{"id":4021,"date":"2013-06-02T17:44:56","date_gmt":"2013-06-03T00:44:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/?p=4021"},"modified":"2013-06-02T17:44:56","modified_gmt":"2013-06-03T00:44:56","slug":"going-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/02\/going-on\/","title":{"rendered":"going on"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not bring a fiction writer – I gave it a go once and have a couple of awfully nice personal rejection letters from high-level editors for efforts – what SFWA does isn’t entirely my bailiwick. But the latest sexist eruption from the old guard has Anna, who is<\/em> a writer, asking – in rather clear terms – what the hell this organisation is for, and why it’s worth her time<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I’ve read excerpts from Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg’s “rebuttal”\/”counter-opinion” piece (courtesy Foz Meadows<\/a>, who posted them), responding to a Jim Hines<\/a> commentary on sexism in the field, and I find myself led back to a place I’ve been before.<\/p>\n

Now, I don’t like making this kind of generalisation, and if it weren’t such a matter of strong self-identification of the group itself, I wouldn’t. But Baby Boomers have always<\/em> been generationally hyper-identified. Until 1978, it was a rallying cry: “don’t trust anybody over 30.” Then they started turning 30, and it became “don’t trust anybody under<\/em> 30,” and they’ve never listened to anyone else since<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Of course, I speak in the general, and there are always exceptions; I even know a couple. But over the broad spectrum, that self-proclaimed generational hyper-self-identification has led them to hearing no one else. Which is why they’ve been having the same damn arguments since Vietnam, and why it’s Team D vs. Team R in politics and why it can be so<\/em> fierce on so<\/em> many levels while still being so utterly<\/em> disconnected from reality on the ground.<\/p>\n

As I’ve said many times, when I was more commonly posting about politics: this will go on until it can’t.<\/p>\n

But now we’re on the leading edge of a change: where they’re going to have to<\/em> deal outside their own. Just a little, just on the fringes. The world is changing out from underneath them, right as they’re starting to think a good bit more about mortality, and they’ve spent the last 30 years being determinedly<\/em> unaware and dismissive of the either possibility.<\/p>\n

And they don’t like it<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This isn’t unique to them. A lot of the War Generation sat out the 60s, then got slapped upside the head by the 70s, tried to get reconnected, and found themselves totally, and I do mean totally, lost. We’ve been seeing these erupt more often, lately – see also this bad-even-for-Fox sexist explosion<\/a> a few days ago – as reality starts to close in.<\/p>\n

It’s going to be kind of awful. And in some ways, if you’re a bad person – like, say, a supervillain – kind of hilarious. But no matter how you choose to react, it’s going to be common<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Because Reality – who is one of the Supervillains of Crime and the Forces of Evil, she’s in the back on the Sketchy Characters<\/i> cover – she may not be the fastest of us. But she is cold, and hard, and she will take you down<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And there is nothing<\/em> you can do to stop that.
\n 
\neta:<\/b> Since most people don’t check comments, Mary Robinette Kowal<\/a> has good commentary on how this kind of thing undoes so much of what SFWA is supposed to be about<\/a>, and Ann Aguirre talks about how this feeds back into conventions and career<\/a> – that second one is pretty hard reading at times, so be warned.
\n <\/p>\n

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This post is part of a series of articles on sexism and racism in geek culture<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not bring a fiction writer – I gave it a go once and have a couple of awfully nice personal rejection letters from high-level editors for efforts – what SFWA does isn’t entirely my bailiwick. But the latest sexist eruption from the old guard has Anna, who is a writer, asking – in rather clear [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-peoples-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4021\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}