How to Suppress Writing Women

Last night I saw the most recent anonymized culling of quotes from a science fiction and fantasy forum populated by some of the genre’s malcontents. The occasion of this particular outbreak is (long story short) a petition by a non-member of SFWA on the topic of the potential future actions of a non-existent review board with which the yet-to-be-hired editor of the SFWA Bulletin might some day have to work. I would tell you what the petitioners were asking for if I knew, but the petition itself is a bit of a “First Amendment”, “bikinis”, “tyranny” mess. The people who signed the petition don’t seem to agree what the point of it was in their statements elsewhere, merely that it’s very important and there are some bad people around. Also, as it protested something that wasn’t happening, it’s moot.

I will note, however, that as the associate president of a non-profit organization, I have a tiny bit of experience on this. We’re currently working to hire a new volunteer editor for our monthly newsletter. Not only will this person work closely with an editorial board, but for the first couple of months of their tenure, they’ll be sharing content-acquisition duties with the board so they can get a feel for the priorities of the organization. We’re currently deciding between two very good candidates, neither of whom has expressed anything other than eagerness over the arrangement.

But this isn’t about the petition. This is about the responses to the petition and to the news that the petition wasn’t met with joy and gratitude. You see, when I looked at those quotes last night, I noticed that many of them centered around one woman, Mary Robinette Kowal. (Full disclosure: Mary is a good friend of good friends of mine. I’ve met her in passing at a couple of cons and been part of a couple of email chains she was also part of. I also happen to like her style.)

Following Mary and the petition kerfuffle both on Twitter, I knew Mary hadn’t gotten that involved in it. Some work to get all the facts. A certain amount of time spent reminding people that this petition was something launched against SFWA, not by it. She retweeted some snark, but she added next to none of her own. She also retweeted people linking to non-hyperbolic, if implacable, posts like this one. Over on Facebook, she shared what is easily the most sympathetic post about the whole thing. But on the forum, Mary was the face of evil and the orchestrator of all the…oh.

That was when it clicked. Somebody had a case of Watson Derangement Syndrome, except that Rebecca Watson wasn’t the center of the delusion. Mary was. And everything they were saying sounded so damned familiar.

Yesterday, I saw a link to the actual forum thread. The similarities continued to mount. So, with apologies to Joanna Russ over the fact that I’m doing far less work than she did, here’s how you go about suppressing the women who are doing that terribly inconvenient writing.

Pick a Successful, High-Profile Woman

Being elected to the SFWA board made Mary Robinette Kowal a triple threat. She was already an award-winning puppeteer before she started writing fantasy. When she did pick start writing, she won the Campbell award for best new writer. Then she served as SFWA’s secretary and vice president over a period of change and growth.

Rebecca Watson already ran a very popular blog network, worked on Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, and was in demand as a speaker in June 2011 when she quietly said on a video, “Guys, don’t do that.” The conversations that led from “Elevatorgate” have changed the landscape of the atheist and skeptic movements.

Why choose someone high profile? Two reasons: It will make what you do next slightly more plausible, and if you can topple a woman at the top, you will have demonstrated a considerable amount of power.

Reduce Everyone Else to Her Agents

Sean P. Fodera [all links go to the page on which the excerpt appears; wouldn’t want anything to be out of context]
Article 6020, Wed 12 Feb 2014 02:00:42p

A minority cabal has been in power in SFWA since M. Robinette-Kowal was elected to the Board. Now it’s just her minions worshiping at her agenda.

William Barton
Article 6062, Wed 12 Feb 2014 04:24:25p

I don’t know about minions, sycophants, or lackies, but as far as I know, a puppeteer always has puppets… (Sorry. I. Could. Not. Resist.)

Lois Tilton
Article 6126, Thu 13 Feb 2014 08:47:19a

I find they don’t know how to -think- for themselves. They can only parrot what they see on their favorite social media.

This not being true only of the Young.

