VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Vox Day Interview (by Nick Meniscus)

Cliche Round Up: SFWA Bulletin Sexism Debate

The Love Wizard greets our photographer

 Long time spool readers (yes they DO exist. Shut up) will recall a post I did on the hapless cliches and general bullshit of the SF-lit blog community. I thought it might be a good (and popular, community-bridging) exercise to go back and check up on the state of the arse. And where better than the latest flame-war, the first casualty of which is almost always the English language.

It all began when the SFWA allowed their member's bulletin to house that golden, model T-ford of all SF fandom cliche: two hairy-belled, sweaty veteran male authors discussing women editors as sexual objects. Legendary rocketship qwertybangers, Mike 'The Love Wizard' Resnick and Barry 'Wingman' Malzberg lent us insight into the industry-as-was:

"Anyone who's seen photos of Bea from the 50s knows she was a knockout as a young woman."

And:

"During its first few years of existence CFG was populated exclusively by men. Then Bea joined. Then the members' wives got a look at Bea in her swimsuit at the 1950 Midwestcon. Then the club's makeup changed to the 50% men and 50% women that has existed ever since."

And:

"Let me tell ya, Mary Shelley was quite the piece of  ass. I was trying to give her some insight into the industry and Malzberg here--you dog!--wanted to give her insight into the industry four times a night! Wasn't to be though. Guess who got all preachy? Yup, H.G. Wells, cock-blocking us again...'

OK, maybe I made that last one up. But I'm not a member of the SFWA and I don't have a copy of the bulletin to hand. I'm told Love Wizard and Wingman refuse to put anything on the net, due to it being filled with 'Darn Lesbian Nosferatu'.

And so it came as a genuine shock to the boys and the SFWA (who tried to balance the piece with a cover of a barbarian woman in a chain-mail bikini) when people chided them for their old-time attitudes. Old hands at the game, they seized this opportunity to unleash the Ur-cliche of all those under critical fire:

 In case of emergency, smash the glass and grab the Stalin analogy. Warning: may contain hyperbole.

                                                                             *


Would a brave and reasoning knight come defend them? Well, until he arrives, Resnick and Malzberg will have to make do with ol' racist, sexist, nineties-fixated, face-like-a-hen's-egg-filled-with-tepid-vomit Vox Day in this, his sober and level-headed post, 'Seriously Fascist Women's Association'.

Day cut and pasted a long list of "the most censorious liberal fascists in the SFWA". Day (who never ceases to inform us he is  'highly intelligent... and can still out-sprint most men 15 years younger') doesn't cosplay all that much. But when he does, he does so as Senator McCarthy.

Eager for the cliche crown, Day finishes off by dropping some Tea Party beats into his general rabies: 

"It shouldn't be long before all criticism of  the Obama administration are banned in the SFWA Forum."

Hell yeah. Have you seen Barrack in a two piece? Bea ain't got shit on him.


A writer pal of Day's (using Morse code from her bunker) adds:  "And they have no memory of the past and want to erase it (Spool note: Say whu-?).  Which is why by keeping alive the memory of SF, Mike and Barry MUST be silenced."

 That's Sarah Hoyt, who later, (and presumably smoking Ayn Rand's ashes through a Prometheus award) has this to say about the critics:  "Maybe they feel inadequate compared to the giant women of the past, who made it big despite working in offices where pinching your secretary’s bottom wasn’t out of line."

Well, in fairness, they were Giant women, Sarah. They were probably more concerned with getting their husbands out of that oven two lost children tricked them into with magic beans.

Here, clearly, is a woman of, er, real nuance when it comes to gender politics:  

"(These people are) the sort of person who thinks “because I have a vagina is a winning argument in every circumstance, instead of just the trump card on an argument with your significant other on who is going to do the dishes."

Or how about some classic pseudolution cliche? "Women don’t like confrontations.  I think this is evolutionary, baked in the cake from when the pregnant female needed the help of the band.  Women are likely to go around, give hints, and try to solve the problem by other means. "

Not only does Hoyt achieve pseudolutionary cliche nirvana here, she does so while suffering a bout of amnesia as to the very character of  the people she was originally criticizing. Maybe, like she said,  Hoyt has no memory of the past and wants to erase it.

More Hoyt wisdom: "You want to compete?  You have a dream of making it in science fiction?  Then shut up and write.  And stop being convinced everyone is making you a victim because you have a vagina."

(On a personal note, this is singularly the best writing advice I've ever received. I've really no excuse now)

A Sarah Hoyt cover. Note the man is being patriotic and thus has no time to pinch your ass. Deal with it, socialist!

                                                                        *

So the boys and their defenders owned all the classic cliche. But their young gun critics delivered in terms of faddish, seasonal banalities.

