Feminist Science Fiction

[Nerds_feather]

Completely agreed for the most part, but as I said, on the internet the fringe tend to have the biggest mouths and the biggest following and this results in misconceptions about feminism. PZ Myers is a great example of this. I don't know of many bloggers that have as many readers as him, much less have active regulars that generate hundreds of responses to virtually every post and the man--and his horde of commenters--are not up for reasonable debates on issues related to feminism under any circumstances.

You're going to have to explain the PZ Myers thing. I only had a sort of vague understanding of him as an "angry internet atheist," so I googled "PZ Myers feminism" and came up with this. I don't know who the people are that he's talking about, but the basic premise of what he's saying doesn't seem off-base or terribly fringe to me.

 

[iansales]

Other good feminist novels include Native Tongue, Suzette Haden Elgin; The Wanderground, Sally Miller Gearhart; and Correspondence, Sue Thomas;

 

[Southern Geologist]

You're going to have to explain the PZ Myers thing. I only had a sort of vague understanding of him as an "angry internet atheist," so I googled "PZ Myers feminism" and came up with this. I don't know who the people are that he's talking about, but the basic premise of what he's saying doesn't seem off-base or terribly fringe to me.

He is also an angry internet gender feminist that refuses to brook any argument against his ideas and uses his horde to help him with it.

The 'Elevatorgate' incident is a great example of this. Rebecca Watson claimed that after a talk she gave at an atheist convention that a man came up to her in an elevator, said she and her ideas were interesting, and wanted to know if she wanted to get coffee. She posted a video saying that people shouldn't do this because it constitutes sexual harassment. (In the interest of full disclosure I will say that I can understand why she felt uncomfortable and would not approach a woman in that manner myself, but that the original account(s) she gave indicated that he was polite and left her alone when she said no. I would not call that sexual harassment.) Needless to say, some arguments resulted over whether that was sexual harassment or even if she was being hit on. Richard Dawkins made a comment comparing a polite request to coffee to women in countries dominated by Islam who have to worry about acid getting splashed into their faces. PZ Myers jumped into the fray insisting that asking her for coffee was an act of sexual assault and he and his horde went about insisting that anyone who didn't agree with everything she said was a filthy misogynist or a gender traitor and continuously made straw men and nasty ad hominem attacks out of anyone who disagreed. Several even went so far as to declare that Dawkins was a misogynist (a ridiculous claim in itself) and that they should organize and to see it that he was banned from giving talks at any atheist or skeptic conferences because of this. Pure authoritarian nonsense. If you want I can dig up the elevatorgate posts, but there is some really ugly stuff there, and it is unfortunately the face of feminism to the average person on the internet.

 

[Nerds_feather]

I'm not a big fan of Dawkins (if you want to talk about someone with the militancy and inflexibility of a religious zealot, there's your man...and seemingly oblivious to the irony of it all as well). And I think that comment he made is incredibly trite and demeaning--I can only imagine how frightening it is for a woman to be in an enclosed space with a strange man who then begins making unwanted advances. The man may not have meant any harm, and calling that sexual assault is OTT, but it's certainly out of line and deeply problematic behavior--and Dawkins is straight-up dismissive of the woman and her feelings on the matter. Of course Dawkins can't resist taking a potshot at Islam either, however tangential or unwarranted, so yeah, there's that too.

Ugg...now I feel icky.

Btw, something like this happened in our community, at ReaderCon. Synopsis here.

 

[Southern Geologist]

Just read through part of Scalzi's post and the reversal of the decision by Readercon. I must say that I am very impressed by how thorough that reversal was, right down to the entire board resigning (under encouragement, no doubt) over the matter and offering refunds to anyone who feels uncomfortable attending the con in the future as a result of the original decision.

 

[Nerds_feather]

Just read through part of Scalzi's post and the reversal of the decision by Readercon. I must say that I am very impressed by how thorough that reversal was, right down to the entire board resigning (under encouragement, no doubt) over the matter and offering refunds to anyone who feels uncomfortable attending the con in the future as a result of the original decision.

Agreed. I think they realized that they'd made a huge mistake and the only way to save the con was to make a total and complete reversal of that decision.

I think this event also highlights how the world of SF/F fandom can still be a "boy's club," though that is definitely changing. Still, there's much work left to do...