Author: Alex

Categories
clothing feminism

Socksism?

Sometimes it’s the little things.

So I go to REI to get some more smart wool light cushion socks because I like wearing those with my Docs, and I need a few more pairs. After purchasing my socks, I noticed this.

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Those are two pairs of the socks I bought. You’ll noticed the pair on top, which is a kind of light gray-green, is marked as “women’s” and has only women’s shoe sizes listed. Whereas the one on the bottom, which is a sort of gray-brown, is unmarked and has both men’s and women’s shoe sizes list. I guess unmarked means gender neutral, though maybe that’s supposed to mean “default to male” for all I know.

This is just silly. It’s silly.

I loathe this gender coding of color BS to begin with, and this one just seems particularly dumb. So men and women are allowed to wear gray-brown, gray, or black, but only women should be wearing gray-green (gosh that’s so super hyper femme) or that historically girly color, purple? Yikes.

Still dreaming of the day when we’ve done away with this men’s versus women’s clothing nonsense entirely. Seriously, people. Wear what makes you happy.

Categories
conspiracy theory silly spam

In which I answer (spam?) e-mail out loud.

from: christian bile
to: katsuhiro at gmail.com
date: Thu, May 8, 2014 at 4:13 AM
subject:

hey i’d like to know if u r an illuminaati member?

Good question! Actually, I’m an Illuminaaati member. They’re easy to get confused, but one is sort of an off-brand Illuminati that’s generally manufactured in sweatshops by children who are held under terrible conditions and paid almost nothing, and the other is a shadowy, terrifying global organization whose agents sneak into your house in the dead of night and make certain your car tires contain the appropriate amount of air pressure. They also have a highly disturbing yet intensely helpful habit of being already waiting at the proper intersection with a tow truck before before your car has broken down. Almost as if they know it will happen. As if they engineered it perhaps.

(I imagined that question being read in an extra gravelly voice, as if Batman has had food poisoning and been dry heaving for a while. No idea why.)

Categories
someone is wrong on the internet things that are hard to write you need to do better

The deeply pathetic intimation of violence

Last night I was bemused to see some referrals to my cranky blog from a post on John C. Wright’s that I hadn’t linked to. Curious, I took a looksee, and lo and behold, I got name checked in the comments. Which is fair enough. (Gentlemen, I’m terribly sorry your delicate constitutions can’t handle some salty language, by the way. Kindly get the fuck over it.) And then there was this comment:

I found myself briefly regretting that duels of honour are illegal and, if to the death, immoral; but that is the level of anger I’d feel at being called a liar, multiple times.

Of course, the difficulty is when it’s a woman impugning your honour; it is dishonourable to strike a woman, but equally dishonourable to allow slights to your good name to stand. Never did figure a way out of that paradox.

Which honestly made me laugh, a lot. Seriously, how can you react to that other than by telling all your friends would you get a load of this fucking guy? Curse my ovaries for making it dishonorable to challenge me! Friends across various social media sites had a lot of fun laughing about it and there was a lot of “oh you’d totally kick that guy’s ass” chatter and that’s always pretty fun too in a sort of drinking beers and slapping each other on the back kind of way.

But now I want to get real about it.

This is not actually the first time I’ve had a random stranger on the internet publicly fantasize or imply how awesome it would be if he or someone else perpetrated an act of violence on my person. (About a year and a half ago it was someone making noise about taking a baseball bat to me because I had the [lady]stones to say I thought the president of the NRA is a terrible person.) Frankly, answering words with fantasies of violence is already a sign, at best, that someone needs to take a deep breath, count to ten, and remind themselves firmly that they are supposed to be an adult. That these notions–duels! baseball bats!–are immediately excused, often in the same metaphorical breath, with assurances of how that would totally never happen because it’s illegal, or they’re really a nice guy, or haha you’re a woman, is actually even more pathetic. It sure looks a lot like trying to have your cake and eat it, by being vaguely threatening at someone so you get to feel all big and tough, but then having the plausible deniability of no, seriously, I was only joking.

I do not care if you are my friend or my enemy. You are not tough or impressive when you do that. You are pitiable.

Because this is the thing. You may believe that violence or the “joking” threat of it will somehow end the argument, and in your favor because you’ve “won.” That is the magical thinking of a child. If the only way you can manage to respond to an argument is by puffing out your chest and waving your fists, you have lost, and profoundly. I don’t particularly want to have a baseball bat taken to me, or get cornered by someone wielding a pistol who desperately wishes it was the eighteenth century. But the fact of the matter is, no matter what could be physically done to my body, that does not actually prove me wrong.

