So I’m late to the ruckus… I don’t work much on weekends and I had a date night, no kids, no pups, just me and my guy and a hotel and relaxation, something we so needed, and this wasn’t getting in the way.

But I don’t want to not post my thoughts on this.

I’m not a Barbie Doll.

 

Image via Altered Barbie

I never have been, nor will I ever be.

I’m not going to go into the whole back story…

You can read about it here, here, some of the shit that a female SF has to deal with here or Jim Hines lists a bunch of links here.

Suffice it to say, there’s a bunch of sexism going on within SFWA, people are getting tired of it and are speaking up and others don’t like the fact that people are speaking up over something pisses us off.

Crap like this has been going on for a while and seems to be coming to a head within SFWA.

I’m not terribly active in the SF/F community and at times like this, I can’t decide if I’m happy of that or if I regret it.

Had I attended any of these cons where I saw female authors being talked over, being talked down to, being referred to as ‘token’ females…well, I’m…ah, well.  I’ve never been known for keeping my mouth shut and playing nice is a skill I never learned.

I don’t think I would have made a lot of friends, but I’m not necessarily looking to make friends.

I am a member of SFWA, based on the PNR romances I sold. My contribution to the SF/F writing world would be minimal, although I spend an awful lot of dollars…really, writers, a lot of female dollars are spent in your world–more, probably, than you realize.  Maybe you should ponder that and appreciate it.

But back to the writing world, the closest I come to the SF/F world would be my UF series, the Colbana Files.  And yucky-gross, those have sex in them.  Girl cooties and all that.

I’m a reader of SF/F.  I love the SF written by authors like Ann Aguirre and S.L. Viehl.  Hey, those are women. Character-driven stories like the Grimspace series and Stardoc just call to me and I make no bones about it.

I love Myke Cole’s stories and one of my die hard faves? Dave Wolverton’s Serpent Catch.  I’m a mad lover of Star Wars, I adore LOTR.    I’m something of a geek.

I read SF.  I read fantasy.  I love and adore UF.

I haven’t followed as much of this fray as some people and it’s probably a good thing, because my blood pressure can’t handle it.

I hate sexism.  The SF world has sexism in spades…dinosaurs (FYI, using these term doesn’t have anything to do with their chronological age, more to do with their refusal to come out of the stone age) who think it’s okay to ask women to fetch coffee, people who think it’s okay to refer to women on panels at the token female.  There are people who thinks it’s totally A-OK to have chats about women but they don’t focus on the person’s abilities…sexy they were, how hot they are.  Screw their abilities.  They become body parts and sex objects.

And when people object? Forget people listen to those objections… we should act like Barbie…and carry on with quiet dignity.

Um, yeah.  You can shove that up your tailpipe, buddy.

Being a woman very often means you’re going to be insulted, ignored, condescended, treated as insignificant, devalued, viewed as an object, and the list goes on and on and on…we get so blind to the shit that comes our way at times.

Maybe the problem is that we carried on with quiet dignity for too long.

All women want is to be treated as the equal.  That’s not that frickin’ hard.

At least…it shouldn’t be.

FYI, no woman is your fricking Barbie doll or your coffee girl.

I’ll keep my SFWA membership, because I know the asses aren’t the majority, even when it seems that way.

And maybe I’ll even try to figure out where the regional SF/F cons are and start hitting them.  Who knows… maybe what some of these things need are more loudmouths on hand.  It’s possible we’ve been quiet and dignified long enough.

Also, for a good kick, head over to that Altered Barbie link up top.  😉  Some really interesting twists on Barbie…and very few are dignified.