Champagne and Socks

This is a very hard post to write. In fact, it’s so hard, I’ve started trying to write it several times over the last couple of years. Every time, I’ve made it part way in and then decided it was better, politically, to just shut up. Let it slide. It’s not *so bad* after all. And there are ways to cope with these things, silently, and on the side, aren’t there?

I’ve learned that most people can see the elephant in the room. I’m just the one who always has the need to point to it and then ask everyone else if they can see it too. Whilst I haven’t necessarily written about this stuff before, I have openly spoken a lot about it on Galactic Suburbia.

Overnight, Elise Mattheson came forward and spoke up about her reporting of sexual harassment at Wiscon. What strikes me most starkly about this is that hers was the first formal complaint about this particular person. I have been aware for several years about this person’s behaviour and I have avoided him at cons since being warned. I was aware of his behaviour at World Fantasy Con in 2010 and of other incidents with people I know. I’m not shocked that it was the first formal complaint but I’m aware that for every time we don’t openly speak out and report incidents, we contribute to the ongoing status quo of allowable/acceptable behaviour in our spaces. As our Chief of Army recently just said – the behaviour you walk past is the standard you set.

I was watching discussion last night on Twitter about harassment at cons. And I found myself questioning some tweets about whether I thought some cases were really harassment. I mean, sure, I’d feel pretty shitty in that instance if it had been me, but did it really constitute harassment? And when I interrogated my own thought process on this, I realised it’s because I’m used to a lot of this kind of behaviour through spending four years with 75% male classes in engineering school with males 17 to 22 years of age. And then again in postgrad in the same school but to a lesser degree. And then ramped up again when I went out into the real world and into a male dominated field – in my first job I was the only woman in my section and usually the only woman in meetings. After that, I ended up in female dominated sections but usually was the only woman when I went to business meetings. You have to grow a thick skin, you have to learn to smile and smooth over situations. You have to learn how to clearly let the other person know their behaviour was inappropriate and unacceptable whilst still being on the side of “professionalism” when you do so. I didn’t always succeed. I was better at it when it came from people other than my bosses.

But my point is, I have a thick skin when it comes to a lot of this kind of stuff – I’ve had to handle it for years in my day job – both sexual harassment and also just plain old sexism. It means, I probably let a lot more stuff slide than others might do and I voice to shut down stuff too.

So all that said, I’ve still found myself pulling away from conventions at home. I no longer really enjoy most of the aspects of conventions. I’m lucky because I have a lot of friends that I enjoy catching up with at cons and I can spend most of my weekend in the bar or out at restaurants deep in conversation with them. I’m also lucky because being a publisher, I can have a dealers table and I can spend the rest of a con weekend at my table. I can still catch up with people, I can still talk about my books, I can still pitch and get pitched projects and I can still check in with my writers to see how they’re going with what they’re working on.

But I’ve long since stopped going to parties for example and I don’t really participate in programming anymore.

I don’t feel comfortable at parties. I’ve been touched and groped inappropriately and without invitation at more than one of them and by people whom I see openly and vocally acting as “allies” and discouraging sexual harassment. I often wonder if they are aware of how they (have) behave(d) or whether they don’t realise it. Are they clueless or with intent? I’ve also been privy to the warnings about members of our community – don’t stand next to that one, make sure you don’t sit too close to him/her, don’t let yourself be alone with them etc. We circulate warnings about people. I do my best to warn those who do not know. I’ve had my own encounter with someone whom I’ve been reluctant to ever really publicly call out. I was drunk. He was not. It was not at a convention. He is known to you. It wasn’t flirting, I don’t think I could have misinterpreted his actions. He was a bit aggressive. I’d spent the evening on the phone texting this guy I liked, in and out of the room to take phonecalls with him. I don’t think I could have been making any invitations for the behaviour that happened. But still, even now, I wonder if I misunderstood what happened. I was drunk, but not that drunk (I’m too much of a control freak to ever be that drunk). I asked others about it later – is this acceptable behaviour among friends? Maybe it was me? Maybe I was too much of a prude? He never ever mentioned it again. And never understood why I avoided interaction with him. He’s not been nice to me since. I don’t think it was my fault. I still feel gross and yucky about it.

