John Scalzi, author of precisely one “conventionally published novel”, leads the hopping mad flock of rabbits over at Electrolite:
I have a degree in philosophy from the University of Chicago (specializing in the philosophy of language), and therefore have ample training in rhetoric, so I doubt that rhetorical deficiencies on this end are the issue.
I read your column Vox, and I grasped your obvious rhetorical device. It doesn’t impress me. As continually stated, your rhetorical device is obviously bad: Poorly stated, poorly supported, and rheorically incoherent. To restate: Your thesis is wrong and you lack the rhetorical skills to present your thesis in a coherent fashion. Your latter-day attempt to brush off your sexist and ignorant statement as sarcasm is baldly transparent as backtracking; even if it were true, it shows that your use of such devices is appallingly clumsy. Again one wonders how you got your columnist gig, or, alternately, if anyone bothers to edit you, as you so clearly need.
He’s taking exception to my statement that “women do not write hard SF today”. I guess he’ll be after Maureen Dowd this morning after the opening line of her column in the New York Times: “Arabs put their women in veils. We put ours in the stocks.”
Or perhaps she isn’t using a rhetorical device and I’ve been shamefully remiss in not keeping Space Bunny locked up. Handcuffs, hmmm…. That doesn’t really sound all that bad, if you just come at it from the right perspective.
By the way, don’t post there. The host has declared the subject closed. You can make your points here if you like.