Tag: SFWA

We are not fooled

Larry Correia totally feigns putting on a supportive face while pretending to play down the fact that Steve and I actually managed to OUTGUN the master Monster Hunter. But we are not fooled. We all know this has lit a fire burning deep within the man, the green-hot flames of fury fed by envy, disbelief, and outrage:

I know the author online. I’ve participated in many email chains with
him, Sarah, Mike, and Tom. I’ve got a copy, but I’ve not had a chance to
read it yet. I wanted to read the review copy, but I’ve got a deadline
and I’ve been slammed. I’ve heard good things about it though…. I offend people on the internet for being an unabashed right winger. Vox sends them into hyperbolic rage spirals. He is their devil. They hate him more than Scott Card or George Bush, so that is saying something. Anybody who has caused that many panty twists is deserving of royalties just for the entertainment value of watching the literati have come aparts. 

Needless to say, I’ll be watching my six with extra caution given the likelihood that Larry will be sending magic kanji-enhanced Shadow Guard after us. Now, where did I put that Benelli-Mossberg Area Suppression Expediter-5K? One of those city block-sweepers could come in handy right about now.

In truth, it wouldn’t be entirely unfair to describe Quantum Mortis as Alien Hunters Intergalactic in Space. We had a nice little SF murder mystery going, but after reading MHI and the Grimnoire Chronicles, I realized that it had two major flaws.

  1. Too few bodies.
  2. Too small guns.

That is how Graven Tower received a transfer from the Trans Paradis Police Department to the Military Crimes Investigative Division. My reasoning was that the police can only get away with so much collateral damage before the public refuses to put up with it. But the military, well, all they have to do is cry “planetary security” and they can get away with damn near anything.

Pink SF vs Blue SF

A few people have asked me what I mean by differentiating between Pink SF and Blue SF.  Pink SF is the dominant form of science fiction today. Or rather, more properly, the currently dominant form of SyFy. It is necrobestial love triangles. It is using the superficial trappings of science fiction or fantasy or war fiction to tell exactly the same sort of goopy, narcissistic female-oriented story that has already been told in ten thousand Harlequin novels and children’s tales and Hollywood comeuppance fantasies.

Pink SF primarily concerns a) choosing between two lovers, b) being true to yourself, or c) enacting ex post facto revenge upon the badthinkers and meanies who made the author feel bad about herself at school. Pink SF is about feelings rather than ideas or actions.

Pink SF is an invasion. Pink SF is a cancer. Pink SF is a parasitical perversion. Pink SF is the little death that kills every literary subgenre. And Pink SF isn’t limited to SF; there is a very good reason the Sports Guy’s meme “Women Ruin Everything” applies so perfectly to most forms of literature. The one exception is the One True Female Genre, which is the Pillow Book. Read Murasaki Shikibu or Sei Shonagon; women have been writing the same thing over and over for more than 1,000 years now and very, very few do it as well as the Lady Murasaki did. Pink SF is the girls coming to play in the boys’ sandbox and then shitting in it like cats.

Consider the way Pink SF has now invaded even that most masculine of subgenres, War Fiction. Books 1, 3, and 5 on Amazon’s War Fiction Top 100 free list are not genuine “war fiction” any more than Pink SF is actual science fiction. It’s WereSEAL porn. It’s 50 Shades of Sexy Soldiers.

So what, in contrast, is Blue SF? Blue SF is a return to the manly adventure fiction of the past. Blue SF says “fuck that” to strong independent female protagonists who ride rainbow-farting unicorns and flex their nonexistent muscles when they aren’t being mounted by corpses and canids.  Blue SF says “fuck that” to sexual equality, salutes la difference, and doesn’t deign to throw bones to women who might feelbad that their oh-so-tender feelingses isn’t being gently massaged. And Blue SF says “fuck off” to every idiot of either sex who whines about it being too this or not enough that.

Blue SF does not apologize for being male, for being insufficiently inclusive, or for refusing to fall in line with the dynamic demand for character quotas concerning sex, race, religion, and sexual preferences. Unlike Pink SF, Blue SF is sufficiently confident to be what it is rather than deceptively market itself as what it manifestly is not. Can you even imagine genuine science fiction trying to sneak into the romance market and pretending that it’s all proper romance when actually there is little more than action and technology and ideas under a very thin and superficial veil of romantic intrigue and self-centered drama?