It makes me feel like, no matter what I achieve, I can still be reduced to just a sexual object, who can be overpowered and plied with. And maybe that was the intent.

(If this was you, and not me, I’d be encouraging you to call him out, make it known, take back your power! I’d kick and scream and tell you he doesn’t have power over you. I’d have your back and I’d go in and fight for you. I’m aware of the hypocrisy. I write this to illustrate that it has nothing to do with who you are and I understand why people don’t come forward and don’t speak out. If there wasn’t an issue with coming forward, there likely also wouldn’t be an issue to come forward about.)

I don’t go to parties anymore. It’s no fun to spend your evening making sure you’re on the other side of the room as a serial harasser. It’s even less fun when those people seek you out to come and speak to you and the whole time you’re trying to smile sweetly but you’re thinking “please don’t grab my boob, please don’t pull me onto your lap”. I prefer the bar and intellectual discussion and debate. That’s why I go to cons. But I want to be clear, our cons *are not* safe spaces. No matter how many times you say something aloud, that doesn’t make it so. I’ve been touched and grabbed in the act of “friendly hugging” in front of the registration desk or passing someone in the suddenly narrow corridor on my way to a panel.

In the last couple of years, I’ve pulled away from being on programming at conventions too. Programming is an excellent way to network, to promote your work, to make connections and to build your profile. That’s what everyone told me and that’s why, when I was first starting out with Twelfth Planet Press, I wanted to be on programming. And it’s why I continued to say yes to programmers long after it stopped being fun. In my experience, I found them to be highly combative exercises where I had to fight to be able to get a word in edgewise, often not called on or allowed to speak at all, or it was an exercise in belittling the work I was doing and discouraging anyone in the audience who might be remotely thinking any of this gig was fun. I’d walk away from them depressed, despondent, maybe with a sore throat, or bored out of my brain cause I hadn’t brought my knitting for the hour session in which I never got to speak. Having moderators on panels is newish here and for a long time, I’d find myself the only woman on the panel, maybe I didn’t even get a microphone or the one being shared would never be passed down to me on the end. My opinion was rarely sought and rarely valued. I think worse than being spoken over is that polite waiting til you’ve finished and then the rest of the panel carrying on as though you never said anything at all. The last Swancon panel I was on, I actually stopped actively fighting for sound space and waited to see how long it would be before the other person on the panel stopped talking – 30 minutes.

Programming just wasn’t fun. And that’s one of  the reasons we started Galactic Suburbia. Look what happens when you don’t get derailed, belittled or not allowed to speak. Instead of doing programming at conventions, I’ve been paid to give 15 minutes to 1 hour talks and lectures on exactly the same material by universities, schools, writers organisations, other (nonSF) conventions and as a guest speaker at a charity dinner. Instead of doing programming, I’m available for the same discussions in the bar and at my dealers table. But just to reiterate, our spaces are not safe spaces just because we say it so enough times.

I’m writing this post for solidarity. I don’t want to walk by behaviour and accept it as the standard. I want to say that the kind of behaviour being spoken about online at the moment doesn’t just happen at *their* cons, over *there*, by *those* people we don’t know. I’ve found kindred spirits and lifelong friends in the SF community. I’ve been supported, encouraged, nurtured, taught and loved by this community. I’ve been supported through some of my toughest life moments. I’m a better, smarter and more caring person because of this community. I met my husband and I’ve changed my career because of it. I’m finally happy in life, and it’s a lot to do with the friends I’ve made here. I’m me again. But that doesn’t mean that some of these years haven’t been the hardest and most confronting too. It doesn’t mean that everyone is supportive, nurturing and caring. It doesn’t mean that everyone wants the best for everyone else. And as much as we love this community, we need to be sure that the behaviour we walk past really is the standard we want set.

Yesterday, I came home from running errands at about 9am and started following Senator Wendy Davis’ filibuster in the Texas Senate to stop the voting on an abortion bill. I’ve been vaguely following issues relating to new abortion bills being proposed in different US states, mostly via Planned Parenthood and other affiliated groups, through Twitter since the lead up to the US election last year. The increasing power of the conservative, across the globe, both in terms of in government and in the kind of governing they are doing has been concerning for some time. And with similar hanging over our heads here at home, things look grim for women’s rights to do with health access, among other things. Bill SB5 seeks to shut down almost all abortion clinics in Texas by requiring abortions to occur at ambulatories instead. It also seeks to limit abortion-inducing drugs and to ban abortions after 20 weeks.

