It’s a new blog, The Feminist Hivemind: a space for secular feminists to explore. I think they’re attacking my precious bodily fluids.
It’s a new blog, The Feminist Hivemind: a space for secular feminists to explore. I think they’re attacking my precious bodily fluids.
In the wake of recent raging sexism in the science-fiction writers community, the SFWA has convened a task force to address the issues. It has the potential to be a good response, or a strategy for procrastination…we’ll just have to wait and see. It looks like some good progressive people on the committee, at least. John Scalzi has stepped up and accepted responsibility, which is also encouraging.
Meanwhile, the response is getting hot. Rachael Acks unleashes the fury, and so does SL Huang. That last post includes complete scans of the 6-page dialog from Resnick and Malzberg that elicited the anger. It’s an amazing piece of work: Resnick/Malzberg first brag about the sexist work that they’ve done in the past with no complaints (from women editors, even) and then whine at length about how they’re being censored and crucified by liberal fascists (Malzberg favorably cites talk radio and Sean Hannity for that one). It’s a pathetic spectacle.
They aren’t being censored. They’re being criticized for saying stupid things.
Does this sound familiar? What is it with old white guys who get all this respect and recognition as leaders in their fields, who then wilt into self-pitying whines of “witchhunt!” at any bad press, no matter how mild?
Yemisi wants you to sign this petition against the JAIL THE GAYS bill in Nigeria. I concur.
Uh-oh. I guess we’re going to have to shut down. The MRAs are right, and arguing against feminism/racism is a total waste of time — science proves it. It also conclusively demonstrates that the most oppressed group in America is…heterosexual white males.
It’s published in a scientific paper so I have to accept it. Oh, well, the life of a PUA totally sounds like fun.
Here we go again. Read this letter from a former member of the Science Fiction Writers of America.
It began with issue #200 of the Bulletin—all right, #199 if we want to get technical. It began with the Resnick and Malzberg Dialogues, a long-time feature of the publication. It began when two men sat down to have a dialogue about editors and writers of the female gender. How fantastic, I thought, because I, being a writer and an editor and female, had a keen interest in such things. I love reading anthologies such as Women of Wonder (and its sequel) and seeing how women impacted and contributed to this forward-looking and -thinking genre I love. I hoped they might include the women who inspired me and introduce me to many I hadn’t yet discovered.
That’s not what I found. I found a dialogue that seemed more focused on how these “lady editors” and “lady writers” looked in bathing suits, and that they were “beauty pageant beautiful” or a “knock out.” I am certain no condescension was intended with the use of “lady,” but as the dialogues went on, I felt the word carried a certain tone—perhaps that was a fiction of my own making. As I listened to these two men talk about lady editors and writers they had known, I grew uneasy. Something wasn’t right.
That sounds so familiar. But wait, there’s more!
The editorial staff (headed by a woman) vowed to improve, to seek more membership input. Issue #201 was little better—it included an article, written by another man, that told women to emulate Barbie, to “maintain our quiet dignity as a woman should.” I could not believe those words—yet there they were, in black and white. I asked my friends again—was I mistaken? Was I simply taking these words out of context? They were surprised, appalled, outraged. First at the idea that someone felt such a thing, and next at the idea that SFWA published it in the magazine which is part of our public presence.
Be…like…Barbie? To an SF audience? I’m surprised I didn’t hear the loud splat of a world-wide Picard facepalm.
So the little ladies complained and complained and complained, and then the men who started this all replied. Quit picking on us men, they said!
Issue #202 brought with it a “rebuttal” from Malzberg and Resnick, in which they used the words “censorship,” and “suppression,” and “ban.” In which they said those who complained about their article were anonymous to them, that the SFWA forum had become “the arena for difference.” Was it members who objected to “apparent sexism,” or was it a larger, darker, more hostile and threatening thing that wanted to suppress their dialogues?
In all the complaints that were voiced, there was never a call for censorship. There was never a call for suppression. There was a call for respect.
Whoa, man, deja vu. Deja vu all over the place. And really, there’s nothing special at all about atheism/skepticism, is there?
Nigeria has just passed a vicious anti-gay bill. It not only forbids gay marriage, it criminalizes organizing or lobbying to allow gay marriage, helping gays marry, having a gay club, and public demonstrations of affection by couples in public.
Lawmakers in Nigeria passed a bill Thursday banning gay marriage and outlawing anyone from forming organizations supporting gay rights, setting prison terms of up to 14 years for offenders.