I set down facts. I had an opinion. Even if someone found me in the parking lot tomorrow and beat me to death with a pipe wrench, that would not change any truth I’ve written. Climate change will still be real. Wayne LaPierre will still be a terrible person. Abiotic oil will still be horse shit. Powerforce bands would still be magical money wasters. John C. Wright will still be a disingenuous liar.

The truth doesn’t give a shit who hits harder or shoots faster. At best, maybe you get to be the last man standing who dictates his delusional vision of the world into a history book. But it’s just that: a delusion. Even if you could take every scientist who has ever researched sea level rise and threw us off a cliff, the sea level would still be going up. Even if you could duel everyone in the world who called someone you like a liar, that does not change the fact that he’s a fucking liar when he makes statements that are provably false.

You want to win? Then use your words. You don’t like statements I’ve made? Marshal your facts. Write a cogent argument. Prove your point in a substantive way. I’m a scientist. I might not like admitting when I’m wrong–seriously, who the fuck does?–but if I was incapable of doing so I never would have made it through graduate school.

But this “joking” about duels and baseball bats and the infinite number of nastier and more substantial threats that have been made against people far unluckier than me speaks not of the capacity for violence, but rather an ultimate lack of intellectual courage and a profound smallness of spirit. This is the ugliest possible version of a child sticking her fingers in her ears and shouting “Lalala I can’t hear you!”

And for that, anyone who practices this feeble tactic has my pity, whether they like it or not.

While I’m on a roll and talking about violence, and fights…

To my friends and loved ones: It is incredibly sweet that you have that kind of confidence in me, even if in a joking way. Yeah, it does feel good to be patted on the back and told I could totally kick someone’s ass, like I’m some kind of chubby, red-headed action star. That kind of thing can make a gal feel nine feet tall and fearless.

But let’s be real again.

I’ve practiced kung fu for twelve years now, and I’m still going strong. I’ve also been in precisely two fights in my entire life, both of which happened more than twelve years ago. What I learned about fights is that they’re terrifying, and chaotic, and painful, and then later sickening. They are not glorious, or cool, and anyone who claims they are probably hasn’t been in one, is dealing with it in the only way they can, or has bought into a mode of thought I’ve come to despise.

Practicing in the controlled environment of a school is not anything like being out in the real world; the closest you can ever get is sparring, and I’ve always avoided that because I don’t like it. I don’t like fighting. So I have no idea how I’d actually fare in a fight these days. And you know what? I’ll be overjoyed if I die at a ripe old age without ever finding out.

But let me tell you what I have learned, after twelve years of kung fu:

  • It’s okay for girls to hit.
  • Pain isn’t as painful as you think.
  • Practice is fun. Fighting is not.
  • It’s easier to train your fists than it is to train your will, or your temper, or your spirit.
  • Violence is the first resort of a bully and the last resort of a true disciple.
  • It takes the most strength to walk away.
  • You don’t ever, ever start fights, but you damn well finish them.

And yes, maybe there are situations where your back is to the wall and you or someone you love is in physical danger and then maybe, just maybe, you have no choice but to fight. But people seem to forget that often the quickest, most decisive way to end a fight is by choosing the most difficult path of all and walking away.

I won’t walk away from an argument, but I will walk away from a fight and consider myself the better person for it, always.

Categories
movie

[Movie] Chef

Which should be subtitled: Or: 115 minutes of unrelenting food porn; if you don’t leave the theater prepared to murder a hobo if it will only get you a cubano, you are either the most self-controlled vegan who has ever lived or dead.

So that is the first thing you need to know about Chef. It’s a nearly two hour ode to food. But it’s so much more than that. Considering that most mainstream movies these days are still very much about being dark or edgy in some way, where there’s angst and tragic pasts and manpain everywhere, movies that very conspicuously avoid those things really stand out to me. Because you can look at the characters in them and think yeah, I know someone like that. Or yeah, that’s me. The characters feel so much more rich for it, full of an ordinary kind of life that makes them feel infinitely more real than the overemphasized caricatures with which we basically get inundated. Characters grow and change and learn lessons and no one has to have a melodramatic run through the rain or throws dishes on the floor or flees in slow motion from an explosion.