Going in to watching Senator Davis filibuster, I didn’t really know a lot about the specifics of the bill, SB5. I knew that it had passed the House and had failed in the Senate and this Special Session had been called by Governor Perry (remember him?) to revote on it. I knew that she had to filibuster til midnight, almost 13 hours, to prevent the vote. And that they’d had many sessions in the week leading up, debating elements of the bill. As I tuned in – the Texas Tribune had the session streaming through their website (via Youtube) with a clock ticking down til midnight – and followed on Twitter (the hashtag was #IstandwithWendy), I learned that she couldn’t just talk for those 13 hours, she had to talk on topic. For 13 hours. I tuned in when she’d been speaking for about 9 hours. She looked heroic. She was strong and powerful and engaging as a speaker. For all those hours, she couldn’t stop. Not to eat, not to drink, not to go to the bathroom. And she couldn’t lean against the dais. Many jokes on Twitter referred to The Hunger Games. She’d worn bright pink sneakers for this battle and she stood there talking about the bill.

Immediately, I was captivated – watching a real live female role model launched in full throttle battle. Here was a woman fighting, gallantly, eloquently, passionately, intelligently for all women. (Photo taken from Buzzfeed)

And I learned a lot about the bill itself in listening to her speak – I wished I’d tuned in earlier, in fact. It still floors me that people who clearly know nothing about human biology are so hell bent on legislating in great detail about it. I mean, I guess, it makes sense – the female body is like magic, and we must fear that which we don’t understand. But here is a debate that over the week had seen discussion of Roe V Wade ruled not germane. Not germane to legislation on abortion!!! And a female (!) Senator who actually thought that rape kits performed abortions. When we dumb down politics, and we belittle experts, this is the kind of lawmaking that happens. Other issues with the legislation itself included setting time limits on procedures in relation to the “post-fertilisation date” – which no one, not even doctors can pinpoint. And doctors gave testimony to that fact earlier in the week. What a convenient way of passively moving the dates even more conservatively for procedures so as to make sure you’re in compliance (if you’re not sure, you are going to be more conservative in estimating that date, some women ovulate during their period for example). I gathered from her speech that there was another aspect of the legislation which related to “irreversible physical impairment as a result of pregnancy” – that could be used as a reason for abortion? And that with no other qualifiers to that, Senator Davis asked would incontinence be considered to meet that criteria, for example. She was highlighting that whilst the bill is technical, and in some ways deliberately pushing for limiting abortions (towards eliminating them), they also didn’t really seem to actually understand the full mechanics of conception, pregnancy and childbirth and the full implications of enforcing elements of the bill.

Other elements of the bill put further requirements onto women seeking an abortion. And discussing this aspect of the bill was where it all ramped up. This bill required women to go back to the location of where the procedure was carried out, or where the medication was given, within a set number of hours of the abortion occurring. The Senator raised several issues related to this – that most women actually go back to their GP for that check up rather than the abortion clinic, that it would be hard to know when the abortion occurred if medication like RU486 was taken, and that these ambulatories (which is where all the abortions would now have to be carried out if this bill succeeds) may be far away from where women live. She was discussing the huge burden this places on a woman (as well as expense) in a time of particular stress and placed it in the context of another, related bill that had recently been passed that requires all women seeking abortions to have a sonogram before they can obtain one. Her argument was that this is a lot of requirements to be met, in about a two week timeframe, whilst also considering expense, travel, physical and emotional discomfort etc.

It was at this point that the Republicans called a point of order that this – reference to this other bill – was not germane to the argument. This would be her third warning if upheld. She quickly explained the relevance and then there was deep discussion, off mic, about whether she had breached or not. After some time, the President came back and declared that she had indeed been talking off topic, and that this was her third warning. The gallery cried out, and started chanting “Let her speak” and so did I. (This photo also taken from BuzzFeed shows protestors there to support Senator Davis filling the Capitol Rotunda. The Gallery was also full.)