William Barton
Article 6160, Thu 13 Feb 2014 12:45:18p

The groupmind can come up with original thinking, but the practice of groupthink doesn’t manage it.

In atheo-skepticism, we have the continual conflation of Rebecca and Atheism+. Forget that Atheism+ is Jen McCreight’s brainchild. Forget that Rebecca said at the time that it wasn’t her preferred means of dealing with the problem, that she’d rather start from humanism. No, when Atheism+ was the big bogeyman, people kept complaining to Rebecca about it. But that’s just one example. For more, try this.

We also have “FtBullies”. How does that tie to Rebecca? Well, if you understand that Skepchick is part of Freethought Blogs, even though it isn’t part of Freethought Blogs, and you understand that the “bullies” in question are all of Freethought Blogs or whatever portion of the bloggers are actively talking about feminism today plus Rebecca or any commenter on Skepchick or Freethought Blogs who says something disagreeable (feminist, anti-racist, etc.)–well, if you understand all that, explain it to me. The point is that the responsibility for whatever group of people you find objectionable at the moment can be laid at Rebecca’s feet under a name that doesn’t apply to her.

Why subsume all the people who agree (even somewhat) with your target woman under that woman? In addition to keeping the size of your problem under control, this keeps anyone else involved from being seen as a leader in their own right or even someone who honestly holds the position they do. If all the feminist evil emanates from one person, your work is easy. Just undermine and discredit that one person, and you can be assured that all that aberrant behavior will cease. You’ll be allowed to return to your rightful place as whatever it is that you actually do. Or did. Or claimed. This also helps you continue to attribute criticisms made by other people to her.

Minimize Her Work

Raymond Feist [included for context only]
Article 6025, Wed 12 Feb 2014 02:15:29p

M. Robinette-Kowal? I suspect I may regret this question, but who? I know I don’t follow the field the way I used to, but who is she and why does she have minions?

Lawrence Watt-Evans [included for context only]
Article 6033, Wed 12 Feb 2014 02:36:34p

Mary Robinette Kowal. (No hyphen.) She’s a fairly successful writer, won the Campbell and a couple of Hugos.

Sean P. Fodera
Article 6035, Wed 12 Feb 2014 02:49:17p

Honestly, no one you should have heard of, and no one you should concern yourself with. I have other words for her, but they wouldn’t be PC.

Peter Heck
Article 6037, Wed 12 Feb 2014 03:06:24p

Sean, you flatter her.

William Barton
Article 6067, Wed 12 Feb 2014 04:32:33p

This is where I usually point out how a) easy to win Hugos are, and b) how little they stand for. As a Hugo winner, you know all that LWE. As a Hugo finalist (for “Acts of Conscience”) I know something about the numbers involved. I got on the Hugo ballot because I was nominated by 24 people out of 7,000+ qualified to nominate. The winner that year, a favorite son of the convention state, received 350 votes out of 7,000+ qualified to vote. It beats me how anyone would think such an award counts for much of anything. Jerry Pournelle is right: only sales figures matter. Funny how most people keep those secret.

Lawrence Watt-Evans
Article 6069, Wed 12 Feb 2014 04:37:47p

Pretty much. One voter told me he voted for my story because it had the best title, since he hadn’t read any of the nominees. I suspect he wasn’t the only one.

But Mary’s books do apparently sell reasonably well.

William Barton
Article 6074, Wed 12 Feb 2014 04:46:44p

I’d have to see her numbers, and also be told the current average numbers for her publisher, and for category SF/F in general. Apparently just doesn’t tell us anything.

Lawrence Watt-Evans
Article 6079, Wed 12 Feb 2014 04:52:51p

“Apparently” in that I see them in stores, and Tor continues to publish her. Though her Amazon ranks aren’t very impressive.

