(no subject)

[geekchick]

elorie points to a wonderful post by matociquala ("Post-feminist? I gotchyer post-feminist right here."), inspired by one Vox Day, aka Theodore Beale. Mr. Beale is earning himself top honors in the "All-Around Asshat" competition with gems like this:

The mental pollution of feminism extends well beyond the question of great thinkers. Women do not write hard science fiction today because so few can hack the physics, so they either write romance novels in space about strong, beautiful, independent and intelligent but lonely women who finally fall in love with rugged men who love them just as they are, or stick to fantasy where they can make things up without getting hammered by critics holding triple Ph.D.s in molecular engineering, astrophysics and Chaucer.

   -Vox Day

Just the sort of thing you love to hear coming from somebody on the 2004 Nebula Awards Novel jury, no? And interesting to hear coming from someone who himself writes Christian fantasy novels.

Another choice excerpt from another column:

An unconscionably stupid ideology, feminism's only redeeming characteristic is that it will likely eliminate itself before it eliminates society. Forget the Bible, even from a secular scientific perspective, it is an obvious evolutionary cul-de-sac, as delaying reproduction, embracing homosexuality and a harboring a prediliction for murdering one's young are not exactly the traits of a Darwinian survivor.

Comments

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

He was critical (http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/day2.html) of Michelle Malkin's book defending the WWII internment of the Japanese (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0895260514/qid=1110070089/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-6465182-3100140?v=glance&s=books&n=507846), and I thought he was in the right on that one. It's still a live argument (http://voxday.blogspot.com/2005/02/warning-rotting-equine-alert.html).

He tends to veer between well written articles and ones that come out of cloud-cuckoo land, like the time he announced that he'd believe in evolution when scientists could get fruit flies to evolve into something else in the lab.

I keep him in my list of "sometimes worth reading fringe types," and ignore him when he babbles. He's been babbling more often than not lately, but he still writes things that are worth reading (http://voxday.blogspot.com/2005/02/mailvox-friendly-enemies.html), IMHO.

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

I should amend that to "some things worth reading."

And I should also note, if it's not plain enough, that I do not often agree with him, lest readers of these comments think I want women who have abortions imprisoned until menopause.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

What I love is the assumption that "hard" science fiction with it's astrophysics and battles is inherently superior to "romance" science fiction. IMHO Asshat is also suffering from the misconception that things that are stereotypically "male" are always better than things that are stereotypically "female".

Also, if he's gonna get all hard science on everyone, it might be useful to point out to him that he's talking about fiction - why doesn't he get his head out of his ass long enough to read one of those "obviously superior" chemistry textbooks out there?:P

Bastard, indeed!

[madbodger.livejournal.com]

Oh, I wish Hal Clement were still alive. He had this great lecture on the chemistry of science fiction. He pointed out that you could create a world with an oxygen-chlorine atmosphere, work out all the numbers, and say the sky is such and such a colour if you really wanted to (he's done this — his book Bleachworld came out a few months after I heard this talk). But inevitably, some fan with a sliderule and way too much free time will complain that you got something wrong.

"Just say it was a typo, you didn't mean 0.28% chlorine, you mean 0.23%. All the equations are very finicky, and they'll have to do four more weeks of work to find out if that's right. By then, the con will be over."

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

Fans with sliderules need a GRACIOUS helping of "supension of disbelief", IMHO! - like sjdr said, most people don't read fiction to pick it apart!

I mean, even I'm willing to set aside errors of costume descriptions in historical novels, if the story is good! :P

[geekchick]

You haven't been to a science fiction con, have you? ;)

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

Nope :P

[sjdr.livejournal.com]

The thing I find amusing is this notion that hard science fiction is better and "smarter" than romance scifi, as anotheranon said.

The thing is, I was raised by a physicist and a mathematician, both committed, intelligent feminists, and while they both like science fiction (my dad, the physicist, somewhat more than my mom, the mathematician), their opinion on the science within and the genre in general is sort of "LOL w00t fiction!".

If an SF novel is fiction, it's fiction; which means it's either made-up fantasy, or completely staid and boring "pre-existing" physics - in other words, research that already exists and can be verified, and (chances are) wasn't done by the autor.

It's not like "hard" science fiction is ACTUAL CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH. It's either wank, or basically a quotation. Where's the brains in that?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Historical fiction isn't history, but to make it any good one must be able to work with history.

If women, in this example, can't really understand science, they can't really use it as a major element in a story. I see problems with this basic idea (understanding a thing when using it as a plot element) all the time, because most people don't understand the military culture (we shan't even go into the military mind) but are more than willing to write stories which either have military characters (usually stock, and flat as cardboard) or actually take place in the military.

Absent the understanding of the culture, such tales usually suffer, and can even fail, if the military aspect becomes a big McGuffin.

TK

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

The discussion at Electrolite about his being on the jury is, as one might expect, enlightening.

TK

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

It was until after one of the other jurors said that he hadn't been a problem. Then it degenerated into him and John Scalzi flinging verbal manure on one another. You could use that discussion thread as example to people on how not to make good arguments. I mean, really, does "this guy appeared in a silly photo" refute anything he's saying? And he's making ar argument that is starting to get creeping respectability in large part, IMHO, because people are just refusing to make the case against it, preferring to snort and say it's obviously wrong. Meanwhile, he and people like him do make arguments, and when people don't make a counter-argument, they go back and say "see! I told you they were utterly illogical!"

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I didn't keep reading to that point.

I think I saw two arguments being made.

The first, that women can't write "x" because they are genetically unfit, is balderdash. Aboslute rot, not as useful as a dish of tripe (which I personally don't care for, so at most it's a lot of work to make something for dogs to eat).

The second is that this person's possession of this ridiculous belief must, ipso facto, make him unfit for dealing with the product he says women can't, as a class, produce.

Since I will wager he holds the view, some women can, he is not a terrible judge. He can probably do what everyone who sits on a jury claims to to, and divorce himself from some of his predjudice for purposes of the work.

Had he said women shouldn't write such and such, and then was named to a jury of such and such, in that case I'd say he was, prima facie, unqualified.

TK

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

I do wish people would attempt to refute his arguments instead of just relying on ad hominem, question begging and sneering. He's made a claim in there that I think is not true, and should be easy meat. His claim is

There are few female hard SF writers, because there are a small percentage of women in the hard sciences (especially physics), because women are predispositioned against the sciences.

At a bare minimum, the last is an unknown, it may be totally false. Heck, Larry Summers, in his controversial speech (http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/nber.html), wasn't even saying it was true: he was saying it shouldn't be excluded as a possiblity. (There are, of course, other possibilities: sexist society discouraging women from entering the sciences, women are not predispositioned at all but men are, women are making a rational choice and going into more lucrative fields..and that's just off the top of my head.)

Beale makes a big deal out of the supposed irrationality not only of his opponents, but also of the ideas they advocate. Why not take on his claim? There were a few beginnings at attempts to do so, but for the most part, people just totally rejected his ideas and couldn't give reasons why.

I have a fear that full-blown old school racism and sexism are going to make a comeback in part because those who are against those two ideas no longer bother to make arguments why those ideas are wrong. They just tend to treat them like a tautology, and when challenged, can't make arguments against them that are worth a darn.