Help! The Women Are at the Gates!

The Lost Art of Debate

My writer/reviewer friend Terry recently had a bully try to intimidate her on Facebook. Terry reviews for Fantasyliterature.com,and she contributes a weekly column called Magazine Monday. I am not going to include the name of the magazine or the editor in this post, but if you want to read Terry’s review, click here.

I am going to call the bully OSG, which is an acronym of something he calls himself. There will be no links to his blog because I don’t want to send people to this guy. You can probably find him if you have nothing better to do.

Terry always links from Facebook to her reviews. In the review, she said she found that this invitation-only hard SF magazine, edited by a low-midlist hard SF writer, felt like “an exercise in nostalgia.” In her comments on each story, she pointed out predictable plot lines with no twists or new ways of seeing things. Of the nine stories reviewed, she singled out three that she found highly successful and explained why. Generally, though, she concluded that this magazine, with its many reprints of stories that were not outstanding the first time around, not to be for her.

OSG pounced, immediately mischaracterizing what Terry had said. “The idea that good storytelling is an exercise in nostalgia strikes me as appalling,” is one example.Terry wrote nothing even close to that.  Another is, ” Clear, unadorned prose is an out-dated style?” Terry wrote nothing like that statement either. She did describe the prose in one story as clear and unadorned.

He probably didn’t know who he was dealing with. In addition to being astonishingly well-read, Terry, who brings the values and intellectual rigor of literary criticisms to her reviews, is also a practicing lawyer. She handled him tidily.  The exchange, with OSG hectoring and trying to put words in Terry’s mouth, and Terry calming correcting him, only went on as long as it did because Terry kept inviting him to debate the review on its merits, something he refused to do.

Back at the Brat-Cave

Like most bullies, as soon as he realized he did not have a compliant victim, OSG ran away. From the safely of his blog, though, he continued to whine, revealing at last his real problem with Terry’s review. Terry had noted that there was only one piece of work in the magazine that had been written by a woman.

Here was the true source of OSG’s rage. He described the comment as something from the crazy-old-feminist-with-something-up-her-pooper-category. (That is an exact quote and it’s his link to the review.) Here is the single most revealing quote in his post:

“You’re kind of damned if you do, damned if you don’t with some people, aren’t you? Can you imagine the froth, the rage she would have spewed if they hadn’t included any female authors?”

We’ll come back to that comment in a few minutes.

Is Terry a feminist? Hell, yes. Is she crazy? I’m not a clinician, but I can say with confidence that she is not any more crazy than anyone else I know… and far less crazy than some. Is she old? Terry referred to her age in the column. To OSG, she probably does seem old. She’s a year younger than me, so of course, to me she does not.

OSG could have engaged Terry on the specific points of her review. Why didn’t he? I don’t know, but three theories occur to me:

1. He can’t analyze. He’s a simple binary soul; he either likes it/doesn’t like it,and case closed.
2. He doesn’t want to elevate female Terry to the level of an equal in his mind by dignifying her review with a thoughtful response.
3. He can’t respond because, despite some artful bluffing, he hasn’t really read the magazine.

Personally, if I were a betting person, I’d put my money on #3.

The Briefcase Bomb

Now let’s, as the kids say, “unpack” that “Damned if you do…” statement.

What’s the subtext here? It’s pretty simple:

1. Women can’t write. Letting one in was a kindness. Be appropriately grateful.
2. Hard SF is our domain, the privilege of men. Keep up the attitude, honey, and we’ll see to it that none of you get in. Got it?

My comments here are not about the magazine at all. The editor obviously picked stories he liked or stories from authors he likes. If he is truly going to print a bimonthly magazine of reprinted hard SF, though, there are plenty of women who were and are highly skilled at the straightforward “hard” science fiction short story; Leigh Brackett; Kate Wilhelm; James Tiptree Jr; Marta Randall (although she was always New Wave), Connie Willis. I can name that many and I barely read short fiction.

OSG’s real problem is that about forty years ago the rigid gender roles started breaking down, and apparently he only just now got the text message. OSG is a gamer. It must just frost his tomatoes that women are entering gaming in droves, and writing games. Women successfully write military science fiction. Women are CEOs, scientists, astronauts, explorers. A woman runs the I Fucking Love Science page (another thing that must cause OSG great ire).

This goes a bit beyond a Facebook kerfluffle for me. Women, right now, are under as much assault as we were in the 1970s and 1980s. Women still earn less per hour than men, even when they do the same work. One entire political party has made rolling back the rights of women a key plank in its platform. Like the 1970s and 80s when derisive terms like “bra-burner” and “ball-breaker” were used to shame and ridicule women, men use the internet and social media to try very hard to silence women who dare express any opinion other than, “Yes, dear, you’re so smart,” or work in any area other than Pinterest or a knitting blog.

In Petaluma, California, this week, the girls at Kenilworth Middle School were called into an assembly with the superintendent, who told them they could no longer wear yoga pants, leggings  or skinny jeans, because tight clothing was “distracting the boys from their studies.” In 2013, adolescent girls are still being told by their educators that they are responsible for the behavior of boys. This makes me approach guys like OSG with a lot less humor.

There is certainly a contingent of young men, many of whom still live at home, who work out their own mommy issues by bullying or packing up on women in social networking arenas. OSG, based on the bio on his blog, seems a little too old to be one of these, but I can make no judgments about his emotional age. If his Mum still brings Marmite sandwiches down to his secret fort in the basement, that would certainly explain the “crazy old feminist” line.

From the safety of my blog, I picture OSG huddled in an old recliner, patched here and there with duct tape, clutching his remote as he cycles through endless loops of the original Star Trek. As Kirk smooches one mini-skirted female alien after another, he murmurs, “Why can’t it just be like that now?” And there I must leave him. I am a woman. I have work to do.