William Barton
Article 6137, Thu 13 Feb 2014 11:01:35a

Unless the publishing world has changed dramatically since I walked away from it 5 years ago, I can name any number of “successful” writers who continued to be published by a given publisher because they are personal favorites of one or more editors, or because they have special personal attributes that support the publisher or editors’ personal politics. I know a couple of writers whose entire careers are based on such “credentialing.” There’s a long history of this in hard SF (we can all name one completely talentless scientist who got a career based entirely on his scientific career, for example), but it gradually spread. I’d have to see verifiable numbers.

Rebecca Watson is blogger with a degree in communications. That stuff about running a successful blog network that covers five subject areas in four languages? Forget about that. Forget that she’s enough in demand as a speaker to have a rider with conditions like minimum female representation among speakers for events. Forget her being part of one of the top skeptical podcasts. She’s a blogger without a degree in science.

Why work so hard to reduce the importance of your target’s accomplishments? It makes it ever so much easier to suggest she’s an interloper with no right to influence your group. Besides, you’ve got decades of examples of other people minimizing women’s work to help you on your way. This will also help you later, when you paint your target as merely “jealous” of her betters.

Portray Any Issue That Happened on Her Watch as Global Incompetence

Sean P. Fodera
Article 6035, Wed 12 Feb 2014 02:49:17p

I told her I wouldn’t allow anything I’d written to be posted there as long as I didn’t have access (as well as long as Cory Doctorow’s “testimonial” was still on the home page). She gave me a lot of excuses about how I’d had my chance to influence the site, but hadn’t bothered to visit it. I pointed out that I had visited the public areas, and had sent her my comments, but couldn’t visit the private areas because she had repeatedly ignored my requests for a working user account (others posting here had the same issues with access).

[…]

I think “incompetent” is as polite as I can be.

Sean P. Fodera
Article 6039, Wed 12 Feb 2014 03:26:19p

For the record, I’m very embarrassed that I’ve not managed to turn the other cheek and put that behind me, but SFWA and my contributions to it MEANT SOMETHING to me, and her incompetence and arrogance forced me to give that up. I’d go to confession, but the monsignor would know I wasn’t sincere.

Sean P. Fodera
Article 6157, Thu 13 Feb 2014 12:42:07p

Myself, Jane Yolen, Jerry Pournelle and others on sff.net were clearly not held in good standing when the new site went live because our requests for working logins went unanswered. It goes back to the petite-tyrant who set up the new forums. It doesn’t surprise me at all to hear William indicate that access hasn’t gotten any easier in five years.

I’m just going to let Rebecca cover this one herself, with “It’s Okay to Make Mistakes, Even About Galileo“.

Why point to your target woman’s mistakes, even months or years after the fact? Because everyone does everything perfectly except for those terrible women who are reaching beyond their competence. Besides, you wouldn’t want anyone focusing on what they did accomplish, would you?

Simultaneously Attribute Her Mistakes to Malice

Note: I have no idea who was responsible for log-in issues at SFWA. I see nothing in Mary’s bio to suggest she has a tech background and would, thus, be able to fix these problems herself. A less Mary-focused explanation of the problem is given here.

Sean P. Fodera
Article 6192, Thu 13 Feb 2014 01:58:03p

There was a very purposeful effort by MRK to keep out certain people who were very active on sff.net. Despite having it pointed out to her multiple times that she was keeping out former presidents and committee chairs, nothing was done to fix non-working credentials. Jane told me after I’d left that she still didn’t have working credentials on the new site, but that was OK because it gave her time to write more.

Then, of course, we have a talk by Rebecca in which the scope of some statements wasn’t clear enough for the whole audience, and that became “science denialism“.

Why attribute behavior to malice? Come on. Do good geniuses get any minions?

Discount Her Feminism If She Disagrees with Any Woman

William Barton
Article 6051, Wed 12 Feb 2014 03:59:57p

Yes, the Bulletin editor was the first and most unfair victim.

Lois Tilton
Article 6056, Wed 12 Feb 2014 04:10:53p

Public shaming of a woman. Which apparently only counts for some women.

