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Women, Men, SFF part deux


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Let Me Tell You About the Birds and the Bees: Gender and the Fallout Over Christopher Priest

But it’s not the piece itself that has stuck in my mind like so many bar-room darts.

It’s that if a woman wrote it, she’d have been torn to pieces. No quarter, no mercy.

I touched on this in my previous post. But it’s more than lolz, he’s got balls of brass, I could never get away with those blognanigans. I couldn’t, of course, even if I wanted to. But neither could almost any other woman writer or blogger I can think of. Go after popular SF writers and a respected award? She’d have gotten death threats, rape threats, comments telling her everything from shut up and make [unnamed internet male] a sandwich to wishing she’d be raped to death because that would shut her right up.

I don’t actually have to imagine this scenario and speculate as to its outcome–it’s happened.

ETA:

Since the Sady Doyle Song piece was mentioned, I should link the counter point by Alyssa Rosenberg.

ETA II:

The Chris Priest piece she's referencing.

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Sady Doyle's GRRM piece wasn't the worst thing she's ever written. It was a troll piece but made some decent points. I'm also quite partial to vicious and snarky criticism. Her response to Alyssa Rosenberg was kinda disgusting though

http://threatquality...ame-of-thrones/

She calls Rosenberg "the girl who speaks up for boys" in the comments in the review above. WTF kind of shit is that. I was seriously disappointed because Doyle is a pretty great writer. She simply wasn't interested in having any sort of conversation with Rosenberg.

As for Cat Valente's piece. She's absolutely right. I don't think even Ursula K Leguin would be immune to the kinds of sexist criticism, female writers routinely face on the internet.

Interesting she mentions the whole Watts/Bakker/RoH shitfest. I really hope this doesn't draw Bakker out of the woods. He hasn't posted in a while and I'm guessing/hoping it's because he's holed up furiously finishing the Unholy Consult.

Edit: It sort of makes me sad that Valente will probably never read Bakker's books. i'd love to see a writer of her skill and feminist bent take on Bakker.

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I have read very little in blogs or boards on the Internet written by authors of any gender. So I have no idea if the thesis that women get more savage criticism than men is correct.

It does strike me, though, that this particular idea is one that would be subject to empirical verification. I think it would be great if some sociologist or psychologist researching gender issues would select a random group of comments on sites written by men vs. women and have people rate them as to their degree of "nastiness" or "threat" without knowing which ones were addressed to women and which were addressed to men. Someone could get a great academic publication in a gender studies journal on this one.

(And if anyone knows if this has already been done, please give a reference!) :)

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I think she was referring to one comment by Watts, not necessarily indicting Bakker.

Sady's critique was interesting, though I didn't see eye to eye with a lot of it. I will say I thought her summaries did have hilarity.

It sort of surprised me that Game of Thrones is the book series she criticizes, when it at least attempts to interrogate the genre. I suppose when she wrote it certain other fantasies with garbage depictions of women hadn't been published...

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Lol, silly women and there periods, they can't write books!

Note: I'm joking.

And really, search for some older threads here, I can't remember the exact title but it's something along the lines of "Are there any actually good female writers"?.

I still think if a guy had written The 100k Kingdoms it would be hugely popular around here. :P

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I'm kind of confused about what everyone's mad about here. Are we mad that not enough people are mad at Priest? Cause I think he's a giant douchbag who should be eaten by a rhino and I can't stand his work, if that makes people feel any better.

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Damn. Well. Hmmmm.

A lion?

And after thought, I get where she's comign from in most respects. The ROH um....incidents I have, um a different opinion on. But that's a shit storm that will be saved for the sequel to my book. (Hoho, inside joke there).

But I think you only need to look at the shit that happened when Travis tried to defend some random number in Star Wars lore that Lucas gave her to see how fucked up the internet is when it comes to female authors.

And Horza, I know where your name comes from now.

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Hoho, inside joke there

Heh, I kinda miss the shit-storms...

But I think you only need to look at the shit that happened when Travis tried to defend some random number in Star Wars lore that Lucas gave her to see how fucked up the internet is when it comes to female authors.

???

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Oh jeez, I'll have to look up some links on that one. Basically the number of clone troopers in one of her books pissed people off even though Lucas gave it to her and she bitched about fans and then fans bitched about her bitching about fans, and there were some VERY disturbing video threats put up on youtube. I'd write more but my thumb hurts,

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Heh, I do recall catching wind of that. I actually do wish more female authors would comment when writing of women is utter garbage - some of the stuff that gets discussed is quite frankly trash in that regard.

Enjoyable trash, in the way a porn movie could be considered enjoyable, but nonetheless there is something sad that the forum's name is Literature and then you look at the first page....and it's hard not to think the thoughts of Priest: "Have we lived and fought in vain?"

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