It’s ridiculous to think these two bills are unrelated and not relevant to each other. As though the requirements to meet them don’t compound. Actually, it’s not ridiculous at all, it was the first example that I watched of this group of men working to use the “rules” to silence a dissenting woman. If we say it’s not germane, then you’ve broken the rules. And we decide what’s germane. Ahhh that old moving the goalposts chestnut.

Several other Democrat Senators were there to help her with her filibuster. They’d been trying to break in earlier to give her a break by asking her if she’d yield to questions, but she refused to yield. (I assume they were friendly questions but I don’t know that – they could have been from Republicans. I did not properly train for this.) Now they stepped up to pick up on the filibuster and try and keep it going – they had about two hours, from memory, to go and I really didn’t think they’d succeed. But gosh it was fascinating. They began asking questions relating to procedural questions – can they appeal decisions but they were also asking if they could appeal the decision of like who could speak first and who could bring points of order and in which order different senators had been speaking. It was a thing of beauty to watch. One senator got the President all tied up in knots as he couldn’t follow the logic of the question and the senator kept re-asking and reexplaining his question for about 10 minutes. In the end, they had to adjourn for another ten minutes whilst I think he drew him a diagram of the question which had to do with which order different senators had asked what. This is important and I’ll get back to it in a minute.

At this point Senator Watson got the floor and spent about 30 or 40 minutes arguing as to whether they should be able to let the floor vote on whether Senator Davis had breached this issue of germaneness. He argued that the previous two points of order had been voted on by the floor and in this case, the President had made a ruling. And he questioned whether this was by the rule book.

In between these two senators essentially filibustering, Senator Van de Putte kept trying to take back the floor. She had originally started this new round of filibustering by asking for an explanation of what the other two points of order had been and what they were in relation to because she had not be in the room when they had occurred. She had been at her father’s funeral. At Her Father’s Funeral. Stop with me for a minute and think about how you would feel on that day. And whether the thing you would feel like doing after a day like that would be to come back to work til midnight. But there she was. And she was also brilliant. When she was allowed to speak, that is. She was one of the senators who had been speaking and there was some contention on who started speaking when, she (and I, cause I’d been watching) maintained she had had the floor and had not yielded it. In the meantime – that 40 minutes of discussion – someone on Twitter had managed to get a message to Senator Van de Putte about the actual rule in the rulebook relating to germaneness – that it was three points of order relating to germaneness, specifically, that ended the filibuster. In Senator Davis’ case, she had two warnings on point of order relating to germaneness and one relating to interference.

(Now, this is really interesting. Another Senator had helped her earlier in the day adjusting her back brace and this was deemed as out of order. In researching to find his name (which I failed to do) I found that in arguing for her not to have a warning in this case, they raised that time that a Republican Senator had been filibustering in that very room and had been surrounded by Senators of both persuasions as he was allowed to change his ASTRONAUT BAG that he was wearing so that he could relieve himself. I mentioned that whole moving of the goalposts thing, yes?)

But Senator Van de Putte was not allowed to even argue this point of whether Senator Davis really had 3 strikes and was out because she kept being shut down by Mr President. There was about 11 minutes left til midnight at this point, and Senator Van de Putte’s frustration at both not being allowed to rightfully hold the floor nor put forward her point led her to this:

That cheering? Yeah that was me at home too. And it is for someone FINALLY saying what those of us watching had been frustrated with – we’d watch men debate for nearly two hours on whether a woman could be allowed to continue to speak. We’d watch a woman trying to also argue for this woman to be allowed to speak and for her, and her alone, to be continually shut down within seconds of speaking compared to men who were allowed to filibuster. And that, ultimately, this filibuster was about letting the women of Texas the freedom to make choices about their own bodies.

The silencing of women couldn’t have been more visually displayed than those three or four hours that I sat there.