Lois Tilton
Article 6109, Wed 12 Feb 2014 08:55:15p

It was a public shaming, regardless. By people who claim to be advocates for women. Except for actual individual women.

Bud Webster
Article 6110, Wed 12 Feb 2014 08:55:13p

And that, Lois, is one of the things that bothered ne the most about the whole thing. They just didn’t GET IT.

Sheila Finch
Article 6113, Wed 12 Feb 2014 09:24:00p

And those women are labelled “phenomenal buttheads,” “bigots,” and “sexist pigs.”

A few times over the life of her career, Rebecca has strongly disagreed with a woman who criticized her. This is one of the more recent. Apparently, calling someone who tweets about you and your friends and colleagues several times a day–while you ignore her–“obsessed” is invoking the anti-feminist “all women are crazy” meme. Other times, the mere presence of the criticism is enough.

Why make a big deal out of her or her minion-bullies criticizing a woman? Some people still don’t understand that feminism is a political movement with the goal of equal treatment of men and women on a legal and societal basis. This aids in that confusion while emphasizing the fact that some women agree with you. Also, noting that one woman said something “mean” about another plays off the trope that all this political stuff is just interpersonal jealousy.

Call Her a Mean Girl

Susan Shwartz
Article 6313, Fri 14 Feb 2014 01:28:33p

She’s an actress marketing herself, and she’ll use whatever. Now she’s letting the Mean Girl show.

She’s dealing with a doctrinaire crowd? Expect her to be more feminist than thou. Or humanist.

This is why she was so clever not to name the Rabid Weasels — aside from wanting to avoid claims of libel.

And she’s feeding off this controversy.

I’ll just leave this here.

Why a mean girl? Because when men talk about their situations, it’s politics. When women do it, it’s catty gossip. And no one likes a gossip. Except Alice Roosevelt Longworth.

Discount Her Feminism If She Appears in Less Than a Burqa

Sean P. Fodera
Article 6299, Fri 14 Feb 2014 11:42:57a

It just occurred to me that MRK seems to be deeply involved in this whole anti-sexism matter. I remember seeing her posing with Hines and Scalzi on one of their very scary cover parodies, and I know she chimed in with a snipe at the petition signers on the Radish thread.

I find it very funny and ironic that she would jump on this bandwagon. For a long time, her website featured an array of photos of her in a diaphanous white outfit, posing on a beach. No metal bikinis or such, but they were not innocuous writer headshots either. One of them, with her recumbent on the sand with legs exposed, made her somewhat attractive. I also recall she’s fond of wearing tight-fitting gowns and plunging necklines when she attends cons and award ceremonies. [The pictures in question are here. –SZ]

I’ll have to add “phony” to “incompetent” and “arrogant” in the mental tags I’ve assigned her.

Did you know that Rebecca Watson appeared in a pin-up calendar? If this fact has somehow escaped your attention, be ignorant no more. This means she can no longer speak to sexualization or objectification with any authority, even though she does, with respect to her pin-up calendars, no less.

Why talk about what your target woman wears? There are still some people who can’t seem to tell the difference between sex and assault, sex and degradation, sex and objectification, sex and unprofessionalism. If you point out that your target allows the world to understand that she probably has sex and enjoys it, you can call her a hypocrite for objecting to all sorts of social ills.

Add Some Direct Sexual Harassment

William Barton
Article 6361, Sun 16 Feb 2014 10:43:44a

I’m disappointed Neosunlight chose not to include my challenge for Ms. Kowal to star in a gender-flipped rendition of my book *Dark Sky Legion* (Bantam, 1992). A person ought to have the courage of their convictions.

[ETA: Owlmirror helpfully points out in the comment that I haven’t given people any good way to tell what Barton is suggesting. Here’s the cover art in question.]

Painting of very muscled man in a cold tech environment. He's naked with a shadow, cables, and some steam covering roughly what a pair of shorts would cover.
Here’s a little sample of what Rebecca’s received. The link is safe for work, but links from it aren’t necessarily.