At the Baen Bar, a retired airborne infantry master sergeant left a comment about QUANTUM MORTIS: A Man Disrupted that perhaps is not irrelevant in this regard: “I read it and enjoyed it greatly. Baen might want to talk to the authors because they would fit right in. These guys like guns and prefer big guns. Guns that leave big body counts and lots of wreckage. They like hand-carried particle beams, lasers, slug throwers and vehicle-mounted missiles, cannons and chain guns. MCID would fit right in with Monster Hunters International only with better weapons. But the attitude is there. The simple arrest in the park is an all-time classic. I’ll buy the sequels.”

That’s right. Quantum Mortis actually outgunned Larry Correia. And that, in a nutshell, is what Blue SF is all about. Masculine ideas. Masculine challenges. Masculine action. Masculine energy. And, of course, masculine competition.

Pink SF, on the other hand, is the female equivalent of writing Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and somehow failing to realize that it is a parody.

Saving SF from Strong Female Characters V

The fifth part of the ongoing series, in which John Wright makes it clear that the Strong Female Character in SF/F is nothing less than the written feminist version of Soviet Realism:

Now, I do not mean to sound cynical, so I will ask rather than speak my opinion. Is there any strong woman character which meets with the approval of the Politically Correct who also happens to be, as the characters in Lewis and Tolkien, reflect a Christian worldview, or, as happens in Burroughs or E.E. Smith, to reflect what one might call the traditional heroic worldview, a worldview reminiscent of the Stoic and Military virtues of the ancient Romans and Greeks?

I have heard some Leftists praise the female characters of Robert Heinlein, who, with one exception, I myself find to be somewhat demeaning to women. (The one exceptions is  Cynthia Randall in ‘The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag’, perhaps the only honest portrayal of a woman throughout his whole oeuvre.) Others despise his portrayals.

My cynical question is this: when they ask for ‘strong’ female characters, are they actually honestly asking for strong female characters, Deborah from the Bible, Antigone from myth, Britomart from poetry, or are they only asking for Leftist female characters, poster children for Leftist causes?

If so, what they are asking for is Political Correctness, which means, substituting true narratives about the real glories and sorrows of the human condition for a false narrative, an advertisement for Leftwing political causes, which tell lies about the glories and man, bemoan with crocodile tears only the sorrows of their particular mascots and special causes, and make false promises about the cure for the world’s pain.

If so, they are giving up art for an ad.

Myself, I want to see women writers not because they are women, but because I would like to have the genius of distaff half the human race writing new and brilliant science fiction stories for us to enjoy. But, as far as I can tell, this is akin to the complaint that Science Fiction is meant for juvenile audiences. That has not been true during my lifetime. I have not seen even the slightest trace of the all-boy club mentality ever, neither in any writer nor in any editor nor in any reader.

I have seen plenty of people like me, who are annoyed with the cheerless preachy monotony of Political Correctness and would like the dullards to stop ruining good stories with their sucker punches and pauses for their political advertisements, but, hey, the PC types answer any criticism of PC  by calling the complainer a sexist, or saying he is paranoid, or saying that PC does not exist. Any lie will do, just so long as it is an accusation.

To tell the truth about what they are doing, which is informal censorship, that is, thought policework, is the one thing they fear.

As I said before, they think they are fooling us into thinking they are honest and compassionate people, and we know they are not, and they know they are not, but they do not know we know, so when one of us mentions, for the umpteenth time, that the Emperor has No Clothes, they react with exaggerated fear and fury. Because they are afraid of anyone, no matter how humble or obscure, who punctures their little daydream of make-believe, their land of colored cloud where they are the saints and the saviors of the world.

The fact of the matter is that those who demand Strong Female Characters don’t actually want genuinely strong women possessed of the feminine virtues. They simply want to substitute a nominal woman for a man and claim the masculine virtues for their Mary Sues in order to make themselves feel better about themselves.

Remember, most Pink SF is written in order to let the gamma male or shambling shoggoth author retroactively triumph over his persecutors from junior high and high school. Hence the lack of credible action and the interminable focus on “witty” dialogue that always allows the author stand-in to come out on top. To say nothing of the inevitable love triangles focused on the Mary Sue. It is wish-fulfillment of a very different kind than the adventurous fantasy of Blue SF.

