WHAT.

Did... did she actually just call someone else out for using gendered language, describe them as whoring and then declare that nobody had the right to tell her that 'whoring' was gendered language? o_O

Did I even see that?

For the love of pastry, fandom, put on some pants.

The Spectre of the Artist's Ass & the Haunted Artwork

My parents gave me Le Mort d'Arthur (or however you spell that. I don't speak French) when I was a teenybopper, and when I had finally given up a third through out of boredom, my Mom told me that she hadn't told me in advance that it was written when Malory was in jail for raping a 14-year old girl because I might not want to read. And then I didn't finish it.

Later I read Ender's Game. After I finished it, I Asked Daddy if there were any sequels; and he told me that there were, but they weren't as good as the original, and not good enough that he had wanted to own them, but if I wanted he could buy them for me. Then he told me that he didn't want to give Orson Scott Card any muneez if he didn't really have to because the dude was a crazy right-wing Republican anti-abortionist homophobic Mormon asshole, with colourful fanlore anecdotes. And I said that I didn't want to read anything else by him. Ever again.

My mother's reports account for why I haven't read Heinlein. (My parents Agree to Disagree about him: my father accedes completely to my mother's estimation of his misogyny, but is able to enjoy the books anyway; my mother doesn't have that luxury. *eerie echoes*)

Something like a year ago, there was a racewank that started in SGA fandom, where people were upset by the treatment of Ronon and Teyla in fanfiction (and canon, but in SGA you can usually count on the fanfic being better-written). During that cycle of meta, I'm pretty sure, was when I saw Will Shetterley, one of my mother's favourite sff writers but one whom I hadn't gotten around to reading yet, expounding the theory that Racism Doesn't Exist, It's All Just Classism.

And anyone who has been following the current wank will have seen his wife, Emma Bull, another of my mom's favourites, come unasked to the defense of Elizabeth Bear by declaring that the "emotional reactions" of fans of colour who are offended by racial tropes in fiction are "invalid" and based on "shallow reading" and that their [incorrectly and unfoundedly] assumed inability to comprehend or speak academispeak indicated an inability to analyse or, indeed, comprehend the text.

In future, I'd like to decree mandatory participation in Consciousness Raisings for all writers whom I might someday like to check out, and who have any future plans to appear on the internet and possibly display their asses.

Because some people might separate the art from the character of the artist, but that's the silliest part of New Criticism in my view. As Sylvia says to her cat in one of my favourite comics, "Memorize their faces. If they should attempt to come to a party of mine, destroy them." In other words, once I've seen your ass, it's kind of hard to forget. Its spectre can be counted upon to haunt our future dealings, and if it was a really unpleasant sight, any enjoyment I might have gotten from them is gonna be tainted.

The GW Bush Era: selected statistics

Extracts from the Harper's Index article A retrospective of the Bush era.

Minimum number of Bush appointees who have regulated industries they used to represent as lobbyists: 98

Years before becoming energy secretary that Spencer Abraham cosponsored a bill to abolish the Department of Energy: 2

Months before September 11, 2001, that Cheney’s Energy Task Force investigated Iraq’s oil resources: 6

Number of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and North African men detained in the U.S. in the eight weeks after 9/11: 1,182

Number of them ever charged with a terrorism-related crime: 0

Number charged with an immigration violation: 762

Chances an American in 2002 believed the government should regulate comedy routines that make light of terrorism: 2 in 5

Percentage of the amendments in the Bill of Rights that are violated by the USA PATRIOT Act, according to the ACLU: 50

Minimum number of laws that Bush signing statements have exempted his administration from following: 1,069

Factor by which an Iraqi in 2006 was more likely to die than in the last year of the Saddam regime: 3.6

Factor by which the cause of death was more likely to be violence: 120

Number of all U.S. war veterans who have been denied Veterans Administration health care since 2003: 452,677

Portion of Bush's presidency he has spent at or en route to vacation spots: 1/3

Number of incidents of torture on prime-time network TV shows from 2002 to 2007: 897

Percentage change since 2000 in U.S. emigration to Canada: +79

Seconds it took a Maryland consultant in 2004 to pick a Diebold voting machine’s lock and remove its memory card: 10

Amount the Justice Department spent in 2001 installing curtains to cover two seminude statues of Justice: $8,650

Number of Republican officials who have been investigated by the Justice Department since 2001: 196

Number of Democratic officials who have been: 890

Percentage of EPA scientists who say they have experienced political interference with their work since 2002: 60

Change since 2001 in the percentage of Americans who believe humans are causing climate change: –4

Portion of the $3.3 billion in federal Hurricane Katrina relief spent by Mississippi that has benefited poor residents: 1/4

Ratio of the entire U.S. federal budget in 1957, adjusted for inflation, to the amount spent so far on the Iraq war: 1:1

Minimum number of nicknames Bush has given to associates during his presidency: 75

Number of associates with the last name Jackson he has dubbed “Action Jackson”: 2

Number of press conferences at which Bush has referred to a question as a “trick”: 14

Number of times he has declared an event or outcome not to be “acceptable”: 149