Why make things all about her body? Well, it’s FUN, amirite? Also, it reminds her that no matter what she does, you don’t see her as a real person, just a bag of meat that might be attractive to you.

Accuse Her of Profiting From Your Abuse

Susan Shwartz
Article 6375, Sun 16 Feb 2014 02:23:40p

I TOLD you she was feeding off of this. Now, if Ms. Romano had wanted to be a journalist, not an ideologue, she’d have e-mailed some of us.

Do the words “professional victim” mean anything to anyone out there in atheo-skeptic land? Yeah, I thought they did.

Why accuse your target of profiting? It makes any recognition of your abuse to be attention-seeking behavior, not to be encouraged. Don’t worry. She already knows that.

So there you go. Just a few quick steps to making all those pain-in-the-ass feminists into non-people and non-problems. Unless it backfires, but that would never happen, would it?

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How to Suppress Writing Women
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29 thoughts on “How to Suppress Writing Women

  1. 3

    Wow. I’ve been a member of SFWA for years but have never been on the Fora or involved in the organization, so all this is news to me. What shocks me is that my husband knows MRK and frequently reads her works in progress to offer comments … she sends her manuscript to several friends the same way. My husband is a staunch feminist and doesn’t give praise lightly. I can’t believe she’d be “guilty” of any of the sins attributed to her.

    BUT we also have met Susan Shwartz, my husband knows her, too, and I would never have expected this of her. This is really horrible. I’m glad I’m not involved in any of this, but it’s really kind of a shock.

    As for Raymond Feist … never read him, never will now. Of course this is all probably backlash against the stuff that went on last year, with the sexist crap in the bulletin. What always shocks is women attacking other women.

  2. 4

    I went to the original link and I have absolutely no idea what’s going on or which side is which. My husband and I also know C.J. Cherryh and she’s always been one of my favorite authors. I have no idea where she fits in in this, but then again I don’t understand the issue at hand. Is it something about letting non-board members have free access to board discussions, and disagreements over that?

  3. 5

    OMG. It’s Freeze Peach, isn’t it? And C.J. Cherryh thinks it’s “okay” to discuss all sides of clearly sexist and racist issues? WTF? I’ve been reading her for over 25 years, since her very first book, and met my husband through her fan club. Whatever this “Young” group is, I could hardly qualify at 55 and a novelist for 20 years.

    I don’t get it. I’m sorely, sorely disappointed. There are no “two sides” to racism or sexism. Period.

  4. 6

    It is freeze peach. Jim Hines has a round-up of various signatories saying in their own words why they signed the petition. Cherryh isn’t one of them. I’m not sure what she’s given as a rationale or whether she has at all. It’s worth noting a few things for clarity:

    1. The person who signed the petition is not a SFWA member.

    2. Many/most of those talking about Mary are not SFWA members.

    3. The disgruntled left largely because SFWA was cleaning up the place.

    4. Some of those who signed the petition are said to have later withdrawn their names, though I can’t confirm this and don’t know who.

    5. Those who signed the petition and those who were discussing Mary are not the same group. Amy Sterling Casil, for example, who signed the petition, has been directly and publicly supportive of Mary.

  5. 8

    As far as Cherryh goes, she did make a post on her Facebook to say, essentially, that she signed the petition to support freedom of speech. More or less. When I went back later to get another look, it was gone, so I’m guessing she got tired of the commentary it spawned. Though to be honest, I did think at the time that she’d missed the point somehow.

    Incidentally, all of the ones I’ve seen speak up about their reasons for signing have made it out to be about supporting free speech or fear of potential censorship, etc.

  6. 9

    Fodera? I call a bad case of sour grapes: Aside from his participation in the “Atlanta Nights” sting against PublishAmerica he’s got one short story in an e-pub anthology from 2003. He’s hardly burning uyp the presses.

