of Yig (or whatever they are called) as "a mix of socialism and fascism"

Actually, we DO know how he felt about queer people!

From a letter to J. Vernon Shea:

I guess it is true that homosexuality is a rare theme for novels—partly because public attention was seldom called to it (except briefly during the Wilde period) until a decade ago, & partly because any literary use of it always incurs the peril of legal censorship. As a matter of fact—although of course I always knew that paederasty was a disgusting custom of many ancient nations—I never heard of homosexuality as an actual instinct till I was over thirty��which beats your record! It is possible, I think that this perversion occurs more frequently in some periods than in others—owing to obscure biological & psychological causes. Decadent ages—when psychology is unsettled—seem to favour it. Of course—in ancient times the extent of the practice of paederasty (as a custom which most simply accepted blindly, without any special inclination) cannot be taken as any measure of the extent of actual psychological perversion. Another thing—many nowadays overlook the fact that there are always distinctly effeminate types which are most distinctly not homosexual. I don’t know how psychology explains them, but we all know the sort of damned sissy who plays with girls & who—when he grows up—is a chronic “cake-eater”, hanging around girls, doting on dances, acquiring certain feminine mannerisms, intonations, & tastes, & yet never having even the slightest perversion of erotic inclinations.

Even worse, from a letter to James F. Morton:

Have you seen that precious sissy that I met in Cleveland? Belknap says he’s hit the big town, and that he’s had some conversation with him. When I saw that marcelled what is it I don’t know whether to kiss it or kill it! It used to sit cross-legged on the floor at Elgin’s and gaze soulfully upward. It didn’t like me and Galpin—too horrid, rough and mannish for it!

The idea that this fucking dweep saw himself as the alpha male in the room is dadgum hilarious.

And yet, R. H. Barlow and Samuel Loveman (again) were gay. Did Lovecraft know? He met the aforementioned "precious sissy" at a gathering Loveman had taken him to. R. H. Barlow wrote a story lost to us called "I Hate Queers" which Lovecraft read that certainly sounds psychologically revealing, but his brief commentary on it really tells us nothing about the content and if it made Barlow's closet more transparent or not.

Derleth said Lovecraft "seemed" to be unaware they were gay, but what the fuck does that asshole know? Lovecraft personally explained the ideas behind his stories to him and he still fucked up the Mythos for decades with his bullshit. On the other hand, Derleth was bisexual himself, and I don't know how Lovecraft couldn't have picked up on it from this letter he sent him:

I can understand your detestation of sex irregularities in life as violations of harmony and I here fully agree with you. I had previously misunderstood you to mean protestation from a basis of morals, and on this basis I would have stood squarely opposed to you. I have known and still know many people who are sexually irregular, both homosexual men and women, and except for three cases out of perhaps 21, I have always found these people highly intellectual, fully aware of what they were doing, and in all cases quite helpless. Speaking perspectively and in the abstract, I could as easily conceive myself entering upon a monogamous homosexual relation as a heterosexual one—though perhaps practice would change that point of view. To quibble about mere words, I should not say that perverts necessarily lived inartistically.

As to if Lovecraft would have accepted scientific evidence in favor of queer validity, maybe. He was becoming a full-blown Actual Communist towards the very end of his life and his racial views, while still preferring to keep cultures separate, had gotten to the point where he believed a Chinese baby raised by White parents would be essentially the same as a White person, which is, uh, technically progress?