Now, few Pink SF writers go so far in their wish-fulfillment as McRapey, who in addition to having male infantry soldiers swapping blow jobs as currency has now apparently paralyzed his female characters in his next novel. (A subconscious confession due to the weight of all that Rohypnol plaguing a guilty conscience?) The two primary focuses of the fantasy in Pink SF are the sexual desirability of the author/Mary Sue and the belated revenge of the author on his real-life enemies. These take the place of the Blue SF triumph of the protagonist over the environment, his fictional enemies, and himself.

Knowing themselves weak in life, the writers of Pink SF stride confidently through their fantasies as the demigods they wish themselves to be. And anyone who dares to observe that those fantasies bear no resemblance to reality is not merely mean, but indubitably evil.

Saving SF from Strong Female Characters IV

The fourth installment in John C. Wright’s detailed explication of one of Pink SF’s barbaric ills and the various ideological and religious reasons that underlie it:

My objection is to falseness, insincerity, propaganda, bad drama, bad art, and treason against the muses.  My objection is to using art for propaganda purposes. My objection is to Politically Correct piety. My objection is to the Thought Police.

My objection is to the spirit of totalitarianism.

For about ten years now, I have been writing and posting essays and articles on my electronic journal, and in all that time, I have been subjected to the Leftist mob tactics of mass hatred once and once only. It was the time I mocked the Sci-Fi Channel for kowtowing to Political Correctness. My motive for objecting was perfectly clear to everyone: I would like to write without censorship, formal or informal, based on political considerations. Formal censorship is state enforced; informal is enforced by organized mob-tactics, minority pressure groups, yelling, screaming, boycotts, hysteria mob-tactics and general bullying.

Because I would like to write without informal censorship interfering with my livelihood, I objected to Sci-Fi channel, or anyone in my field, surrendering to the minority pressure groups screaming and yelling and mob-tactics and bullying. So I mocked the Sci-Fi channel for encouraging the bullies by bowing in the knee to them.

And in return the mob tried to bully me, of all people. As if I give a tinker’s damn for the opinions of these yowling halfwits. (There was exactly one person of the seven hundred or so who wrote in to me who seemed sincerely offended, and to him I apologized. To remaining six hundred and ninety-nine or so, I offered defiance in public, and in private prayed for their fool souls, hoping despite all appearances they were not damned fools.)

This taught me a lesson, but not the one the mob organizers wanted to teach. It taught me what they were afraid of. Not of me: no one can be afraid of a fat and balding nearsighted science fiction writer with a dull swordcane.

Nor were they offended by calling sodomites sexual perverts, which I have done frequently before and since, never eliciting a single angry comment in reply, or attracting the slightest notice.

Since my legions of drug-maddened terror troops are all stranded on Salusa Secondus, the third planet of Gamma Piscium, 138 lightyears away, surely they are not afraid of any physical force I can bring to bear. Neither am I in a position to deny any man any economic opportunities, nor am I influential enough to provoke public opinion or create any controversy. I doubt I could even do as much myself against them as they have done to me, such as hack a Wikipedia page or send around an open letter and expect it to be published and reprinted.

To explain what they are afraid of, I am afraid I have to explain something of the pathology of Leftism.

They actually think they are fooling us.

Pink SF/F is a crystal-clear picture of Dunning-Kruger effect in action. Which is ironic, considering that the pinkshirts love to cite that effect, almost always inappropriately.  As Wright wryly notes:

“They think they are smarter than us. These undereducated boobs who cannot follow a syllogism of three
steps, who do not speak a word of Greek or Latin, who do not know the
difference between Arianism and Aryanism, who have never read ORIGIN OF
SPECIES or DAS KAPITAL or THE REPUBLIC and who do not even know the
intellectual parentage of all their ideas, these vaunting cretins whose
arguments consist of nothing but tiresome talking points recited by rote
and flaccid ad hominem, whose opinions are based on fashion, they, of
all people, think they are smarter than the rest of the world.”

Because degrees. Never mind that these magic credentials primarily consist of being willing to go into debt in order to obediently listen to serial monologues by poorly-read academics with no experience of the real world.


