I know I shouldn't get this worked up over somebody's stupid AU fanfic, but . . .
( cut for feminist nerdrage )

Okay, so sexist idiots on tumblr (no, I DON’T feel like be charitable to them tonight) are once again asserting that women “don’t want anything to do with science” and “don’t want to go near a science class,” and most of the women who try to major in STEM fields “will drop out without getting a degree,” and that all of this has absolutely nothing ( Read more... )

I am so sick of seeing "omegaverse" or "A/B/O" fic for every single fandom, it's not even funny anymore. There's so much to hate: the complete failure at biology for all time and eternity, the breath-taking level of misogyny built into the very foundations of the world, the insistence on assembling all the worst romance tropes ever and turning ( Read more... )

It has come to my attention that some people on this very internet are misusing the Bechdel-Wallace test to an egregious degree. Specifically, they have been asserting that anything that clears this very low bar is a net good for "female representation in media," even if the thing in question is Oz: The Great and Powerful or A Game of Thrones. ( Read more... )

( Trigger warning for Hugo Schwyzer )

I've started reading Still Forms on Foxfield, a short-by-today's-standards science fiction novel by Joan Slonczewski that published in 1980. I'm posting about it partly because it's just a really interesting book and as a follow-up to my earlier post about how I'd like to see more nerdy feminist discussion about science fiction and fantasy books ( Read more... )

Having just put down yet another urban fantasy in which the main character hates every other woman in the universe, but that's okay because they all turn out to be meeeeeean to her eventually, I think I've finally figured out a decent in-universe explanation for why Sso many UF heroines meet with so much hostility from the rest of the female cast ( Read more... )

I am becoming increasingly dismayed by the amount of cultural space taken up by A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones, especially in what I'll call, for lack of a better term, nerd feminist discourse. This isn't just another "I'm tired of popular thing I don't like" complaint. Wherever I go to read women's thoughts about the fantasy genre or ( Read more... )

Has anyone else heard of Laura Mixon before? I've just started one of her books. I'm not very far along, but I'm enjoying it so far. She wrote a bunch of science fiction novels, at least one of which was well-regarded by the Big Names when it came out. I accidentally started with the sequel to that novel because I didn't know any better, having ( Read more... )

I just realized what certain points of my feminist philosophy that conflict with a lot the shallow pop feminism on the internet have in common with my dissatisfaction with a lot of the escapist reading I try to do only to be thwarted by unpleasant in the world I'm supposed to prefer to this one. I believe that any better world worth building in ( Read more... )