And that cheering just kept on going. At first, the people outside the room thought it meant that the bill had been defeated, then they learned that it was about drowning out the President. Later the President said that they’d used “Occupy tactics” to prevent them doing their work. I dunno. It felt very much like people trying to be heard. And frustrated that they were not being given the chance to do so. Or maybe more about not being *listened to*. They tried to clear the gallery but the time expired before the crowd quietened down. Meanwhile, in the remaining minutes – 2 or 3 to midnight – senators were gathering down near the front and then they were calling the roll as the time expired. At first, I thought maybe they were voting on the motion – of whether Senator Davis had breached the issue of germaneness. Or whether they were voting on the appeal of the point of order that had been raised. But after midnight, there was a declaration of an overwhelming majority voting for what sounded like the bill.

And noone knew what was going on. And the mics had been turned off. And there was mayhem. And surely that’s not how laws of government get passed? I remember shouting at about 12:03 – they are voting anyway!!! Nothing can describe the feeling of my stomach dropping to the floor as I stood (in solidarity with Wendy) and watched them conduct the vote ANYWAY. If they were going to change the rules to suit themselves, after making her adhere to them for 13 hours, what did any of it matter? What was the point of the filibuster at all? If she’d not been stopped and had made it all the way to the end, would they also have voted anyway? Were they always going to make the outcome theirs no matter what?

Worse than that, they started to say that the voting had begun before midnight. And they changed the official record on their website to show that had happened. Suddenly there were two versions of the timeline being circulated on the internet – a Before and an After. Did they not know that 200 000 people had watched them conduct that vote after midnight? Did they not realise that people would have had the original timeline open on their desktop?

The camera to the room got cut and we were left to find some guy with an iphone in the crowd outside who was streaming the scene through UStream. We waited for another hour as the Democrats continued to debate the legality of that vote. And eventually it was announced that the bill was dead.

But I’d lost faith. I’d lost faith that this fight – for equality – can be won. I’d watched the men in power blatantly massage the situation to get the outcome they wanted. I’d watched them lie and falsify the proceedings to make it look like it was above board. And I was watching mainstream media start to cover the outcome – that the bill was passed – none of those outlets had been following the proceedings, none of them had seen what had really happened and they’d just gone with the official story from the Senate. The only journalist covering the event was the guy with the phone, and the rest of us watching on Youtube and tweeting to Twitter. I wondered if this is how it happens – the slow apocalypse. I watched as I realised that what we think and feel doesn’t really matter, those guys are going to get the outcome they want. And they are unashamed by that. Why should they be? When you have privilege, you don’t feel bad about not sharing it. It doesn’t ever even occur to you that you should.

But it made me wonder – what do rules really mean? For me, I see many similarities to that whole “tone debate” – where women get told not to shout, not to swear, to speak/debate civilly. To be nice. If we want to be listened to. Well … you know what? Fuck that. You wanna know why we’re angry and why we can’t just speak nicely about how it feels to be silenced, ignored, stripped of our rights? Try watching a woman heroically play by the rules for 13 hours, to speak eloquently, intelligently, informed on the subject matter, get pulled up on imaginary breaches  that don’t actually break the rules that the pedants are pushing, and in fact, have been allowed for others (men) in the same situation,  and then watch the rules change anyway, after she won. So that she loses anyway. And then tell me what playing nice ever gets you. If it’s not a fair playing field, what does playing nice, speaking softly, actually get you? What has it ever got us? It’s yet to get us equal pay, equal rights, equal voice.

In the end, it was conceded that the vote happened after midnight and so the bill was dead. So the Governor has sent the bill back to the Senate for another special session scheduled for July 1. In other words, keep working on it til you give me the right answer. Which begs the question, why bother with the farce of process when the outcome is already decided?

This wasn’t just about an abortion bill in the US state of Texas.

2. That the nature of communication, mostly via social media, has changed the speed of unfolding events at all levels of politics.

News events and scandals travel like an avalanche now, picking up speed (and commentary) across the virtual landscape. A day is now A. Long. Time. in politics. If something happens on a weekend now, you can’t just wait til Monday or when the board/committee can meet to address the issue anymore. In this case, the SFWA President was travelling over the weekend and was physically incapable of addressing the issue as it unfolded. For me, watching it all, it felt like a very long silence before SFWA made an official statement. And it made me feel uncomfortable  – I know how the President feels about sexism, and still, I started to feel a bit unsure about whether, maybe, I wasn’t as sure about their position as I had been. Maybe the organisation had different values? Afterall, I had heard for years how sexist this organisation was.