The plot itself is something you could imagine happening in real life–chef loses his job (okay, the melodramatic blow-up at the food critic is perhaps a bit over the top, but hilarious) and decides to start a food truck. Picks the truck up in Miami and drives it back to California with his son and his line cook. And on the way, it becomes a love letter to the landscape, food, and music of the Gulf Coast states.

It’s a movie with a lot to say about creativity–both the kind specifically involved in cooking and the arts in general–and criticism, and how art is supposed to touch peoples’ lives in a very personal way, and does so without ever getting into navel-gazing territory. It has a lot to say about relationships, about being happy and fulfilled, heck, even about social media. (Though regarding relationships, the only bit in the movie I didn’t like was the last three minutes, but that was for very personal reasons.)

But I think what I loved the most was how real it all felt in comparison to the movies I’m used to seeing. Like I said, you could look at any one of those characters and believe they were a real person that you could run in to around the corner. Beyond that, I loved the fact that it had an R-rating, and the only reason for that was because the word fuck was used so often–because you can’t have a believable kitchen without the f-word. I loved that there was so much Spanish in the movie, and none of it subtitled, in the kitchens, used by Chef Carl’s ex-wife Inez, used by his line cook Martin. That’s not something that happens often in mainstream film either. And I loved that there was no “darkest hour before dawn” moment, that a guy and his ex-wife managed to have a great friendship, that there was an amazing scene where the kid just got to sit there and look mortified that Carl and Martin were singing along to this song while driving down the highway:

Movies like this remind you that life has its own tiny dramas, but at the end of the day it’s a journey and you just get on with living it–and there is nothing boring about that. Life is rich and amazing and full of laughter and beauty and love.

This movie is fucking awesome. You come out of it just feeling good about being alive. You should go see it. Plan to get a cubano after.

Categories
pictures

Your jealousy tastes like sweet cake.

I am so lucky I have a housemate who loves cooking. Because then when I find an old recipe and want to translate it to modern cooking instructions, she’s willing to test it out for me. And then magic happens.

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The only thing sweeter than your jealousy is THIS CAKE.

(Recipe will be in the forthcoming Captain Ramos collection and the SFWA cookbook. SOON MY PRETTIES. SOON.

Seemed like a perfect thing to do after watching Chef.

Categories
science fiction sexism someone is wrong on the internet

Dear John C Wright: Please stop lying.

No really, John C. Wright. You flounced, you’re not my problem any more, I don’t have to care about your bullshit misogyny and gross homophobia. I’m done with you. Stop wasting my time.

Only then you go and pull this shit.

I have this problem, you see. Most of the time, when there’s someone saying stupid things on the internet, I can make myself get up and walk away because I seriously have better things to do with my limited number of minutes on this mortal coil. Like read books. And write. And play with my cats.

But when it’s a particular brand of stupid shit on the internet, when it’s someone saying things that should be connected to actual real facts, I. Just. Can’t.

I already had an inkling that Mr. Wright had some problems with the truth after his flounce. But this just confirms it. So let’s play some whack-a-mole, shall we? Please, don’t consider the following comprehensive, exhaustive, or final. I invite you to play your own round of Spot The Bullshit. It’s fun for all ages! Enjoy slogging through his comically overwrought paragraphs! My brainmeats may never recover!

Robert Heinlein could not win a Hugo Award today.

Not calling this out as an untruth necessarily, but because I am so, so fucking sick of this.

First off (at the risk of inviting hordes of flying monkeys to my blog for failing to bow at the feet of the Heinlein) you say that like it’s a bad thing. Second off, he won a Retro Hugo for best novel, for Farmer in the Sky, in 2001. This is not to say that if Farmer in the Sky had been on the actual 2001 Hugo ballot, it would have won. No, I’m pretty sure Harry Potter would have nutpunched poor Bill Lermer and gained the victory without breaking a sweat.

I’m also forced to wonder at the implied assumption that, had Robert Heinlein been born in 1977 (or 1967) instead of 1907, he would be writing the exact same stuff in 2014 that he wrote in 1954 (The Star Beast) or 1964 (Farnham’s Freehold–holy shit, I hope not!). Feels kind of insulting to him that if he’d grown up in a different time he wouldn’t have maybe had some different opinions, but I guess that shouldn’t be surprising coming as it is from someone who has attitudes about gender roles that might have been more at home in the Victorian era.

But that’s a discussion for a different time, a different place, and probably to be had by people who are a lot more personally concerned with Heinlein than I am. Let’s get back on track.

