Trouble at the Koolaid Point

momgamer wrote:

Malor, have you actually read The Fifth Season?

Because I have. And your sly suggestion that the writer won just because of the contents of her underwear is infuriating.

Sure it wasn't intentional, but let's not define genders by underwear contents.

Malor wrote:

The world I'd like to live in? The one where sometimes women win, and sometimes men win, and nobody much notices or cares. I'd like to focus on the books instead, which we were able to do before the Puppies showed up. Five years ago, the politics and genders of the authors were vague afterthoughts at best, and suddenly they've been thrust to center stage.

I don't follow the Hugos, but were women fairly represented at these awards prior to the Puppies? If sacrificing one year of awards to identity politics is the price of better representation, or even just the price to keep Puppies from trying again, I'm not seeing much to be concerned about here.

Sorry dude, but that doesn't help. Five years ago, the only people who didn't have their politics and gender on stage was the men. Just look into the bullsh*t Ursula K. LeGuin or Louise McMaster Bujold or C. J. Cherryh have put up with over the years.

There never has been some halcyon time when this wasn't a problem. You just didn't have to notice it because the girls weren't even granted a seat at the table.

And that's what's got the puppies all knotted. Like you, they thought something was fair, but it was rigged from the start, down where they weren't looking. People are starting to look, and that upsets their blinkered little notion of equality.

That time, before the Puppies, was a time of ignorance for many. Women were struggling to get recognized regardless of quality of writing. If things have swung a little in the affirmative action way, that's fine because it's a counterbalance to what existed before. In time the issue will fall by the wayside and things will go back to 'normal'.

Major, I get your point and can agree with a lot of it, but complaining that authors shouldn't be allowed to talk about the realities they faced is, frankly, childish. There was never a perfect time, just an ignorant time.

Spoiler:

Call me out if I'm being overly harsh, I'm sick atm and my sensors are all jacked up.

Edit: Whelp, momgamer got to it first.

Malor wrote:

The world I'd like to live in? The one where sometimes women win, and sometimes men win, and nobody much notices or cares. I'd like to focus on the books instead, which we were able to do before the Puppies showed up. Five years ago, the politics and genders of the authors were vague afterthoughts at best, and suddenly they've been thrust to center stage.

Can't get to that world until the puppies are shown they can't win. This is the voting system. As I understand it, the puppies campaign was primarily trying to keep women and minorities off the list of nominees entirely, so I think people can celebrate both that she was on the list of nominees despite the puppy campaigns and that she won by being the best out of the nominees.

Re: Online threats, and taking them seriously:
https://twitter.com/jackdrat/status/...

momgamer wrote:

Sorry dude, but that doesn't help. Five years ago, the only people who didn't have their politics and gender on stage was the men. Just look into the bullsh*t Ursula K. LeGuin or Louise McMaster Bujold or C. J. Cherryh have put up with over the years.

Yup. C. J. Cherryh is actually a pen name. Her real name is Carolyn Cherry.

Her first editor had her change her last name because he thought Cherry sounded like someone who wrote romance novels and she used initials to hide the fact that she was a woman.

OG_slinger wrote:
momgamer wrote:

Sorry dude, but that doesn't help. Five years ago, the only people who didn't have their politics and gender on stage was the men. Just look into the bullsh*t Ursula K. LeGuin or Louise McMaster Bujold or C. J. Cherryh have put up with over the years.

Yup. C. J. Cherryh is actually a pen name. Her real name is Carolyn Cherry.

Her first editor had her change her last name because he thought Cherry sounded like someone who wrote romance novels and she used initials to hide the fact that she was a woman.

J.K. Rowling—boys won't read a book written by a woman. The list goes on and on and on and on and on.

But you know, meritocracy!

Last I checked Liu Cixin's a dude so that kills the puppies -> affirmative action for women hypothesis.
Puppies -> hugo's going to non puppies.

Did Tingle win anything? I want to see Zoe Quinn get up there and give the speech for his award.

Demosthenes wrote:

Did Tingle win anything? I want to see Zoe Quinn get up there and give the speech for his award.

He won best related ribbons:
IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CqPiKlYUEAAT4g3.jpg:large)
IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CqVUVLLUIAAQWeU.jpg:large)
IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CqU_36bUEAAI-T5.jpg:large)

edit: eh, tensions are high right now, this might be taken the wrong way.

Just want to jump in to reiterate the quality of The Fifth Season. I hadn't been a huge fan of Jemison up to this point. Her previous fantasy novels had done some interesting things, and were solid books in their own right, but they didn't really stand out in any way. But the Fifth Season is a huge step forward. It's not only a complex, compelling story about the way human societies work, but also a very pointed metaphor about being black in modern America. And it does the later in a very matter of fact, self-aware way.

I've read every other book on the list other than the Butcher book, and IMO it's far superior to all of them in almost every aspect.

momgamer wrote:

There never has been some halcyon time when this wasn't a problem. You just didn't have to notice it because the girls weren't even granted a seat at the table.

For example, across all the prose fiction categories since the award started publicizing nominees in 1959, only 22% of the Hugo nominees have been women. 2007 had only one woman-written nomination out of 20.

For a few recent years (2011-2013) the ratio bumped around between 50-60%, which roughly matches informal estimates of the gender ratio of authors, and prompted the Puppy panic in 2014.