I don’t think I’ll ever forget being called “parochial” by a fan of a monolingual Canadian who grew up in the sticks of Western Ontario, graduated with an MA from the University of Western Ontario, and now lives in Canada’s 15th largest municipality, which happens to be located in southwestern Ontario. That, more than anything, made it obvious that Pink SF not only has no interest in reality, but can’t recognize it even when it is standing right in front of them, poking them in the nose.

The barbaric nature of Pink SF

I will soon have to write a post delineating the many differences between Blue SF, which is classic SF of the sort written by Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Herbert and the other SF greats of the past, and Pink SF, which is the modern offense against literature committed by gamma males and snarky shambling shoggoths and inevitably features one or more of that quasi-literary abomination known as The Strong Female Character.

In a very long and powerful essay, John C. Wright explains that the Strong Female Character is not only an offense against literature, but an intentional crime against civilization itself:

Anyone reading reviews or discussions of science fiction has no doubt come across the oddity that most discussions of female characters in science fiction center around whether the female character is strong or not.

As far as recollection serves, not a single discussion touches on whether the female character is feminine or not.

These discussions have an ulterior motive. Either by the deliberate intent of the reviewer, or by the deliberate intention of the mentors, trendsetters, gurus, and thought-police to whom the unwitting reviewer has innocently entrusted the formation of his opinions, the reviewer who discusses the strength of female characters is fighting his solitary duel or small sortie in the limited battlefield of science fiction literature in the large and longstanding campaign of the Culture Wars.

He is on the side, by the way, fighting against culture.

Hence, he fights in favor of barbarism, hence against beauty in art and progress in science, and, hence the intersection of these two topics which means against science fiction.

It’s pretty easy to determine how infected an SF writer is by the Pink SF disease. If his work features women in the futuristic Armed Forces serving on an equal basis with men, it’s Pink SF. If her work involves having sex with animals and corpses, it is Pink SF/F.  And if any female character ever physically bests a bigger, stronger, faster male character without supernatural powers or technological enhancements, its Pink SF.

And if it involves soldiers bantering about providing each other with the sort of services that resulted in a man being beaten to death in the Roman legions, it is most definitely Pink SF.

Orson Scott Card on SFWA

The author of Ender’s Game expresses the reasons he disdains the SFWA, but perhaps more importantly, he echoes my previous point about why the post-80s SF authors repeatedly show themselves to be unable to produce fiction that is as compelling or as relevant as their predecessors even when they are expressly trying to mimic it:

What I find interesting is the people who commit and keep their commitment at great personal cost, the grown-up story, the story of parents, the story of people who sacrifice for community but stay in it and have to live in the mess they made. … They don’t take off their mask and go back into society under another name. They have to be who they are, wear their own face in their community.

This has made some critics very uncomfortable right from the start. And as my politics diverged from the political correctness that has captured the left — I mean, (in) 1976 I was a Daniel Patrick Moynihan liberal Democrat — and without changing any of my principles, I’ve now become quite a right-winger in the eyes of the left. And I’m a little baffled by it because I’m a liberal and they’re not. They’re repressive, punishing, intolerant of the slightest variation, absolutely the opposite of what it means to be a liberal. But that’s the way it goes. They still get the label. I am the fact of what it meant to be a liberal. I find the most liberals who feel like I do among people who are labeled as conservatives. It’s a very odd thing.

But that political thing has affected the criticism of my work. And it would just make me crazy to read asinine, irrelevant comments by critics who think they’re saying something intelligent.

You see, what happens is, if you respect a writer, then you talk about the work. If you disdain the writer, then you try to psychoanalyze the writer and figure out why would he write this. And that’s all I get from science fiction literary elite. If they mention my work at all, which they rarely do, it’s to dismiss it and to psychoanalyze me, which they are incapable of doing since they’ve never actually formed the kind of community bonds that my fiction always depends on. They have no idea what I’m talking about. They couldn’t produce that fiction if they tried because they don’t share those values.

This is absolutely true. “They have no idea what I’m talking about.” That’s precisely what one sees wherever the SFWA fascists are discussing something written by Card, me, or some other outlaw of SF. They literally don’t understand it. Look at how many people threw a hissy fit about my comments concerning NK Jemisin and thought that I was saying I was more homo sapiens sapiens than she was. It’s not worth bothering to explain it to them, because the whole point is to take offense in order to justify taking action.