Orson Scott Card publicly expressed the mildest imaginable opposition to having judges overrule popular votes defining marriage in the traditional way. The uproar of hate directed against this innocent and honorable man is vehement and ongoing. An unsuccessful boycott was organized against the movie Ender’s Game, but he was successfully shoved off a project to write for Superman comics.

This is what’s commonly known as a lie. Orson Scott Card has a history of virulent and public homophobia dating back to the early 90s (oh look, Salon has been kind enough to collect a non-exhaustive timeline!) The straw that broke the homosexual’s back, so to speak, was him joining the board for the National Organization for Marriage in 2009–the loathsome organization that worked to pass Proposition 8 in California and then tried to defend it with blatant, pathetic lying in court. His involvement in NOM was specifically cited by the campaign to boycott the Ender’s Game movie, by the way.

Even better, Wright doesn’t even believe this line of shit himself. To quote a comment he posted in his own blog in response to someone pointing out that hey, OSC is in trouble for sticking his hand into the political blender when it comes to same-sex marriage, not for being a Christian:

Hence if Mr Card, a Christian, expresses what Christian should hold, he does and he must express the idea that homosexual acts are sins. When Mr Card is being punished for speaking out against homosex, he is being punished for being a true Christian.

Huh. I thought you said it was just incredibly mild opposition to judicial activism. Not “homosex.” Whatever the fuck that is. But if you read that entire post (I suggest you have an airsickness bag on hand first) it’s painfully obvious that Wright’s concerned about OSC being boycotted and punished for being, gosh, virulently homophobic because their opinions are totally similar, OSC is just so much more mild than him.

(Aside: This quote is from a hilarious thread in which Mr. Wright debates with a commenter whether or not Mormons are Christian and thus deserving of help.)

Mr. Wright, stop lying.

Likewise, Theodore Beale was expelled from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers America (SFWA), our professional union, on the rather specious grounds that he repeated comments from a members-only bulletin board to the general public.

Nope. Beale is an embarrassing (racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic) shitstain in the shorts of humanity in general, but what got him finally thrown out of SFWA was using the organization’s official Twitter feed to promote a racist, misogynistic screed. Here’s a post Amal El-Mohtar wrote prior to his expulsion, with screenshots of said screed. I don’t know, something about those professional organizations. They don’t like it when members try to drag them through the racist, sexist shit.

He was libeled with the same typical menu as above. [The “list from above”–ed: You know the selection: racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, insensitivity, fascism.] (By odd coincidence, the falsely accused racist here is also Hispanic.) That the expulsion was done in an irregular and ad hoc fashion casts an additional pall of shame over it.

(Note, I’m guessing the “falsely accused racist here is also Hispanic” is in reference to Larry Correia. I’m leaving the Correia issue alone because I do not know enough about the guy other than the fact that I think he’s an asshole, and still cannot be bothered to slog through the festering cesspit of his blog to investigate.)

Quoted from the screenshot of Beale’s blog post: [For context that should probably be unnecessary, NK Jemisin is African-American.]

Jemisin has it wrong; it is not that I, and others, do not view her as human, (although genetic science presently suggests that we are not equally homo sapiens sapiens), it is that we do not view her as being fully civilized for the obvious reason that she is not.

And:

Unlike the white males she excoriates, there is no evidence that a society of NK Jemisins is capable of building an advanced civilization, or even successfully maintaining one without external support.

Yes. Beale is totally not racist at all. [/withering sarcasm] Stop lying.

Back to Wright’s bullshit fest.

Likewise, Elizabeth Moon was “uninvited” from being the guest of honor at a large convention for making the rather unremarkable remark that immigrants to the United States should assimilate.

If you actually care to read the article linked to, you will find that once again that Wright is going for the incredibly dishonest minimization route. Now, maybe it was just the assimilation comment that got Elizabeth Moon uninvited. Or maybe it was this:

I know – I do not dispute – that many Muslims had nothing to do with the attacks, did not approve of them, would have stopped them if they could. I do not dispute that there are moderate, even liberal, Muslims, that many Muslims have all the virtues of civilized persons and are admirable in all those ways. But Muslims fail to recognize how much forbearance they’ve had.

I feel that I personally (and many others) lean over backwards to put up with these things, to let Muslims believe stuff that unfits them for citizenship, on the grounds of their personal freedom. It would be helpful to have them understand what they’re demanding of me and others – how much more they’re asking than giving.