In reality, I first came across it at about 7.30/8pm Friday night, by the time I got up late on Saturday morning there was an official statement that there would be a taskforce “to look at the Bulletin and to determine how the publication needs to proceed from this point in order to be a valuable and useful part of the SFWA member experience” and yesterday the official statement from the President was made which takes responsibility for what happened and reinforces the value of all members to the organisation. So, a timespan of maybe 60 hours?

Not really a long time, in thinking about the speed that organisations work through processes. Not a long time to gather facts, speak to those involved, assess the situation and develop a way forward. And not a long time when considering the President was travelling, it was a weekend and a volunteer organisation.

But. This is the internet age. I don’t think the pace is going to slow down or people’s expectations for action to be mediated by “what’s reasonable”. The avalanche rolls down the mountain gathering volume and speed. And the shouting into the void gets angrier the longer it goes on unmitigated.

I don’t necessarily think there’s an obvious here. If you speed up your reaction to situations, you are more than likely going to make a mistake, regret things you say or do or suffer the consequences of kneejerk reactions. Everybody, including those who have made mistakes, deserve due process and for decisions to be made that set precedents that are fair and are not in the heat of the moment. So often the second thing you think to say or do is wiser and better than the first. There are countless examples lately of news stations covering unfolding events and reporting false information in their rush to be the first to get the scoop. Some of these can be very damaging. That said, I don’t see things slowing down. I don’t see people moderating their expectations for instant-ness to take that into consideration. I think the five day working week will slide into the past, with expectations of always being available and for people to think and act on their feet. And with that, in the process of learning how to do that, I think we will see more and more events and the PR of them, mismanaged as they unfold.

In this case, I personally think a public statement reinforcing the values of SFWA along with all the other services and work that the organisation does for its membership would have gone a long way to heading off some of the online drama at the pass. This would have placed the issue of the Bulletin, one aspect of the organisation, into more of a context – that it’s not all of what SFWA does, and that opinions expressed in it do not reflect the values of the organisation as a whole.

As an observer, watching from the outside looking in, I am interested to see what the taskforce will produce. But until they do, this story is hard to assess.

So, the SFWA Bulletin thing. I’ve been following it quite closely since it spilled out onto Twitter on Friday night. As it happened right on the heels of a week of the Eddie McGuire racism “gaffe”, I was immediately interested not in the issues themselves (in the SFWA Bulletin case, the Feminism 101 stuff is not really interesting here, the sexism is so awful it almost reads better as a parody but for a truly awesome takedown, Foz Meadows cannot be missed on the issue – “Old Men Yelling at Clouds” btw should become the actual term for this stuff) but in the conversations that do and do not happen around them.

A couple of aspects of the whole situation really interest me:

1. The way people react to negative feedback

I’m not an affiliate member (which is all I can be) of SFWA so I am not a reader of the Bulletin. I have, though, read excerpts from the last several issues and I did see the … I could say controversial, but it’s just ridiculous and offensive and outdated … cover of issue 200. There is some very problematic material published in these issues. And this has occurred over (at least) 3 consecutive issues, so, over the course of the last nine months. On reading all this material on Friday night, I really felt that I would be annoyed if my membership money was being used to pay for it to be published and to represent me, as part of that professional organisation. I wouldn’t want my business to be affiliated with that kind of material – that women should be quiet like Barbie, that lady editors should be remembered not just for how competent they were but also how good looking (in a piece intended to discuss the role of women in the industry) and so on. I protect my brand very carefully, and I thought long and hard about whether I would want it associated in any way with this kind of material. (I do not).  So I understood why some members felt they needed to leave SFWA after their complaints about this material had seemed to be falling on deaf ears (since the offensive material just kept coming). At the same time, I also understand that change happens from within, and that it’s just as important to speak up as a member of an organisation to push for change. So I also understood people who began joining or stated they would remain members.