As he observes: “Just writing honestly makes them attack me because they can’t bear a
favorable depiction of someone they disagree with. It’s intolerable to
them. They are arch-fanatical puritans. They can’t bear the thought that
someone somewhere who is intelligent might not hold the same idea as
them. It’s the essence of intolerance, and that’s the way they are.”

It is the way they are. And it drives them absolutely insane that more successful, more intelligent people not only don’t hold the same ideas as them, but hold them in complete contempt. The fact is that they are nothing but parasites. Consider: after openly ripping off Heinlein, John Scalzi has openly declared his hopes that Old Man’s War can catch a ride on the coattails of the Ender’s Game movie… and Scalzi’s mediocre derivatives are literally the award-winning best that the current SFWA community presently has to offer.

The culture of abuse

The Mad Genius and former SFWA member that is Kate Paulk slogs her way through my response to the SFWA Board report and finds it not only worth reading, but apparently not entirely lacking in entertainment value.  She also determines that SFWA is a “culture of abuse”:

Naturally, he has made public his response to the shit-sheet… ahem…
report. I recommend reading it. My knowledge of the SFWA by-laws from
actually reading the wretched things when the last revision of them came
up for a vote is that Mr Beale’s facts are 100% accurate. That’s
something I’ve noticed with him: you can disagree with him on how to
interpret the data, but the data he offers is usually pretty damned
accurate.

Among the many things Mr Beale is totally correct about is
the culture of abuse within TOFKASFWA. Name-calling that could make a
dock worker blush is one of the charming features of the regular
shit-storms, right alongside a truly remarkable lack of originality and
wit in the insults being flung right and left… mostly from left to
right, but but that’s another story. You’d think a collection of
speculative fiction writers could manage better insults than endless
conjugations of the standard four letter words (and no, I don’t mean
‘work’ and ‘food’).

Having read Mr Beale’s “vigorous” responses to some of
these childish inanities, I can say with a degree of authority that he’s
definitely more imaginative, and often more witty. He even manages to
be self-deprecating once or twice.

As for the substance of the alleged offenses he allegedly
committed: it’s pretty clear that every sin Mr Beale committed against
TOFKASFWA was committed in greater quantity by what seems like half the
flipping membership. Possibly half the non-flipping membership, too.
Since they apparently don’t keep accurate membership records (in
violation of their by-laws and the relevant laws for non-profit
organization in the two states they’re incorporated in – because their
MA incorporation is not over and they’ve taken out CA incorporation.
Possibly in violation of Federal laws for their tax status as a
non-profit as well) it’s a little difficult to tell what proportion of
the membership does anything.

Actually, it’s not too hard to tell what the barely published affiliate members who are pushing the pinkshirt agenda do. They clearly spend considerably more time reading obscure feminist sociology papers than they do publishing anything.  I suspect that what will ultimately be seen to have killed SFWA in the end is the removal of the requalifying requirement for Active membership; the techno-democratization of publishing may have eliminated SFWA’s original raison d’etre, but it was the makeup of the membership that prevented it from finding a new one still related to the creation of science fiction.

I have to confess that I am just a little disappointed no one has yet managed to identify the stylized way in which I began my response. I mean, I’m not at all surprised that it went right over the head of the relatively poorly read members of the SFWA Board, but I would have thought that more people here would have caught the reference.  I thought it was rather funny myself, but then, as Spacebunny assures me, I am the only one who truly appreciates my own sense of humor.

Kate Another Mad Genius, Dave Freer, also has some interesting thoughts on publishing and probability that the writers here will probably find worth checking out.

Burying the evidence: the SFWA Report

It appears the SFWA really doesn’t want the public to be able to learn why the SFWA Board “voted for the expulsion” from the organization of an unidentified member.