    (see http://voices.yahoo.com/book-review-atlanta-nights-travis-tea-75559.html)

    The tawdry pictuires? Looks like a stock photo shoot, not a glamour shot session.

    Thanks for the good explanaiton of the proper moves for suppressing those upp[ity wimminz.

  7. 10

    Glad for the clarifications … thanks. I was totally confused about what was going on. I’ll read the link with the synopsis.

    Still don’t know what’s up with Cherryh, though. I’m firmly on the side of anyone who realizes that sexism and racism have no part in SFWA.

  8. 11

    Wild. I’m amazed the same playbook was enacted so quickly, and without any apparent planning. I wonder if there’s an evolutionary component; if groupiness evolved as a successful social strategy, perhaps a general strategy for taking down social groups was burnt into us as well?

  9. 12

    I see you have reprinted part of my comments. However, you need to make clear that I wasn’t calling Mary a “phenomenal butthead.” That’s what one of her supporters called me.

  10. 13

    Sheila, oddly enough for someone who deplores the state of today’s education and the critical faculties of the “youngs”, you seem to have missed that your quote is under a heading that already makes it clear that the subject of the quotes below is her or her purported minions/bullies/supporters saying things about other women. I think it is already quite clear that you were called (or think you were called, as I haven’t seen the source) a phenomenal butthead.

  11. 14

    Hmm, perhaps I’m being hasty and judging erroneously by names. Sheila, do you identify as a woman? If you don’t, I agree that that quote does not belong under that heading. I’ll be happy to correct that if I got it wrong.

  12. 15

    I don’t think it’s clear enough in your original post why William Barton’s comment about Dark Sky Legion is sexual harrasment. You might want to include a thumbnail of the cover from Amazon. It shows a bare-chested man from the front.

    So a demand for MRK to do a “gender-flipped” pose of that cover is literally a “Tits or GTFO”.

  13. 16

    I suppose the Freeze Peach brigade should be glad to have Vox Day back. After all, he presents the perfect candidate for the “all sides” approach to sexism, racism, and homophobia. Then we’d have complete fairness,and all points of view covered very nicely.

    Or perhaps guest editorials by various skinhead organizations, Tony Perkins, etc. etc.

    But they aren’t members of SFWA, are they? Well, as I said, there could be a petition to reinstate Vox Day.

  14. 17

    Updated. Thanks, Owlmirror.

    sueinnm, one or two of the folks in the SFF.net group seem to be suggesting he should rejoin their conversation to show their pesky dissenters what’s what.

  15. 18

    quelle suprise. It never stops, does it?

    BTW, I’ve written romance for many years, and I’d say 75% of my covers have featured a bare-chested man. The rest show a man with part of his chest showing, though early on I did have some “clinch” covers. I’m no more fond of that than sexualizing women for book covers. It reduces people to body parts, which I abhor for any gender. (Some romance covers actually show only the chest and torso of the male model … not even the head! Talk about reducing to body parts!)

    So, yes, it sometimes works the other way. And there’s not a damned thing I can do about it, except lament it.

  16. 21

    Yes, when I read about this I was like “sounds really familiar”. The whole “”Freeze Peach Censorship Women who wear revealing cloths once in a while must be fine with everything” stick sounded very familiar.
    What annoyed me a bit about the replies both on MRK’s own website as on Scalzi’s were all the comments about how MRK doesn’t deserve this because she’s such a nice person (which I don’t doubt). Or because she’s so talented. No woman deserves this, whether she conforms to people’s expectations of “nice” or people’s expectations of “talented”.

  17. 22

    […] It’s fascinating to see how this entire conversation has progressed and how the rhetorical techniques Joanna Russ wrote about in How to Suppress Women’s Writing are still used today to suppress and erase women. […]

  18. 23

    Also, it reminds her that no matter what she does, you don’t see her as a real person, just a bag of meat that might be attractive to you.

    You missed a curve here. While viewing a target female for a drive-by smiting (or smiting campaign), if one comes anywhere close to implying that the person might be attractive, a dig about what one finds unattractive about the woman is required, pro forma, to complete the paragraph. The negging is almost mandatory.

