Dara pointed me at this tumblr that has a brand spanking new helping of excerpts off the SFF.net forums, with snark directed at “the Young” in general and at Mary Robinette Kowal in particular. I particularly note the parts dismissing “the Young” as “incapable of independent thought” and asserting how we’re probably all pirating C.J. Cherryh’s books anyway. And the parts accusing Ms. Kowal of being a hypocrite due to her wardrobe choices in pictures on her site and when she attends science fiction conventions–because, of course, a woman couldn’t possibly be really interested in feminism if she dresses in any manner whatsoever that might approach making her conventionally attractive, right?
Now, I could point out that if you are of the mind that people who aren’t in your organization shouldn’t be commenting on the Internet about your organization’s activities, you might want to avoid posting things on publicly-readable forums. Or on Facebook. Which, last I checked, is part of the Internet.
And I could point out that criticizing a feminist for her wardrobe choices is yet another belittling, demeaning tactic, similar to attacking her for inflammatory language, meant to distract from her actual points.
I could even point out that dismissing an entire segment of people who disagree with you as “the Young” is perhaps not the wisest of strategies, because it’ll inevitably lead to our deploying this and this and this.
But mostly I’m just looking at the bit on that tumblr that snarks on Jim Hines’ cover parodies as making SFWA look “silly”, and all I can think is, um, actually, no folks, you’re doing that all by yourselves.
But what do I know? I’m just “the Young”.
P.S. Yikes, the Daily Dot linked to me in their post about this SFWA flap. Hi, people coming over from the Daily Dot! For those of you who may have missed it, their earlier writeup about all this is over here.
ETA: BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE! I saw John Scalzi put this post up tonight, and really, there’s nothing I can add to that, because it pretty much speaks for itself.
I’ll also point out Cora Buhlert’s commentary here, noting other commentary I hadn’t found yet, and expressing her general bemusement over the whole thing.
Also, this post over here called “Sci-Fi and Sexism”, by blogger and reviewer Mandaray, addresses exactly why this kind of thing needs to keep getting discussed–because the sexism in SF/F as she was growing up kept putting her off the genre.
ETA #2: Dara has her own next post up now, addressing how, hilarity aside, there’s more being lost here.
