Realms's All-Wimmin Issue
The editor announced it here and there has been considerable discussion on Jim Hines's blog here.
Full disclosure: Doug Cohen is a friend of mine. Realms is also the venue that bought my first (and so far only) published story.
Point 1, regarding Pandering: Holy Crom, people, it's not as if ROF is a venue that comes under fire for not publishing female authors. It's at least 50% female. They don't have the problem that F&SF or Analog do. Accusing them of generally being sexist between the covers is just ignorant.
(Counter)Point 1a: Even Doug acknowledges that this issue grew out of the cover controversy last year, at least tangentially.
Point 1b: There is, however, a difference between "pandering" and "getting an idea and putting it into action."
Point 2, regarding the Theme: a themed issue focusing on Women in Fantasy and calling for "submissions dealing with gender, sexism, and other areas important to feminine speculative literature" is no stupider than an entire freaking long-running, wildly popular convention on the topic.
(Counter)Point 2a: Limiting the issue to just female authors seems arbitrary. Also, Doug needs to learn the difference between "feminine" and "feminist." I think he meant the latter, but he wrote the former. This undercuts the comparison to WisCon.
Point 2b: I will attempt to view the "women only" requirement as part of "celebrating women in the field," but I confess it's hard to when...
Point 3: Over on Jim's blog, in the comments, nihilistic_kid said: I suppose I'd be more interested in it if the guidelines didn't use rhetoric like "girl writers", "feminine speculative fiction", and "ladies, of course", all of which suggest a certain tone-deafness to the very theme they are looking to explore.
(Counter)Point 3a: Yeah, I got no counterpoint to this, because I completely agree with Nick. Doug, what the hell were you thinking, dude?
So, in summary: decent idea, bad execution in the announcement. I suspect a lot of ire could have been avoided simply by writing the announcement better.