Kate Baker
Date: August 19, 2013, 3:52:59 PM CDT
Subject: DMCA Take-down Notice – Request

Requester: Kathryn Baker – Operations Manager SFWA
Organization: Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America
On Behalf of Copyright Holder: Matthew Johnson – Regional Director – SFWA

Work infringed – SFWA_report.pdf

Title: Evidence regarding the complaints made against Theodore Beale
Report to the Board of Directors of SFWA
Matthew Johnson
Canadian Region Director

Referring piece: This is an internal and private document written by Matthew Johnson. No one has been given permission to post,copy, edit the report/article in parts or in whole. We ask that you work in accordance with DMCA take-down procedures to remove the copyrighted piece from the link above.

Sincerely,

Kathryn Baker, Operations Manager – SFWA

This is an astonishingly hypocritical move by SFWA, especially in light of how Matthew Johnson both broke the SFWA Forum rules and infringed my own copyright by copying my Forum posts, blog posts, and blog comments, and distributing them in his report without permission. But I suppose they had to decide what makes them look worse, this DMCA Take-down Notice-Request or the Board Report itself.

I’ve already arranged for access to the document titled “SFWA_report.pdf” to be removed from the ISP as I expect it is only a matter of time before the report becomes a matter of public record. I trust the irony of a writer’s organization fighting to prevent information from reaching the public does not escape the average reader here.

In the meantime, one can still get the gist of Mr. Johnson’s report by reading my formal reply to it: Response to SFWA Board Report. One can also read my detailed response to each section of the report below.

Mailvox: the futility of cancer

Nate explains both why left-wing parasites are driven to take over organizations and why their takeovers always end in the eventual demise of the organization:

They never learn. They don’t understand civilization, and they don’t
understand power. That’s why they are never able to successfully build
organizations in the first place. So they have to take over the
organizations others have already built and try to use them for their
own goals. They think that the organization itself… the name… is
what makes it relevant. So they imagine if they can just get control of
it… all that power will be theirs.

So they break the very tools they are planning to use to fix the world.

Then
they stand there with a dumb look on their face… trying to drive a
nail with a broken hammer… and cannot understand why it isn’t working.

This process is as true of the Episcopalian Church and the Boy Scouts of America as it is of the SFWA.  Some believe that destruction was always the aim, but I don’t think that is true of the average parasite who joins an organization. I think in most cases they genuinely wish to “improve” the organization and do not understand that their desired improvements will kill it.

I’ll write more on this in the next day or two, in my response to NK Jemisin’s call for further “reconciliation”. What is interesting is the way in which Nate’s description here perfectly describes her approach to “improving” SF/F.

Their analytical abilities don’t appear to exceed that of the average cancer cell. The current SFWA is rather like a collection of cancer cells congratulating themselves on how much they have improved the body they are inhabiting and celebrating the way in which they have driven most of those disgusting, unprofessional white blood cells out.  And it is not hard to imagine their alarm when suddenly the body that sustains them begins to cease functioning, for no particular reason at all.

This is something that the Society for the Advancement of Speculative Storytelling may wish to keep in mind, lest it one day find itself going the same route as SFWA.  And speaking of SASS, the organization released a statement entitled: “Statement on the expulsion of a member by another writers’ organization“

In response to requests for comments regarding the decision of another writers’ group to formally expel a lifetime member, SASS Secretary and spokesman Lou Antonelli makes the following statement:

“Although the subject in question was exercising his free speech rights under the First Amendment to the US Constitution, that has nothing to do with the standards of conduct and behavior within a private organization

“Like any private club, the organization in question is allowed to police its membership according to its regulations and bylaws. This is an internal discipline issue and not a matter of concern to the Society for the Advancement of Speculative Storytelling.

“The by-laws of the Society for the Advancement of Speculative Storytelling clearly state that members should not discuss religion or politics within its auspices, and its members are expected to treat each other with respect. Those are our bylaws, and each group operates according to its own bylaws and policies.

I note that not only does SFWA have no standard of conduct and behavior, but it previously had one that was, if I recall correctly, junked during the Russell Davis administration.  As the SFWA’s statement demonstrated, the current Board believes it can throw anyone out of the organization at any time for no particular reason at all.  If I hadn’t made it clear to everyone that I was the member to whom the statement referred, no one would outside the SFWA Board and its confidants would even know with certainty who the expelled member was.