    (Also, I looked at picture of MRK in the allegedly diaphanous dress and it’s diaphanous below knee, then lined. How teddibly, teddibly shocking.)

  19. 24

    This is nicely taken apart. Well done.

    One comment about the whole internet-flow of this stuff: over on Daily Dot it cites Raymond Feist: “Among the participants who are displeased at the recent influx of diversity in their community is award-winning author Raymond Feist, who eyerolled at “fugheads determined to use the organization to further their own agenda.”’

    I’ve read a lot of Feist and was surprised that he would be attacking MRK. So I went and read all the source material on sff.net (yeah, that took a while). He never attacks MRK and spends pretty much the whole comment thread asking who did what? who said what? as he hadn’t heard about the petition. But just his name turning up in the Dot story is enough to make us aghast at him.

    Whenever possible, read the source material, everybody. I started doing that when people started sending me Examiner stories on how my chronic illness had been “cured.”

    p.s. I suspect Joanna Russ would have appreciated this essay a lot.

  20. 28

    Wow, Stephanie. Brilliant identification and categorization of each attack its role in the hierarchy of badness.

    Among these commenters, I am unsurprised to see all, but particularly Lois Tilton, an instructive case. Many years ago when I was first starting out, I reviewed a couple of short stories – one of which I was able to say good things about, and the other, sadly – I was unable to speak well of. I realized that saying the bad stuff was not necessary, I wasn’t any good at “reviewing,” and the whole thing was bad karma. So I have since NEVER reviewed unless it was a legit reader review of a book I’d read and wholeheartedly would recommend to others. Lois Tilton, of course, appears to read and review a great portion of short fiction published and has for decades.

    I’ve *never* gotten anything but a slam review from Lois Tilton. It’s become an amusing game for me to see what Aspergery whacks and rotten commentary she’ll come up with. I know another male (nameless) reviewer who’s done similar things. To me, and countless other female SF/F writers. A couple of years ago I learned to my delight and dawning recognition that this chap’s been in every slush pile since “time began.”

    As a fiery cougar who obviously doesn’t have the candlepower to write any type of SF at all, and clearly, only the lightest-weight subliterate fantasy (that’s “irony,” readers), who also wears way lower-cut, tighter clothing than Mary ever thought of putting on since she’s got class and I’ve got a poor attitude, this whole rundown is awesome. It’s sunlight, the best disinfectant.

    As I told Mary, getting this type of incoming is a good sign, not a bad one, in our sick, twisted, messed-up world. The more of it, the merrier. Because it only gets aimed at the best and brightest.

  21. 29

    Also, this whole mess is a symptom of what I’m addressing here:

    http://www.asterling.com/2014/02/what-do-you-want-to-write-when-you-grow-up.html

    Imagine (God, I know it’s hard for me, being as low-IQ as I am, with clearly my only intelligence to be found in my 32-D breasts … and LAWDY I’m going to be 52 in a couple of weeks … 52 OLD to do you name it) just imagine … “The Women Men Don’t See.” See my story that is NOT going to be nominated for a Nebula this time (no biggie). “The Gods That Men Don’t See.”

    Imagine those so wed to their masters and the old hierarchy that they were compelled beyond sense and reason to attack someone whose very existence threatened them. Imagine this happened time and again, with seemingly no ability for moderation or modification (I believe Sean Fodera’s apology represents some type of dim, dawning recognition that he was way off base, and not in left field but rather the parking lot).

    Now, Mary, who is a better person than I am, was able to publically forgive Sean Fodera. His manner of discourse was inexcusable, unspeakable and warrantless/baseless. There’s NO EXCUSE. These were vicious, animalistic attacks inspired by nothing except resentment, bias, and nasty, poor attitude. Against someone the attacker very incorrectly perceived was “weak” or below/beneath him in the craperarchy.

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