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[james_davis_nicoll]

The Intercollegiate Review seems very special, as this John C. Wright essay on Heinlein and the scourge of political correctness demonstrates. Note that when Wright says

Orson Scott Card publicly expressed the mildest imaginable opposition to having judges overrule popular votes defining marriage in the traditional way.

he is probaly referring to this essay, in which OSC opines

Because when government is the enemy of marriage, then the people who are actually creating successful marriages have no choice but to change governments, by whatever means is made possible or necessary.

Comments

[ironjeff]

Hey, calling for the violent overthrow of the government certainly seems like "the mildest imaginable opposition" to me!

[azurelunatic]

Fuck the fuck out of all that bullshit.

[fengi.livejournal.com]

I suspect it might be this:

How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.

Totally mild. Non-violent democratic measures are best described as "bring down and destroy my mortal enemy".

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

Heh. Why do I suspect that a leftist referring to the US government as "my mortal enemy" would not be considered to be expressing her/his opposition in the mildest manner possible?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Because blatantly counterfactual historical revisionism revises history *towards* your nonsensical prejudices, not away from it.

(I mean, he's not even trying to pretend that any of the real events actually happened. I can't even tell if he doesn't know and can't be bothered to find out, or if he knows and is deliberately lying because he knows nobody who reads ICR is going to care about anything so temporal as "truth")

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I note that his historical revisionism approaches Matt Harrington levels when he comments on Beale - both in his completely-nonsensical reasoning for expulsion (that has nothing to do with the ACTUAL reasons) and his bizarre claim that Beale isn't openly, proudly racist.

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

The replies I've seen to the last one are that Beale was only responding to Jemisin's equally bad racism against white people, and why aren't people talking about that blah blah blah.

[tandw.livejournal.com]

I don't remember her going after a class of people like that, but I may not have been wearing my Secret Decoder Glasses when I read her remarks.

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

I didn't exactly inquire further, but my guess would be that this is a particularly tinhatted interpretation of Jemisin's WFC (?) speech about not feeling comfortable in fandom as a PoC.

[tandw.livejournal.com]

I suspect somehow that Wright or Beale might feel a tad uncomfortable in a group made up almost entirely of PoC. Would they consider that evidence that they are racist?

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

Nope.

Nope, nope, NOPE!!

[michaelgr.livejournal.com]

These days I find it unbelievable that I once liked a collection of words that John C. Wright put together.

[dsrtao]

I was intrigued by The Golden Age, but it didn't really go anywhere; nothing since then has managed to hold my attention for more than the first few chapters, so I gave up.

Being a nice person (or even a sane one) is not necessarily correlated with writing success; nor is success highly correlated with quality.

[michaelgr.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm sure if I could erase the knowledge of who wrote it, I could still enjoy some of his works. He wrote a sequel of sorts to The Night Lands that was fine and an early short story, Guest Law, that I liked very much. And the Golden Age trilogy had some great bits. But I can't separate his writing from his opinions like that. For me, everything he wrote is now covered with a patina of obnoxiousness. And I bet there are plenty of small things that I missed (or was willing to overlook) reading it the first time that I will be achingly aware of now.

[felila.livejournal.com]

I read a few chapters of Orphans of Chaos. Was mildly intrigued, until I reached the episode in which one of the female characters puts on French maid's uniform, is spanked by a dominant male figure, and LIKES IT. Bleagggh. If such tidbits await me in his novels, I will never never never read them.

Not that I disapprove of BDSM, but when it's a sexist stereotype ... no.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

There are a fair number of women who like being spanked by a dominant male figure, wearing a French maid outfit, or both. With or without being submissive in general life.

[felila.livejournal.com]

Submission I can understand. Spanking I can understand. A French maid's outfit is demode and ridiculous.

Also, in the context of a plot in which she's sneaking about doing something, and is caught and spanked (as I vaguely recall), the incident is icky. Now if she were visiting a dominatrix and had a kink for maid uniforms, that would be more comprehensible. Though the maid's uniform ... sorry, but that's just so 1920s. I would expect a modern submissive to get off on dressing up as Sailor Moon, or something like that :)

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

...wow, really? You think people's kinks stays within narrow fashions like that?

On fetlife there's about 400 people into varieties of "french maid". 23,000 into maid uniforms in general. 27,000 into cosplay. Under 200 listing 'sailor moon'. 317,000 into spanking.

I note you say "visiting a dominatrix." Is that more acceptable than having a male dominant? Hate to break it to you, but the BDSM/kink world is full of "sexist stereotypes." And subversions of the same. And people off at right angles. Pretty much anything you can imagine and then some, really.

Now, I'm not defending the particular scene, which I haven't and will probably never read. I'm not a big fan of porn invading my regular fiction, myself. If she's forced to "discover her inner submission and femininity" or something, that could be pretty squicky. But a woman liking maledom, spanking, and maid service play? That's not even worth an eyebrow raise.

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

For people who give a damn about literature, yes, it's worth an eyebrow raise. Real-world kinks and fetishes and preferences are one thing, the kinds of tropes and stereotypes an author chooses to put in their work is quite another. In writing fiction, there are a limitless amount of choices for an author when conveying a character, idea, plot, etc. To choose something as old-fashioned, tired and Looney Tunes as "French maid who likes to be spanked" says a whole hell of a lot about the author, and absolutely nothing about real-life people who have that as a kink.

[felila.livejournal.com]

I couldn't think of the word for a male dominatrix. I don't see why someone shouldn't engage with someone else or elses of any flavor of gender. I've done BDSM, but in the context of a couple, never as part of a subculture. All I know about the broader context is what I've run into online or in books.

Do you think I'm a narrow-minded person who is squicked by BDSM? I'm not squicked by BDSM per se, in person or in what I read. I quite like Sarah Monette's Doctrine of Labyrinths series. I was upset by that particular scene in Wright's novel, a scene that reeked of male entitlement and leering enjoyment.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

I didn't read the linked essay, but I was pleasantly surprised reading the organisation's front page to discover that they're against torture, even for THOSE people.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Don't you realize that not *actually* beating the crap out of homosexuals is "the mildest imaginable opposition"?

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

It's rather impressive that almost literally everything he says in that essay is a lie, and that the ignorant drool-monsters in the comments don't care that it's a lie, they just want someone semi-famous to say words they agree with.

Also interesting to note that Wright clearly believes someone who has won awards is above reproach; OSC's essays are just fine, per Wright, because he's "award-winning." Puts his little stunt with the ballot into a sharper perspective.

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

"Wright clearly believes someone who has won awards is above reproach"

I wonder if he applies that principle to Yasser Arafat? :)

[redbird]

Or, within sf/fantasy, to Ken MacLeod, Ursula Le Guin, China Miéville, or Chip Delany?

[andrew barton (from livejournal.com)]

It's rather impressive that almost literally everything he says in that essay is a lie, and that the ignorant drool-monsters in the comments don't care that it's a lie, they just want someone semi-famous to say words they agree with.

I was actually somewhat impressed at the speed which they took my comment of "Beale was kicked out of SFWA because he used its Twitter feed to disseminate a racist screed" and read it as "Beale was kicked out of SFWA for being a racist."

But then I guess that's all on me for thinking the sort of people who would agree with Wright would care about something so persnickety as "the truth." It's like the Freep farm team over there.

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

Was that you? I felt like throwing down a rope and telling you to hang on and not lose hope, we'll get you out of there.