*headdesk* and 'Teh' (as in 'the') were inevitable. I've long made my peace with that. Death and taxes etc.

Some cliches, though, seem to have mercifully gone extinct. No one, for instance, accused anyone of 'showing his/her/your ass', a chestnut that ran rampant across 2010's #Racefail. More shockingly, 'fail' (used as a noun) only appeared a measly three times, thank Baal.  The curse may be lifting. There was only one elephant in a particularly lonely room, too.

'Douchebaggery' (ie nasty, idiotic behavior), however, had a good run, in line with its current popularity. SL Huang led with: 'They’re the people who made your public face into sexist douchebaggery.' Not literally of course; that would require Resnick and Malzberg squirting cold water into their rectal cavities and firing it out into a rough portrait of, you, the reader, onto a stretched canvas (something Huang noticeably provides no photographic evidence for).

But by far and away the most overused, gawdawful, help-itself-to-your-reading-tolerence's-last-loo-roll, stock phrase was 'Old men yelling at clouds', a homage (or 'rip off') of a Simpsons episode. Reflected humor is a beautiful thing, here allowing critics to pound two chauvinists with a lump of ageism.  

 I bumped into it reeeepeatedly while searching. Oh yes. A Trick Of Light blog is typical of the genre:

 These Old White Men start yelling at clouds and suddenly (SFWA's) work doesn’t seem to count for anything. That’s not right. It’s not right on top of a whole pile of things that aren’t right.

 (readers will soon note there is indeed a pile of something alright, and FOX television want it back)

Angela Highland earned extra points for: "the same sort of cloud-yelling, cane-shaking, rampaging sexists that can’t deal with the notion of girl cooties all over their precious rocketship stories." with its ladling of emergent jejunette ‘girl cooties’ into the mix.

Girlie Jones painted us all a bleak, dystopian future:  “Old Men Yelling at Clouds” btw should become the actual term for this stuff". Clearly a boot in the face of humanity forever. Or maybe that should be an old sock.

Not satisfied with letting this phrases’s once-lighthearted corpse hang from its gallows, Roqoo depot accompanied his blog post, Old Men Yelling At Clouds, with a most amusing ‘meme’, press-ganging a popular photo-meme of Sean Bean in GOT with the popular meme caption ‘______ is/are coming’ (for this one insert ‘lady writers’). The idea being Mike Resnick is a bit like Sean Bean. A sexist Bean. Not Bean the man, Bean the Meme.

No, I think you'll find geeky, overused, continually-borrowed visual humor is coming. As bloody bastard always.

Y'know, It was actually a funny episode...

                                                                      *

Despite the progressives wide platter of faddish arse, I feel one has to come down on the side of the lady-lovin', cognac-sipping forces of sexist regression, who really pulled out all the stops to bring us classic mad men-era broad-analysis swiftly followed by perhaps the most pitiful attempt to duck and hide behind George Orwell's mustache yet known. None of yer modern tat, oh no! This stuff was old when Heinlein and DeCamp were scribbling Rice Burroughs fan fiction. You know that feeling of admiration mixed with pity you'd feel whenever they wheeled WWI veterans up to the cenotaph? Exactly that.

However, individually speaking, hats off to Foz Meadows, who nobly climbed over the hurdle of being morally right to bring us a startling piece of boilerplate, cliche-blistered 'snark' (as the kids call it. Well, by kids I mean 30+ year old people with a Wordpress account. Bloody Wordpress).

In--you guessed it--'Old Men Yelling At Clouds', the author deep-fries her words in that blog bromide people are want to call 'Fisking'. 'Fisking' is when you cut and paste someone else's article (here, Wizard and Wingman's aforementioned gyno-Stalin freak out) and then intersperse it with your own 'snark'.

The upshot? The blogger gets to think they're Jon Stewart. The reader has to amble through stodge. 'Fisking' is a boom industry in Blogland.

The prose is loyal to the hallowed traditions of both 'fisking' and the more frantic end of social justice-minded posts, in which the author asks a series of rhetorical questions. A series of rhetorical questions, understand? You hear me now, Resnick? A hotdamn series of rhetorical questions, the final clause of which is rendered in italics for hardly any reason?  

Nothing wrong with the structure then. Jobsagud'un. Check also: a warning about 'explosive ranting' (Call the bomb squad!), a '*headdesk*', a 'teh womenz', an inappropriate yet increasingly de rigeur rape analogy (other similes are available, viewers!) and another 'old men yelling at clouds', though Meadows nearly scuppers the deal in the same paragraph by flirting with originality.

(A non-cliche-related note, but there's a bit where she says a Resnick story about a true messiah materializing 50 years from now is 'debunking Judaism'. Now I'm no theologian (unless you count those 20 years I spent under the tutelage of Maimonades), but surely he'd be (notionally) debunking Christianity with that one? Am I missing something here? What if I wrote this last question in italics; would that help?)