Context matters. Considering that the large convention in question is WisCon (pretty much the most liberal scifi convention that has ever liberaled), I’m more surprised Wright even managed to mention it obliquely without his poor conservative fingers bursting into white-hot flame from the hellish proximity of so many un-shaven she-devil feminists.

Likewise, under the editorial guidance of Jean Rabe, two well-established science fiction writers, Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg, in the SFWA house magazine made comments ranging from the complimentary to the utterly innocuous about lady writers and editors breaking into the field. That issue also featured a toothsome sword-wielding Amazon in chain-mail bikini. All three were fired.

Wow, going there are we? The original comments in the Bulletin, however they might have been intended, were not complimentary, nor innocuous. The inflammatory and trollish way Resnick and Malzberg decided to respond (“liberal fascists,” really?) earned just the ire for which it had been aiming. That Wright chooses to describe the chain-mail bikini-wearing warrior woman as “toothsome” honestly just goes to prove every fucking complaint women had about that cover. Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg had a regular column that was discontinued because a large portion of the membership didn’t feel like paying to see ourselves belittled in writing; to my understanding, that’s not the same as firing. Jean Rabe resigned, though I suppose one could argue if she felt pressured, but she was ultimately not fired either.

Stop. Lying.

None accuse Mike Ashley of any evil intent against women. Yet if you look at the Wikipedia entry for this anthology, there is only one quote from a critic, mocking his lack of diversity.

Wikipedia: the best source ever for iron clad proof of the existence of conspiracies.

And then Wright goes of into a giant, frankly masturbatory stroke-fest about his cherished belief that he and people like him are persecuted. Keep reading if you want to feel a sense of creeping, disgusted awkwardness.

It’s a free country. Mr. Wright is entitled to his own opinion that the evil liberal thought police are out to get him, and I really could not give less of a shit if I tried. But just like climate change deniers, evolution deniers, moon landing conspiracy theorists, 9/11 truthers, and every other flavor of disingenuous nut scrabbling for justification, he is not entitled to his own facts.

Kindly stop wasting my time.

Sashay_Away

Stop lying. Asshole.

(PS: Natalie, IHU SO MUCH RN.)

Related links: 

HERE. If you want to watch someone try to take on the tortured “logic” in Wright’s post–which I noped right out of and went for the low-hanging fruit of completely dishonesty–Foz has taken a stab at it. Foz deserves all the cookies.

Natalie has also opined about Lying Liars Who Lie.

Popelizbet has an absolutely gorgeous takedown of some of the quasi-philosophical bullshit asshattery that the rest of us didn’t want to touch. NO REALLY READ THIS IT’S SO WORTH IT.

Marissa Lingen makes an excellent point about Heinlein that I only touched on here in the lightest possible sense.

From my own blog: The deeply pathetic intimation of violence. Because duels for honor are a thing?

Categories
writing

Things of Mine Wot You Should Read in May

I have two new short stories out, because I am living the dream!

First off, go to Scigentasy and read What Purpose a Heart. Because it is painfully obvious that your morning doesn’t contain nearly enough space opera, ship to ship battles, or lesbians. I’m even more excited because the artwork Scigentasy put with this story is absolutely gorgeous and perfect in every way. So go! Read it! Why haven’t you read it yet?

Also, the second piece of flash I’ve ever managed to write, List of Items Found in Valise on Welby Crescent is out in Shimmer #19. This story has had three different incarnations and gone through over 10 drafts, which is pretty impressive (or potentially depressing) considering it’s less than 500 words long. But it’s an odd little story I wanted to see if I could tell in a strange way, and I’m really pleased with it. The story will be available online in June, but I think you definitely want to read it so much right now that you should buy a copy of Shimmer #19. And as a bonus you’ll get some other awesome fiction too.

Patricia Ash at GearHearts has reviewed The Ugly Tin Orrery and gave it 4/5 gears. If you’ve been missing out on pirates and murder and steam engines designed to jump the tracks, you should really remedy that. Just sayin.

Other exciting things are in the works, which has involved me being in editing hell for the last two weeks. Super exciting things. Unfortunately if I told you, a squadron of ninja would then have to show up at your house and kill you to preserve my honor, so it’s probably for the best that I’m just going to be mysterious and annoying about it.

Categories
sfwa someone is wrong on the internet

The Flounce Continues: The Flouncening

Edited significantly on 4/30 at 1238 because I had my opinion forcibly modified downward and am feeling much less charitable now.