Ultimately, that people complained, even for a publication that is clearly not respected or widely read (many people claim they put it straight in the bin or skim read it) is important. That they kept complaining when things didn’t seem to improve is also important – it’s so easy to give up when you feel you aren’t being heard or that things aren’t being addressed. That there has been very little material that I have seen online defending the material (I’ve seen two posts on blogs only) might say more about me and where I hang out on the web but also was uplifting to me – that there was so little discussion about whether it was inappropriate and more that because it was inappropriate it needed to be dealt with. In many ways, it felt that at least the conversation at large has moved beyond Feminism 101.

And I say that quite lightly. See Ann Aguirre’s post (or a bunch of other posts by women speaking out and their experiences to show that, no, sexism in SF still alive and well, alas).

Still, the explaining seemed mostly to be at the authors of this material. And this is what interests me – the most current opinion column by Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg was to address complaints about previous offensive material in their column. And, um, this is what they came up with. Yeah. Frankly, it’s so over the line and so over the top offensive that it’s hard to get angry at it. It’s like someone telling you the world is flat. It’s also a good practice at feminist bingo if you like, tracking through all the usual ways to defend themselves and attack the dissenters.

It’s kinda boring.  I mean, a couple of old men, whose work is not really my thing (I’ve only read Resnick, I doubt I’ll feel like getting round to reading Malzberg ever), don’t get that the world has moved on since the 60s. They genuinely do not understand the complaints. This is plainly clear in the piece they have written. They do not get it. And I don’t think they will ever get it. I don’t think explaining it to them, or trying to educate them, is going to get anyone anywhere. I also don’t think that the editor understands the issues at hand either. So for me, the issue is not about addressing them or how they behaved, it’s about deciding whether that kind of material should appear in a professional industry magazine representing (and being paid for) by professional writers. Does this material represent the values of that organisation? If not, it seems obvious to me what should happen. But, that’s process related and takes time.

Meanwhile. I’m totally fascinated by the calls by Resnick and Malzberg that they are being censored and subject to the thought police. It’s such a huge and dramatic, and dare I say it? *emotional* reaction to complaints about being offended by them. I’m completed fascinated by people who claim that our genre is about ideas, and about thinking about the future, (and about how women aren’t capable of either of those things) but who cannot cope with or engage with opposing ideas to their own. SF writers  who are stuck, culturally, in the past. It’s such a complete dichotomy that it deeply intrigues me. Well, and amuses me.

How does someone say with a straight face that their freedom of speech is being denied as what they write is being published, and paid for? Since when did the publishing of what you actually wrote in a publication become censorship? How does actually getting to voice your (offensive) thoughts become being censored by the thought police? Like, how does that actually work. I can’t even type this paragraph without laughing.

But here’s what really gets me annoyed. How does freedom of speech, the concept, mean that it only applies to you? I don’t understand people who think that only they get to express whatever it is that they want to say, and no one else is likewise allowed to express their own freedom of speech by telling you they disagree with you? (bearing in mind that the entire concept of freedom of speech is different in Australia to the US anyhow). I mean, that’s actual thought policing or censorship, isn’t it? And since when did someone telling you they disagree with you become the OMG most horrible thing that ever happened to anyone, anywhere in the world, OMG the sky is falling? If you’re a fan of ideas, which I am, don’t you enjoy the cut and thrust of debating them? Isn’t engaging in alternative views and ideas …. thrilling? Isn’t that the fun? Isn’t that, OMG, the point of writing? Or, the point of writing anything worthwhile of being read, in any case?

I find people who react the way they did in that article boring – intellectually immature and selfish and lacking self reflection as well as respect and empathy for others – but mostly boring. Their column, in response to being asked to address the concerns, was predictable. It’s how we expect Old White Men (their words) to react to such things. Imagine if they had gone another way. Now that would have been cool.

But seriously. We know that this kind of reaction is the desperate attempt to maintain the status quo, the one where they have power, and others do not.  But what gets me is, what would happen, really, to them, and the world as they know it, if they didn’t objectify women in their opinion columns and deliberately differentiate to segregate female professionals in their field? What would happen, really? How does not pointing out that an editor is female affect them? How does it change what presumably incisive and revealing ideas and concepts they have to offer about the world, the SF field and the future? What skin would it be off their nose to not mention how beautiful a particular writer’s wife was, back in 1942? After all, how many of us really care? Why do they?