A worthy winner. But it was neck and neck with many other contenders--both defensive and critical--and, ultimately, it was the taking part that counted. Probably. I'm sending a desk and some bandages to all entrants.


(Update: The curse continues! )

The Write Agenda Allies With Vox Day: Welcome To The Hotel Lowest Common Denominator.

The Write Agenda's Poster Campaign For Theodore Beale/ Vox Day

 You, er, couldn't make it up, as they say. Well, you could, but friends would say you're painting a very bleak picture.

As reported here last October, The Write Agenda are the fake publisher conman community's answer to having their racket strangulated by the information age. Before the internet it was simplicity itself to dazzle some novelist wannabe with a paper-mache 'publishing front' and then siphon them of cash and, in the process, hope. Nowadays, of course, the Rubes and Marks merely have to tinkle your company's name into a qwertyslab to see you're far from kosher. How's a villain s'posed to make a buck, huh?

The answer is to go on the offensive. Create a website full of 'concerned' but oddly faceless writers who attempt (the operative word here) to besmirch efforts like Writer Beware (headed by the wonderful Victoria Strauss); a group of publicly-minded individuals who have done much to depth-charge these wolf-ships of publishing into financial insolubility. To view the Agenda's site is actually oddly life-affirming. For once, it's the bad guys trying to Canute back the tides.

But with this latest move, King Canute has just belly-flopped into the brine. Anyone who visits here regularly or, indeed, keeps up with SF goings on online won't need me to tell them who Theodore Beale, aka 'Vox Day' is:  a mainly self-pubbed fantasy writer and Christian fundamentalist-creationist who believes that working women are more dangerous to society than rape, that they shouldn't vote, that they shouldn't be educated and that the brainless thugs who assaulted an Indian man living in Britain for thirty years will be 'the heroes of tomorrow'.

You'd think the only affection in existence for such a man would be located in the nerve endings of his own penis. BUT... here's The Write Agenda's endorsement of his presidential campaign for the SFWA:

"Theodore Beale is an agent of change, but this is not why we are endorsing him. We’re endorsing him because we have reviewed John Scalzi’s term as President (here, here, here and here) and we know the set of skills that one needs to succeed in the position. Simply put, Theodore Beale has them. He is the right person for the job. He has our vote, and if you are SFWA member, we hope that you will give him your vote as well. Beale is the “warrior scholar”  . . .  give him your vote!"

I'm not so much flabbergasted by The Write Agenda's crass leech-fest (few would be outside of Sesame Street) as reassured by their obvious stupidity. TWA's entire strategy depends upon being and owning the narrative. To be seen to own 'the narrative' requires a public image that's reasonable and balanced (OK, so their website's prose fails that requisite, but still...), something--and tell me if I'm out of line here--that is nigh-impossible when you support a 'warrior scholar' who thinks Hispanics should be expelled from the States and that humanity is very possibly 'divided into various subspecies'. 

At some point TWA dimly sensed this and attempted to defend Beale's racist, misogynist and anti-enlightenment ideals with this lone statement:

"Theodore Beale’s only crimes are that he writes controversial pieces and that he disagrees with John Scalzi. Being controversial is nothing new when it comes to past (or present) SFWA Presidents. Why is it such a big issue now?" 

(The author John Scalzi, you'll recall, is the outgoing Prez of the SFWA and shared enemy of both Vox Day and TWA (Go John!), due to the SFWA's links to Writer Beware)

Damn it, people! Why are you making such a big deal of a rape over work bias? Why a mountain out of a mere violent assault-lauding molehill? Get over yourselves, Puh-leease...

A moral vacuum makes for strange bedfellows it would seem (And I urge you not to compare Vox Day with TWA and fall into the easy pit of 'Well, he's a bigot but at least he's consistent'. He isn't. As this post shows, Day was happy to lick up to Scalzi when it suited his sales and equally happy to turn on his benefactor when that worked better).  The irony is, Vox Day would come down as hard, possibly harder, on the scammers TWA represent. Not from any moral imperative, I hasten to add, simply the fascist's need to be seen attacking a nebulous other whenever their administration begins to look weak before the masses. Which, if Day was ever allowed to rule the roost, would be quite-a-bleeding lot.

Anyway, I tweeted TWA and asked them why they are supporting a vocal white supremacist. I'll keep you posted, though I don't expect an answer. That would be too much like conviction.

WOTF/SFWA update and thoughts.

HMM...

Thought I'd keep you up to date with my attempts to draw whatever attention I can to the alarming allegations of torture that put the 'firewall' between Writers of The Future and Scientology in doubt. (Note- it's worth looking at those last two links- the first as summary, the latter as the lengthier meat of it- if you want to get a handle on what I'm frothing about).