I’m not the only one on the “deets or GTFO” wagon. Apparently SFWA already requested evidence as well and Mr. Wright was too much of a “gentleman” to provide it. So again: Deet it or beat it.

Also, apparently Brad Torgersen is letting his SFWA membership lapse. I’m not planning to be the SFWA membership monitoring police (I have a real job and god, I do not even care), but I did want to mention it because of his stated reasons.

Instead of tackling (head on) the job of defending authors’ interests in a publishing industry enduring great change, SFWA contents itself by persecuting individual members for perceived sins of nonconformity, engaging in ideological purity tests (“Your papers . . . they are not in order!”) and impugning the reputations of men (and women) who have devoted their lives to enriching and growing the field.

(Brad, if you ever by chance stumble across this, I would like to say in all sincerity, thank you for acknowledging that whole women existing thing, if parenthetically. And using words like “members” and “officers.” I’m serious; the difference us stark when you put you’re words next to Mr. Wright’s. So thank you.)

And also:

I’ve seen a mentor slandered, attacked, and thrown out of the Bulletin, and I’ve seen my editor straw-manned and maligned by one of SFWA’s darlings and former top officers.

This is my issue. Actually, two of them. And since this was a comment on Mr. Wright’s blog and not a melodramatic letter created for public consumption, I think it’s fair for me to admit I may be overthinking things a little.

First: If you are accusing the organization itself of a campaign of persecution, same rules apply: deets or GTFO. And sorry, you don’t get to use Theodore Beale. History has yet to be rewritten to that extent. If you are accusing SFWA as an organization of impugning the reputations of others, then I sure hope you’ve got some newsletters or publications or official e-mails or something to back that one up.

Second: There is some inconsistency here that has gone beyond bugging me and into I cannot survive if I don’t say something territory.

Mr. Torgersen complains about “I’ve seen my editor straw-manned and maligned by one of SFWA’s darlings and former top officers.” Mr. Wright complained that, “Instead of men who treat each other with professionalism and respect, I find a mob of perpetually outraged gray-haired juveniles.” Which, stop me if I’m wrong, sure sounds like, “people are being mean on the internet.” And maybe I am reading too much into this, but considering it’s being cited as a reason to leave SFWA, there’s a hefty implication of “and SFWA should do something about it.”

Now, if you don’t want to be in an organization in which there are members who think you’re an asshole and don’t mind saying so out loud where other people can see, that’s clearly your right and I’m not going to say that you can’t/shouldn’t leave or mock you for it. There were plenty of people who dropped the org when Beale was a member because he either was after them or they just thought he was fucking disgusting and didn’t want to be associated with him even peripherally. And it can be very not fun to be in an organization when you feel people are hostile toward you, I get that too. Feels bad, man. But that’s kind of how it goes when you get a lot of people with wildly differing opinions who like writing a lot together and have no rules of engagement apart from “If you take a shit on our private property the ban hammer will descend.”

So here’s my problem. It’s the mentions of the bulletin on one hand–PC censorship!–and then on the other complaints that individual members are jackasses. The Bulletin is something SFWA can police, because it belongs to the organization. And not only that, it represents the organization and SFWA has every right to not want something, oh just pulling a totally random example out of thin air here, deeply disrespectful toward women written across its public face since holy shit it’s well past the year y2k and women are people.

SFWA doesn’t police its members when they’re on their own time and in their own spaces, however. That has always been very clear since when I joined at least, and every time there is a hint to the contrary the goddamn sky falls in. Now, I may be of the opinion that certain things should be beyond the pale, eg threats, racism, etc, but I also know there are people who would disagree with me even on that…and I’m not in charge of the org either. And this is the very reason Theodore Beale lasted as long as he did, until he took a warm, racist shit all over the SFWA Twitter feed.

Current SFWA officers have to be very careful and very clear about when they’re speaking in their capacity as officers, but they don’t sign away their right to have personal thoughts when they get elected. (Talk about making a thankless job even more thankless.) Former officers can say whatever the fuck they want. This should go without saying, but regular members can say what the fuck they want on their own time and in their own space. Because you know. Free speech. Remember that? I thought the crowd that’s self-identified as taking a stand against the evil SFWA liberal PC-police was really in to free such. Or is that only for speech they like, and only in the comments section of others?

I wonder if perhaps now Mr. Wright and Mr. Torgersen feel some empathy for the people who were driven from the org by that shit stain in the pants of humanity, Theodore Beale. Because where the fuck were they then, aiming their sad censure at How Unprofessional Some People Are Being?

