No wait, not done yet after all

[annathepiper]

Dara pointed me at this tumblr that has a brand spanking new helping of excerpts off the SFF.net forums, with snark directed at “the Young” in general and at Mary Robinette Kowal in particular. I particularly note the parts dismissing “the Young” as “incapable of independent thought” and asserting how we’re probably all pirating C.J. Cherryh’s books anyway. And the parts accusing Ms. Kowal of being a hypocrite due to her wardrobe choices in pictures on her site and when she attends science fiction conventions–because, of course, a woman couldn’t possibly be really interested in feminism if she dresses in any manner whatsoever that might approach making her conventionally attractive, right?

Now, I could point out that if you are of the mind that people who aren’t in your organization shouldn’t be commenting on the Internet about your organization’s activities, you might want to avoid posting things on publicly-readable forums. Or on Facebook. Which, last I checked, is part of the Internet.

And I could point out that criticizing a feminist for her wardrobe choices is yet another belittling, demeaning tactic, similar to attacking her for inflammatory language, meant to distract from her actual points.

I could even point out that dismissing an entire segment of people who disagree with you as “the Young” is perhaps not the wisest of strategies, because it’ll inevitably lead to our deploying this and this and this.

But mostly I’m just looking at the bit on that tumblr that snarks on Jim Hines’ cover parodies as making SFWA look “silly”, and all I can think is, um, actually, no folks, you’re doing that all by yourselves.

But what do I know? I’m just “the Young”.

P.S. Yikes, the Daily Dot linked to me in their post about this SFWA flap. Hi, people coming over from the Daily Dot! For those of you who may have missed it, their earlier writeup about all this is over here.

ETA: BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE! I saw John Scalzi put this post up tonight, and really, there’s nothing I can add to that, because it pretty much speaks for itself.

I’ll also point out Cora Buhlert’s commentary here, noting other commentary I hadn’t found yet, and expressing her general bemusement over the whole thing.

Also, this post over here called “Sci-Fi and Sexism”, by blogger and reviewer Mandaray, addresses exactly why this kind of thing needs to keep getting discussed–because the sexism in SF/F as she was growing up kept putting her off the genre.

ETA #2: Dara has her own next post up now, addressing how, hilarity aside, there’s more being lost here.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Comments

[mmegaera]

It's almost amusing watching them implode, isn't it?

(I'm not the Young, being in my mid-fifties, but I do possess the requisite number of girl cooties, so maybe I still qualify)

[annathepiper]

I daresay you probably are on the upper edge of "the Young", given how the average age of the original people who signed this petition that started the whole mess is 73--and of all the signers, it was in the upper 60's.

But it has not escaped my notice, either, that the writers that they seem most inclined to complain about, i.e., Hines, Scalzi, and Kowal, are right smack squarely in my age group. Mid-40's. Which is still pretty damned young by the standards of the publishing industry.

[mmegaera]

I read Kowal's post on the systematic abuse she's been taking over the years, and I'm appalled.

I must live a very sheltered life, is all I can think. Once I got away from my parents' antiquated ideas as to how I should live my life, I've not had to deal with a lot of sexism. Either that or I'm way more oblivious than I thought I was.

The occasional post-con "I was harassed" post always flabbergasts me, too. Although I suspect the reason that's always gone right over my head is that I'm a) on the fringes when I go to cons to begin with, and b) I didn't start going to them till I was middle-aged, so I never atteneded a con as a sweet young thing.

At any rate, it's amazing how much of this is foreign to my personal experience. Apparently, I'm just really lucky or talented at flying way below the radar.