Like the SFWA member quoted below, I am bound by the confidentiality rule, but these quotes from Twitter should give everyone a sufficiently accurate image of the anklebiting junior members now running wild within SFWA, as well as for the disdain they openly display for the men, who, back in the day, created the organization and actually wrote genuine science fiction:
Jason Sanford @jasonsanford 26 Jun
Pournelle (noun): Term for a well-known author who complains things were better “back in the day” when jerks could act with impunity.Jason Sanford @jasonsanford 26 Jun
I’d be nice if people RT’d last tweet. I’d love Pournelle to become a meme. Not that real Pournelle’d understand memes if they bit his butt.Scott Edelman @scottedelman 26 Jun
Sigh … what did he do now?Jason Sanford @jasonsanford 26 Jun
Pournelle is being his usual self on the
usual forums which can’t be mentioned due to the usual privacy policy.Jason Sanford @jasonsanford 26 Jun
But this may all tie in with an organization beginning with S, ending with A, and a FW in the middle.Jason Sanford @jasonsanford 27 JunPournelle
(noun): Term for well-known author who complains things were better
“back in the day” when jerks could act with impunity.Jason Sanford @jasonsanford 27 Jun
It’s a good day when your words have irked the Pournelles of our genre. See previous tweet for definition of term.Justin Howe @JustinHowe 27 Jun
@jasonsanford Also my term for the Pournelles is “Dense Matter”. Such as, “And then we got stymied by the dense matter at the genre’s core.”
One can readily observe that there is no dearth of jerks acting with impunity these days. What horrifically nasty little creeps! Jason Sanford and his herd of never-will-bes are not worthy to so much as shine the shoes of veteran SF authors like Jerry Pournelle, Mike Resnick, and Barry Malzberg, no matter how many participation ribbons and affirmative action trophies they give each other in the pretense that they are Real SF Riters.
And in addition to snapping at the ankles of 80 year-old men, the pinkshirts are now waxing enthusiastic about [REDACTED: CASE PINK SWASTIKA] because apparently SF conventions are just overflowing with perverts uncontrollably attracted to the hairy dugs and misshapen posteriors of shambling quasi-bipedal manatees.
I shitteth thee not.
Needless to say, this is all being driven by the sort of overweight, unemployed “writers” who spend considerably more time talking about themselves – and, one is forced to presume, eating – than they do actually writing anything. Because respect.
What any of this has to do with writing and publishing science fiction, I leave to your imagination.
The ironic thing is that [REDACTED: CASE PINK SWASTIKA] will almost surely have the unintended consequence of exposing homosexual harassers instead of the intended targets. Women, especially overweight and unattractive women, have absolutely no idea how overtly aggressive gay men tend to be in comparison with straight men. Based on the sob stories dating back decades that have been shared on various blogs, I would estimate that I have been “sexually harassed” by gay men 2x more than any ten female SFWA members combined have been “sexually harassed” by straight men.
Actually, come to think of it, I was once “sexually harassed” by a famous female author at a professional convention. [ALERT: TRIGGER WARNING!] I accepted her gesture as the compliment it was obviously intended to be, smiled, removed her hand, and continued with the conversation. But apparently the concept of gracefully rejecting an unwanted or inappropriate invitation is completely beyond the pinkshirted manatees.
Because respect.
At this point, I suspect the SFWA’s old guard is thinking “you know, we would have been a lot better off if we had simply called [REDACTED]’s bluff, maintained the membership standards, and permitted her to walk away mad.” Lower standards seldom produce desirable results.