Pretending to be the adult in the room is a damn sight less believable from someone who has actively tried to make things worse in the past. (Courtesy of Natalie, from this post.)

I’m really, really done with this bullshit.

ETA at 1314, 4/30: 2 things:
1) Brad had responded in the comments with the requested deets, fwiw.
2) To clarify, my mentions of Beale are not directly connected to Brad’s resignation reasoning; I’m aware there he’s talking about Resnick and Weisskopf specifically there. My opinion on Resnick and the Bulletin should already be abundantly clear, so I obviously do not agree with him on that one. I don’t have much of an opinion about the Weisskopf thing because tbh I found her essay kind of incoherent and couldn’t parse get point well enough to form a solid opinion. The Beale thing has more to do with other comments of Brad’s I have read elsewhere. And also I hope makes the point well that it’s not like SFWA members being assholes on the internet is a new thing, and as far as I’m concerned no current assholery even approaches that level.

Edited my above comment at 1457 because I erroneously kept saying Hoyt instead of Weisskopf. I have no excuse for that mistake, mea culpa.

Categories
movie

[Movie] Under the Skin

7dcMy reaction to Under the Skin, summed up by well known philosopher, critic, and Hero of Canton, Jayne Cobb.

Because I am an adult and make excellent life choices, I decided to see this movie at 2230 on Sunday, even knowing that it would mean getting less than five hours of sleep before work on Monday. Because I’d heard wonderful things about it, and I have yet to see something that involves Scarlet Johansson that I haven’t loved to pieces. And the concept behind the movie also sounded so interesting–psychological thriller about an alien stalking Glasgow and doing terrible things to unsuspecting human men until she discovers some inner well of humanity? Sign me up.

I have no idea now, why people are calling this movie a psychological thriller as opposed to horror. I’m guessing because (at least in America) it’s not horror if it doesn’t involve jump scares and copious amounts of blood. Well, I don’t watch a lot of horror movies because I don’t really like either of those things all that much. But they also don’t really tend to leave me feeling fucked up for hours and days afterward. I claim Under the Skin is horror because it managed to fill me with existential dread for well over a day and kept me from sleeping. The last movie that did that? Kairo. The original Japanese horror movie, not that shitty American…whatever it was.

There is nothing about this movie that wasn’t fundamentally disturbing. Scarlet Johansson spends a lot of time staring at the world with dead eyes…except when she’s attempting to lure a hapless (and completely lonely) man to her exceptionally creepy and very water-damaged house. I can’t tell you precisely what happens to the men because it’s never explicitly stated, but it starts out with naked, boner-sporting fellows sinking down into a bottomless pool that the alien simply walks across like it’s solid, continues on to them being sucked out of their goddamn skins so literally there is an empty fucking skin floating in the water, and ends with what sure does look like ground meat and bonemeal slurry going down a chute.

The dialog is minimal, which only leads to the feeling of complete unease. The score is not going to win any prizes for beauty, but it does what it’s supposed to do with efficiency, which is make the audience feel intensely unsettled at every possible moment. The score was composed mostly of sustained chords, which were incredibly discordant and became less so as the alien experiences her shift in personality. The movie takes its time with long scenes, not terribly unlike the alien walking slowly backwards as she lures men into the dark room where they’ll ultimately get turned inside-out for the the crime of just really wanting to fuck a pretty woman. (A pretty woman, I’ll note, doing one of the least sexy strip teases that has ever been put to film.) It’s long, and drawn out, and at times you want to beg it to have mercy and just. Fucking. Stop.

But it is, by the way, fucking gorgeous. Large portions of this movie could easily act as a tourism advertisement for Scotland; forests and shorelines and the countryside all have their moments to shine. Except for the bit where the take home message seems to be: Come to Scotland, it’s a magical place where you might be picked up by a woman in a molester van and then get liquified after 24 hours of terrifying captivity on a bottomless swimming pool.

One thing I found interesting was the amount of nudity in this movie, which surprised me considering the R-rating. Full frontal nudity of both the male and female variety, and much of the male variety involved erections. But I think it’s because I’m used to an R-rating meaning lots of violence. That’s the American way, right? And there is really very little actual violence in this movie, for all it involves men getting sucked out of their own skins. There’s one really horrible scene at the end–an attempted rape that leads to something even more awful–and the rest of it is disquietingly non-violent and unsexy both. This movie refuses to offer you relief from the horror of what is happening by making it titillating in the slightest.

