Yeah, the Chiefs-Patriots game blows. So, I’m typing this up while watching Brady do his best McNabb impression as he overthrows everything by a foot.
It has come to light that my last post has been taken astray as me being a brainless little twit….After the tattoo was finished, we had dinner at Applebee’s, went back to my place, harrassed my wonderful man and had a conversation about people who express opinions that can not back them up. Vox Day was on that list. So, upon urging I looked up Vox Day. What I read appalled me and angered me. I have serious issues with someone who decides that women should not write science fiction because they can not handle, and do not understand, the hard sciences. And yes, biology is not a hard science. Of course, this can not be backed up. I have other issues with a person who declares that “Real Rape” is different than “Date Rape” because Date rape isn’t really rape. (someone help me with the logic here. Please?)
Regardless of why Dr. Catlady posted that, or her presumed ability to surmount the low bar set by it, it nevertheless served to nicely highlight the essential silliness of Amandagon’s expectation that feminist bloggers would change antifeminists’ minds about feminism through their brilliance and diversity.
And she continues to highlight it here, albeit less beautifully. Her errors in that single paragraph are as follows:
1. I almost always back up my opinions. Regardless of whether you consider the support offered to be conclusive or not, I seldom fail to provide something, and have been reasonably accused of going completely overboard on occasion. This is something very few of my critics ever bother to do, including both Dr. Catlady and her fiance.
2. I have never said women should not write science fiction. Given that the SFWA’s recent NAR report shows how I have nominated numerous women for science fiction’s top prize, the Nebula, the accusation is demonstrably absurd. Virtually no women write hard science fiction – I note that this is not my assertion – and what I have stated is that I believe the primary reason for this is the very small number of women capable of writing it due to women’s disinclination to pursue the advanced degrees and professional careers in the hard sciences which are possessed by most male hard science fiction writers and are presumably required to successfully write hard science fiction.
3. I have never made any comment about biology being a hard science or not, in fact, I have never said anything about biology at all. Dr. Catlady’s fiance claimed that the mere possession of a bachelor’s degree in biology was sufficient to make one a “scientist”. I assert that this is ludicrous, especially when the “scientist” in question is a professor in the U of M’s Women’s Studies department teaching feminist history and the philosophy of feminism.
4. If date rape was rape, there would be no need for the adjective. The adjective modifies the noun. If this is truly beyond Dr. Catlady, I recommend F.A. von Hayek’s excellent essay on social justice in the book THE FATAL CONCEIT wherein he demonstrates that the concept of social justice inherently obviates the concept of justice. The concept of date rape is an effort on the part of hard core feminist ideologues to expand the definition of rape as broadly as possible; in the same vein, some have famously asserted all sex to be rape.
With that out of the way, I now invite Dr. Catlady’s fiance to back up his own opinion on my supposed inability to back up my own. He can pick the subject, I will either provide the opinion, or, if it is a topic on which I have already opined, stand by it, and he can see if he is capable of demonstrating how I have failed to back it up to everyone’s satisfaction.
If he’s correct, then this should be no sweat for him. And if he’s simply full of it, then I’m sure he’ll have a very credible excuse for why he’s too busy or can’t be bothered. After all, those china patterns won’t get picked out on their own!