Remember what I said in the last post about my friends trying to kill me? Yeah... They strike again.
On October 9th, a brave, brave individual known only as "Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Tech" posted a screed on The Spearhead blog (nothing phallic there) about how women and gays are destroying science fiction.
That sound there was the head-desking heard round the world. Now, I'm not linking because Captain Odious doesn't need anymore attention. I will, however, link to several responses to his petulant whine. After my own seethe.
Essentially Poo-head McPoo-erson's* complaint is that having developed characters who have relationships with something other than a raygun or space ship is "feminizing" SF/F.
THAT noise was me palm-slapping my own forehead.
And he goes on about the tragedy of Starbuck being a woman, and shows, movies and books that talk about icky girls and super icky homosexuals with their icky emotions and feelings getting ickiness all over his treehouse...
I do not get these guys. I really don't. Ok, actually I do, but I don't want to. They're mostly under-socialized dorks who are constantly bleating on about why can't they get laid, in between venomous rantings about how all women are shallow gold-diggers who only care about looks and cars, using themselves as State's Evidence #1. Yeah, way to make the case for the defense, jackass.
Fortunately, for the rest of the world, the majority of male SF/F geeks are not like this guy. Most male SF/F geeks welcome girls into the fold with open arms, and regardless of looks, get laid a lot, and even get (GASP!) happily married to women... Hmmm... In fact, most male SF/F geeks are like author John Scalzi, happily married and, apparently, believing that women are people too. There's also Hex, and Michael Underwood.
Plenty of women have responded as well. Mary at the Geek Feminism blog, Candy at Smart Bitches Trashy Books (one of my favorite book review websites of all time), Eumelia at Livejournal, and Lisa Fary at PinkRaygun.com. Each of those responses will spawn more links to other responses.
Not to mention that women have been involved in SF/F since the very beginning. Many sources cite Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as the first "speculative fiction" novel. Many women wrote under male or ambiguous pseudonyms like Andre Norton, C.L. Moore, James Tiptree. So, the girls have always been in the clubhouse, we just haven't always let on who we were. Some of the finest and most prolific SF/F authors have been women, Ursula K. LeGuin, Tanith Lee, Marion Zimmer Bradley (Gods, I wish she were still alive to skewer this asshole. She was one funny, sarcastic woman).
Honestly, that jackass has probably read several books by women writing under male or ambiguous names, and never even knew it. And it didn't even make his balls fall off.
More's the pity.
*I apologize for my previous use of demeaning and hurtful language. I was still pretty angry when I wrote this and my earlier denigrating comment was out of line and uncalled for. I stand by Poo-head, though.
Mickey Schulz is a guest author for the California NOW blog; her opinions are not necessarily those of California NOW. Copyright Mickey Schulz, with permission granted to California NOW for use on this site.
"Poo-head McSmallDick"?
Come on, we can do better than that.
Mickey may not be writing on behalf of California NOW, but this piece just makes us look bad.
Posted by: twitter.com/molymena | October 15, 2009 at 10:46 AM
Molly,
We like to give our guest writers a lot of latitude in their language, but you're right, this is not appropriate. Not because it's "bad" language, or unimaginative language, but because it plays into patriarchal stereotypes. Any of our writers should know better than to protest demeaning language by using demeaning language, and we'll be talking with Mickey about this.
Posted by: CA NOW | October 16, 2009 at 09:15 AM