Of course, it would certainly be amusing if the Board’s assumptions turned out to be incorrect, would it not?  Because in that case, I would not even be expelled at all. And it occurs to me that someone inclined towards conspiracy theory might even conjecture that the reason the SFWA Board refused to publicly identify the expelled member is because they know very well that the expulsion was not legitimate, that it was a sham expulsion, and they are attempting to avoid being sued for damages once the illegitimacy of their action is established.

The organization formerly known as SFWA

Kate Paulk shares her thoughts on my recent, and historic, distinction:

His crime? I never really figured that out. It had something to do with
the SFWA twitter account, for which there were no official guidelines
until after whatever Mr Beale did, at least, not that I can find. As far as I can see, Mr Beale was doing nothing more horrible than
stating his opinions – not representing his opinions as those of any
other person or organization, not claiming to be anyone but himself, not
doing anything remotely unethical in other words.

Considering that a leading light of the industry can publicly grope a
female author at an awards banquet and not even get a mild, “that was
bad form” from the organization formerly known as SFWA, it’s clear that
the real reason for Mr Beale’s eviction was his outspoken personal
views.

Now I don’t particularly care what anyone’s personal beliefs are. I do
believe that an organization claiming to represent “Science Fiction and
Fantasy Writers” should have some kind of clause up front if they’re
going to limit membership to people with the “correct” beliefs. Now, if
they were the Communist Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America,
they’d have every reason to want Mr Beale out of their ranks, since he
is vehemently anti-communist. They’re not. Or at least, not openly.

SFWA may not be openly communist, but it is eminently clear that the F in SFWA now stands for Feminist. I didn’t see much hostility for capitalists in the organization, but it is readily apparent that if you are not a self-described feminist, of either sex, there is no place for you in the SFWA. The pinkshirts have already implemented various diktats concerning sexual harassment, SF conferences, and diversity, such as this one.


The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Statement on Diversity
 
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America strongly believes that a diverse membership is the key to a strong community. We define “diversity” as understanding and embracing the fact that our current and future members are composed of a broad range of individuals, who may vary in ethnicity, race, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, physical disabilities, political or religious beliefs.

By including in our membership those of diverse backgrounds and experiences, we hope to provide an inclusive environment for our members, which is the foundation for civil discourse and the free exchange of ideas. Moreover, maximizing the diversity of our organization is important so that we can benefit from the talent and energy of all those who contribute to excellence in science fiction and fantasy writing.
 
Recognizing that historical and present day inequities must be addressed, we understand the need to promote diversity within the Board, staff, members, programs, and written policies of our organization. We must embody the change we advocate for others in the publishing industry. By seeking greater diversity and inclusion, we can serve as a model of the fairness and equality of opportunity we envision for our members.

We value the perspectives and contributions of all of our members. We welcome and support anyone who comes to us in good faith and with the desire to promote the SFWA, science fiction and fantasy writing, and the genre community as a whole.

This Very Important Statement was penned on the organization’s behalf by one Carrie Cuin, a fat little feminist who hasn’t even published enough fiction to qualify as a full member.  Many, if not most, of the outspoken feminists who have appointed themselves the organization’s stormtroopers haven’t published a single novel; the nobodies on the SFWA Board look like respected elders of the field by comparison.

And forget science fiction, the self-appointed experts on Stormfront and its associates have even gotten into the business of determining who is, and who is not, Hispanic. Despite my great-grandfather being a Mexican revolutionary and close associate of Pancho Villa’s, and despite my great-uncle being a well-known Hispanic painter, due to my failure to be publicly “Latino-identified” and my “discriminatory statements against Latinos”, Ms Cuin informed me that she “was afraid that you wouldn’t fall under that category” and therefore could not be included on a list of Hispanic SF writers.

Of course I’m not “Latino-identified”. I’m not Latino. And I don’t think I’ve made any statements about Latinos at all. The inability of a white woman from Ithaca to recognize the difference between Hispanics and Latinos is merely the icing on the irony cake.  No doubt they all look the same to her, and besides, they all speak Spanish anyhow, right?

The SFWA’s position on who is and who is not Hispanic reminded me of a statement by one of my feminist university professors, who once quite seriously declared that Margaret Thatcher “was not of the gender woman”. SFWA is so committed to diversity and inclusiveness that it excluded one of its few genuine writers of color… for no particular reason at all.

¡Viva la Revolución!