It hurts my brain, but also my heart
I tossed and turned last night. Really I need to switch off on a lot of this stuff. But ... some negative feedback came my way yesterday about Galactic Suburbia. And you know, I get that not everyone is going to agree with me, that other people have different frameworks, perspectives, interests and concerns. That's like the point - it makes up the mosaic that is this society. Yay. But, if you don't like something, noone said you had to read it, listen to it or buy it (hello me! Give up on the final book of Twilight already and move the hell on! You only have 3600 books left in your life to read at faster than current pace!!)
But it seems to me that with some people, we will never win an argument relating to feminism. On the one hand, when we raise an issue of gender disparity in SF, specifically say, we get the - that's just one instance, you can't use that to generalise. We want numbers damnit! And more examples!! This could be an outlier! Ie nope, you're wrong, it's all good here and nothing needs to change. So it seems that the obvious thing to me is to not just leave it for the big obvious instances that push us over the edge but rather to point out all the more subtle ways in which gender disparity exists and how the accumulation of these works towards creating the big obvious instances. If you see how it exists everyday and all around, how can you ignore it?, is my thinking. But then, when you do that, you get accused of beating people over the head about it.
Obviously I can't win with those sorts of people and maybe that needs to be ok, because they are never really going to be ones I would want to get into discussion with over a beer. But it does sort of scream of the worst kind of privilege - the one where you don't notice nor care when the default discussion is always masculine or about men or conducted by men and that you *get* to not notice who wrote what stories because they fit with your default view, ie you are the target audience and that world is constructed by, for and about you. *Of course* you don't notice! There's nothing *for* you *to* notice.
And I know I should let it go. And that person is welcome to just not subscribe - there's a heck of a lot of other things to do out there. And yet, the viewpoint is so infuriating, I did toss and turn all night about it with rage. Cause really, instead of just turning off, this person had to write to us and tell us how better to run our show (ie control and change the core focus and become a different show). That's um, kinda not how it works dude. Or maybe, I hope, won't work in the future?
(This is not about the podcast I was referring to yesterday)
But it seems to me that with some people, we will never win an argument relating to feminism. On the one hand, when we raise an issue of gender disparity in SF, specifically say, we get the - that's just one instance, you can't use that to generalise. We want numbers damnit! And more examples!! This could be an outlier! Ie nope, you're wrong, it's all good here and nothing needs to change. So it seems that the obvious thing to me is to not just leave it for the big obvious instances that push us over the edge but rather to point out all the more subtle ways in which gender disparity exists and how the accumulation of these works towards creating the big obvious instances. If you see how it exists everyday and all around, how can you ignore it?, is my thinking. But then, when you do that, you get accused of beating people over the head about it.
Obviously I can't win with those sorts of people and maybe that needs to be ok, because they are never really going to be ones I would want to get into discussion with over a beer. But it does sort of scream of the worst kind of privilege - the one where you don't notice nor care when the default discussion is always masculine or about men or conducted by men and that you *get* to not notice who wrote what stories because they fit with your default view, ie you are the target audience and that world is constructed by, for and about you. *Of course* you don't notice! There's nothing *for* you *to* notice.
And I know I should let it go. And that person is welcome to just not subscribe - there's a heck of a lot of other things to do out there. And yet, the viewpoint is so infuriating, I did toss and turn all night about it with rage. Cause really, instead of just turning off, this person had to write to us and tell us how better to run our show (ie control and change the core focus and become a different show). That's um, kinda not how it works dude. Or maybe, I hope, won't work in the future?
(This is not about the podcast I was referring to yesterday)