Gravey wrote:

Yup. C. J. Cherryh is actually a pen name.
J.K. Rowling—boys won't read a book written by a woman. The list goes on and on and on and on and on.

But you know, meritocracy!

Like C.S Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien?

WizKid wrote:

Like C.S Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien?

I'm not sure what your point is? It's pretty well established that female authors often use gender neutral or male pseudonyms in order to improve sales.

Valmorian wrote:
WizKid wrote:

Like C.S Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien?

I'm not sure what your point is? It's pretty well established that female authors often use gender neutral or male pseudonyms in order to improve sales.

My dad avoids books written by women. He claims that he needs some way to narrow down the number of authors out there. I have told him that this is probably the worst possible filter he could find.

Hmm reversal of sexism in writing is possibly Nora Roberts (started as romance novel author) writing under psuedonym J.D Robb (thriller category) and then being revealed and republished as Nora Roberts writing as J.D Robb finally to just Nora Roberts writing thriller novels.

WizKid wrote:
Gravey wrote:

Yup. C. J. Cherryh is actually a pen name.
J.K. Rowling—boys won't read a book written by a woman. The list goes on and on and on and on and on.

But you know, meritocracy!

Like C.S Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien?

More like George Eliot.

Valmorian wrote:
WizKid wrote:

Like C.S Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien?

I'm not sure what your point is? It's pretty well established that female authors often use gender neutral or male pseudonyms in order to improve sales.

My point is that it also seems pretty well established for male authors to use pseudonyms/abbreviations as well.

T.H White
H.G. Wells
R.A Salvatore
C.S. Lewis
J.R.R Lewis

Just to name a few.

WizKid wrote:
Valmorian wrote:
WizKid wrote:

Like C.S Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien?

I'm not sure what your point is? It's pretty well established that female authors often use gender neutral or male pseudonyms in order to improve sales.

My point is that it also seems pretty well established for male authors to use pseudonyms/abbreviations as well.

T.H White
H.G. Wells
R.A Salvatore
C.S. Lewis
J.R.R Lewis

Just to name a few.

And women do it so they'll appear to be men.

WizKid wrote:

My point is that it also seems pretty well established for male authors to use pseudonyms/abbreviations as well.

T.H White
H.G. Wells
R.A Salvatore
C.S. Lewis
J.R.R Lewis

Just to name a few.

I don't think anyone claimed that male authors don't sometimes use pseudonyms or abbreviations, but rather that the reasons behind male and female authors doing this are often very different.

Gravey wrote:

And women do it so they'll appear to be men.

Right. It isn't that the practice of using pseudonyms and abbreviations is something women typically do and men don't; it's that their motivations for doing so are usually different.

Edit: In case this was a response to J.K. Rowling being used as an example: boogle wasn't making an assumption. J.K. Rowling has specially said that she published as J.K. instead of Jo because she didn't think boys would read her books if she didn't. This is also why Harry Potter is male: because Rowling didn't think boys wouldn't read a book about a girl.

Apropos of nothing, this discussion reminded me that I thought Terry Brooks was a women for something like 10 years.

I guess those women were all just lying about their motivations, right? Because men do it too, so.....

Edit: Snark aside, the existence of men using abbreviated names doesn't negate a woman's actual stated experience. The fact that you even look for a counterexample to disprove a woman's experience is frustrating as hell.

WizKid wrote:

My point is that it also seems pretty well established for male authors to use pseudonyms/abbreviations as well.

T.H White
H.G. Wells
R.A Salvatore
C.S. Lewis
J.R.R Lewis

Just to name a few.

Wait... those are all men? Seriously?!

Pile on alert.

Wiz, the tradition goes back a long ways.

My favorite quote:

Upon her return to science fiction she took on her male pen name. Bradley Sheldon later stated in an interview with Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine that ‘a male name seemed like good camouflage. I had the feeling that a man would slip by less observed. I’ve had too many experiences in my life of being the first woman in some damned occupation.’

Andre Norton (Alice Mary Norton), who also wrote under Andrew North and Allen Weston, used male names for greater marketability.

garion333 wrote:

My favorite quote:

Upon her return to science fiction she took on her male pen name. Bradley Sheldon later stated in an interview with Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine that ‘a male name seemed like good camouflage. I had the feeling that a man would slip by less observed. I’ve had too many experiences in my life of being the first woman in some damned occupation.’

That'd be James Tiptree Jr. (aka Dr. Alice Bradley Sheldon), who won a Hugo while most of the SF community assumed she was male.

Both Sheldon and Norton have awards named after them: the Tiptree Award and the Norton Award.

I actually didn't realize that's where the Tiptree award came from. Shows what I know.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
WizKid wrote:
Gravey wrote:

Yup. C. J. Cherryh is actually a pen name.
J.K. Rowling—boys won't read a book written by a woman. The list goes on and on and on and on and on.

But you know, meritocracy!

Like C.S Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien?

More like George Eliot.

Or Curer, Acton, and Ellis Bell, aka Charlotte, Anne, and Emily Bronte.

boogle wrote:

Last I checked Liu Cixin's a dude so that kills the puppies -> affirmative action for women hypothesis.
Puppies -> hugo's going to non puppies.

You forgot about the affirmative action for minorities portion.