Sexism & Feminism in Geekery 9

Apologies for the delay in posting this!  Sometimes I get a little distracted by the world.  Also I'm done pretending that these have to be timely.  This week and in the next installment of Sexism and Feminism in Geekery we will have some older posts that are just too good not to share.  So without further apologizies I bring you the best the web (or my memory) has to offer you in commentary about sexism and feminism in the geek world.  And yes I know I'm leaving out some important happenings but those may make an appearance later.

Women Ruining Science Fiction (Again)

Once again we have reports that girls have invaded the genre of science-fiction and are ruining it by being girls and generally smearing their femininity all over the place. Didn't anyone tell them that science fiction was by men and for men?  (Over here in the patriarchy we don't talk about Mary Shelley and if we do we call her Mark Shelley because it makes us feel better). A lot of writers and readers jumped into this conversation.  Seanan McGuire had a lot to say (including talking about how My Little Ponies is actually fantasy).

Here is a storify of the whole situation that explains everything much better that I have.

The Savior of YA is Man Of Course

YA Flash over on tumblr put on their Ranty Pants about John Green saving the YA genre and it's a beautiful thing. Don't get me wrong I love John Green books.  I always seem to relate to his protagonists and continue to read all this book.  Also to clarify: Nobody is hating on John Green or saying he claims to be the savior of YA because in fact he consistently points out books that he thinks are better than his.  This is more a reaction to the idea that despite the hard work of female authors like J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyers (I bet you never thought you'd see her name mentioned positively here) that some people insist on latching on to the most prominent man in the vicinity of YA and placing the crown on his head.

So to see that someone who knows literature, someone like a collegiate literature/writing professor, is saying that John Green is THE revolutionary who “brought back” the young adult novel? Oh my god that makes me so upset. It discounts all the hard-working and incredible authors who have been writing YA before it was a moneymaker, before it made you “cool.” Of which John Green is a part, to be fair, since his first novel came right before the boom and he is a literary writer, which is not the most lucrative of book markets, typically.

Read the full post in all it's glory here.

The discussion got really interesting after that and here is a post with a lot of different tumblr peeps contributing their thoughts, especially in regards to the sexism involved in ignoring the many female authors that have contributed to the rebirth of YA.

#GuysAreMysterious

I can't even pretend this was recent.  However it was both hilarious and poignant.  Gail Simone and lots of people on twitter started tweeting about the mysteries of writing men (because men think it's SO HARD to write a woman that's an actual human being). It's just one of those epic instances when the internet wins.

To fully appreciate this you need to go look at the compiled post to see all of the responses.