…
Nigeria’s Senate previously passed the bill in November 2011 and the measure quietly disappeared for some time before coming up in Thursday’s session of the House. Under previous versions of the proposed law, couples who marry could face up to 14 years each in prison. Witnesses or anyone who helps couples marry could be sentenced to 10 years behind bars.
Other additions to the bill include making it illegal to register gay clubs or organizations, as well as criminalizing the "public show of same-sex amorous relationships directly or indirectly." Those who violate those laws would face 10-year imprisonment as well.
I helped gay couples marry by voting in the last state election; I guess that makes me a criminal by Nigerian law, liable to a ten year prison sentence.
Which brings me to a tiny bit of happy news, at least: as of next Thursday, gay residents of the Twin Cities will be able to purchase marriage licenses. Maybe we should invite unhappy Nigerians to move here? Do it quick before your government decides to criminalize visiting more liberal countries!
I tell you, I’ve been tagged in a whole lot of email conversations lately, and there are a lot of women out there who are seething with fury at Ron Lindsay…and now Greta has stepped forward to express that anger at both the content and context of the introductory talk at Women in Secularism 2.
I have a reputation as undiplomatic and blunt, while Lindsay is supposedly an objective philosopher and lawyer, quite calm and cool. To put it mildly, his reputation has just taken a major hit. How could the leader of a secular organization screw up a short introduction to a conference so badly? Apparently, he charged in with the intention of giving the attendees a rhetorical slap in the face.
Recent surveys have shown that 4 out of 10 American households are headed by a woman. Wanna watch four pampered men lose their shit over this fact? Here you go.
Juan Williams is angry — having women as the primary breadwinner heralds the disintegration of the family and something is terribly wrong with the country!
Professional Racist Lou Dobbs chimes in with some non-sequitur about abortions. Women are working and not having babies! Alert the police! Catastrophe and disaster! The social order is being undermined!
Oh, but smug jerk Erick Erickson takes the cake.
I’m so used to liberals telling conservatives that they’re anti-science, but this is liberals who defend this and say it is not a bad thing are very anti-science. When you look at biology, when you look at the natural world, the roles of a male and a female in society and in other animals, the male typically is the dominant role. The female, it’s not antithesis, or it’s not competing, it’s a complimentary role.
We as people in a smart society have lost the ability to have complimentary relationships in nuclear families, and it is tearing us apart.
WTF?
I’m used to conservatives mangling science and telling us that their lies are true, and Erickson does not disappoint. Listening to that I turned purple and tried to blurt out four sentences simultaneously, and then my larynx exploded and my brains geysered out my ears.
It’s not true! Many species exhibit different patterns of dominance, and some have no system of dominance at all. It’s quite common for females to be larger than males, for instance. Erickson is claiming that something common in primates is a universal.
NATURALISTIC FALLACY, ASSHOLE!
You don’t get to spend your pundit career blithering about human (and American) exceptionalism and then turn around when it’s convenient to your argument to point to some monkey over there and say, “See? That’s the natural order!”
Erick Erickson is one hella confused dingleberry. Why does anyone listen to a biblical literalist pontificating about science?
Here’s the deal, Fox News. The world is changing. It’s not getting worse, it’s getting different, and I know that’s the kind of thing that makes bitter, cranky old conservatives weep into their scotch and water, but deal with it. Besides, you’ll be dead soon and won’t care any more.
And it’s not just getting different, it’s getting better — those women in the workforce are more independent, more free, and living more fulfilling lives that matter. Welcome it. And hey, how about getting off your privileged butts and making sure that they get paid the same as men, so those families and children you’re so fucking concerned about can get by?
“removed from youtube”? What the ever-lovin’ fuck? I finished watching it, at least, and it is very grim: it points out the new tropes beyond rescuing the damsel. Many games now have you witnessing the grisly death of women to drive revenge stories, or have the woman suffering such extreme abuse that they ask the player to kill them to put them out of their misery.
So it is very violent — but it’s not Sarkeesian’s violence, she’s merely describing the repetitively vicious approach taken by many video games.
The Black Skeptics have put out a call to sign a petition for Abortion on Demand and Without Apology. I signed it, so should you.
There will also be an abortion rights caravan that will be stopping in North Dakota on 1 August — I may have to make a short hop up the road to Fargo to participate in that.