I got a reply from Science Fiction Writers of America President John Scalzi the day after I sent the email. I can't speak about the content of it, due to the fact it isn't an official SFWA response (Poor guy had just woken up, too. No one should ever have to wake up to me), but it's nice to get a reply.
As for the official response... still waiting.

But I'm not surprised, really. The SFWA must tackle a hundred issues a day, and when deciding precedence the amount of public concern is a vital consideration. Frankly, the SF community hasn't aired its reactions in any way resembling how one would expect allegations of human torture to be received.

Odd, considering how SF's Internet presence is willing to display its opinion on, well, just about any bloody thing ever. Indeed, at about the same time one might have expected a tumultuous uproar over the WOTF scandal, fandom was more aflame with the old man-grumble of Chris Priest over the Clarke awards and its inevitable (and equally inconsequential) counter-batteries.

To my knowledge, only DS Moen and Jim C. Hines blogged anything about the WOTF scandal. A few tweets from Nick Mamatas here and there, an Ansible link. Little else.

Why?

PARTY AND LET OTHER'S PAY

Over at SFF Chronicles I posted about the scandal and got a handful of reply posts. They proved very interesting, especially if they are any indication of the grassroots attitude to the matter. Bear in mind we're still talking about cruelty to fellow humans here.

One poster (Probably best if I don't even reprint their online moniker) argued-

Very few large organisations are blemish free. What some cult does to its leaders that fall from grace really does not concern me too much, none of these people are being killed it would seem. 

Some of these people according to the article, still stay in the church after being through their re-education process; which is what it seems to be. So some personal choice is being made here. No-one is forced to join. I accepted leaving has problems but people have and do.

Startling. Let's give this guy the benefit of the doubt and say he thinks Stockholm Syndrome is a Norwegian techno outfit.

Another, however, wrote-

Are we saying the competition is by default "evil", regardless of the positive results new writers gain from it, because it's associated with a group that's done some evil things?

Right. Let's call this one the, er, 'autobahn argument'.

One visitor, thank heavens, wrote in reply to the above-

The punishment sector is involved in the judging of the competition. I do see a problem with that.

There's still sense out there.

EVERY JOURNEY BEGINS WITH A SINGLE STEP ON SOME OTHER'S FACE

People will make all kinds of justifications for doing something they deep-down know to be distasteful. Channel 4's nightly scheduling being a case in point.

I guess it's the ugly side of this aspiring writer gig we're in. To pursue a writing career one needs a formidable ego: the self-assurance of an innate talent (one probably encouraged by teachers from infant school onwards) marching towards a glorious dawn of public recognition. And if a few bodies should lie on the sides of this path? Take a breath and look ahead to that manifest destiny, the one promised by every How-To-Write book.

The reason something like, say, the Racefail controversy can ignite online fandom and the WOTF scandal doesn't is, with Racefail, there is nothing to lose.  Everyone, progressive and reactionary, got to wave their principles around and duly went home with no scars on their writing careers.

But confronting WOTF is an entirely different prospect. Unless you're a hypocrite, you can't enter it anymore whilst other aspiring writers can. Voila:  they've stolen a march off you, because you've crippled yourself on your own ethics. WOTF winners go on to have a hell of a pedigree- why miss out on that?

IN LOS ANGELES, A PLEASURE DOME DECREED...

And what pampering! As a nominee, they measure you up for a tuxedo, fly you to LA, the works. Heck, they even stage your story as an interpretive dance! (That part actually made me submit a tale a year back- My story! As a dance!!!). And that's just the ceremony. There's that writer's retreat in luxuriant climes too, plus the prospect of your story being in print far longer than it would anywhere else. Which author wouldn't desire that for their mindbabies?

Well, not me. A career in writing is pretty much the apex of all my hopes, but I'd throw it aside in a blink if I knew another human was suffering because of it, no matter how distant the connect. Maybe I just don't want it enough.

Mark my words: the David Miscavige incarnation of Scientology will end in ignominy and very probably arrests. Maybe not soon, but one day. Then, the facts--whatever they are--will be naked and unavoidable. On that day, SF Lit's 'sensawunda' will gain an irrevocable patina of greasy disgrace. You think it's bad outsiders think we dress as Klingons and live in Ma's basement? Just wait, guys, just wait... 




(As a side note, it's become clear to me I'm no kind of activist. I emailed the Village Voice articles (plus my blog post) to Dave Langford's wonderful SF site Ansible, only to be told, very politely, that the VV articles were already there (Hijacker: 'Take this plane to Cuba!'. Pilot: 'It's, er, already going to Cuba, sir.'. Hijacker: 'Well... erm... good.'). Note to Spool- Check first!)