Continue on if you don’t mind spoilers:

Continue reading “[Movie] Under the Skin”
Categories
science fiction sfwa someone is wrong on the internet

It’s okay, John C. Wright, you’re pretty too.

Remember this fucking guy? He has done a public flounce from SFWA now. It’s delightfully pompous as flounces go, and I highly recommend it if you need a dose of evil glee to round out your Monday. (Though I am forced to wonder why someone who seems so enamored of strict gender roles has decided to emulate a stereotypical teenaged girl, albeit one armed with a thesaurus and a King James Bible.) No idea why the flounce occurred today of all days, as SFWA has been nicely quiet for some time.

My best guess is

  1. Mr. Wright is jealous that the other super misogynistic embarrassment to science fiction (you know, Theodore Beale) is getting all the attention and desperately wants the cute girl whose parents gave her a mustang for Christmas the internet to pay attention to him and validate his outrage.
  2. Mr. Wright’s membership is up and he decided to not renew in the most flamboyant way he could find without shelling out the money for a sky writer.
  3. A confluence of luck that made both happen at the same time?

(Dear people who keep trying to blame the syphilitic outbreak on the Hugos on SFWA, get it straight. We give out the Nebulas. Address your complaints to WSFS, and then buy a supporting membership in Loncon 3 so you can vote. Because that’s how the Hugos work. SFWA has nothing to do with it. And I hope Mr. Wright knows that considering he was until today a member of the organization.)

There isn’t really that much to say other than the evil belly laugh for which hairy-legged feminists like myself are renowned, the sound of which causes agony to all good god-fearing men. Well, other than to point out a couple things in his florid love letter to his own ego that he really should be ashamed of typing. You know. If shame is a thing he does.

Instead of enhancing the prestige of the genre, the leadership seems bent on holding us up to the jeers of all fair-minded men by behaving as gossips, whiners, and petty totalitarians, and by supporting a political agenda irrelevant to science fiction.

Sorry dude, if you have a problem with gossips and whiners, you really shouldn’t have typed out that entire letter there and posted it on the internet.

Instead of men who treat each other with professionalism and respect, I find a mob of perpetually outraged gray-haired juveniles.

I really wish you guys would get your internet persecution complexes straight. I thought we were The Young. (DAH DAH DAAAAAAAAAH!) Now we’re gray-haired juveniles? Did we have a terribly dye job accident? Also, the fact that Wright again and again talks about men and completely ignores the fact that there are people of all genders in the org makes me INCREDIBLY glad the door isn’t hitting him on the ass on the way out.

But all of this is honestly just mockery on my part, and really has no meaning beyond me just being a jerk for the sake of being a jerk. Mr. Wright can be upset that women are allowed to speak in public or whatever has his ass in a twist and it really does not matter in the long run. Except for this one right here, and this is where I draw the line:

Instead of receiving aid to my writing career, I find organized attempts to harass my readers and hurt my sales figures.

Does he provide any evidence for this? No. And I will flatly state as a member of SFWA who frequents the message boards, I have not heard word one of even a breath of an idea that could even begin to approach the hint of the shadow of  anything of this nature. Mr. Wright further states in an addendum to the letter that he will not be providing any evidence because he’s totally a professional, and professionals don’t kiss and tell provide evidence for their accusations.

This is bullshit. And is also commonly magical internet speak for “uh oh I don’t actually have any evidence oh shit just pretend to be taking the high road and hope no one notices!” And the more I think about it, the more it just flat fucking pisses me off. It’s all fun and casual taunting games until someone makes an accusation that can actually be supported with evidence.

If this is an actual real thing that has happened, it needs to be stopped. Because going after someone’s readers and harassment is never okay, whether you like the person involved or not. But considering the nature of the rest of the letter, unless he has evidence of this organized harassment of his readers with the intention of hurting his sales figures, Mr. Wright would be far worse than a man in love with his own persecution complex. He would be a liar. The rest of his complaints are the standard differences of opinion, and they are what they are, agree or not. This one is an actual accusation, and as such should be backed up with actual facts if he wants to have any hope of credibility.

Or as we say on the internet: Deets or GTFO.

ETA 4/29: Apparently SFWA requested evidence as well and Mr. Wright was too much of a “gentleman” to provide it.

And Steven Gould, president of SFWA, had a few things to say about these accusations, which includes both his personal opinions and notes on SFWA policy.

And the flounce continues!