User almost_a_human wants to add you to their contact list. Accept? Ignore. User almost_a_human wants to add you to their contact list. Accept? *sigh* Well, it’s been popping up every day for a month now, I guess I’ll give this person a shot. Maybe it’s someone I know. Or at Read more…
“Men have no standards,” my friend joked recently. His wife said, “Now, what does that say about me, sweetie? If you have no standards…” it had the air of an oft-repeated conversation and I was irritated by the complacent amusement of both the women and men in the room. “No, Read more…
I have always considered myself a feminist, since I first learned the term as a child. (Though, like many people, for years I naively insisted I was “an egalitarian” because of course I was pro equality, not pro-female. I grew out of that. Feminism IS belief in equality. It’s only Read more…
In the Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin inserts a passage, a fictional essay about gender among the Gethens. When I read The Left Hand of Darkness the first time, in a Junior High summer, I was deep in love with it, and when reading this passage in Read more…
I was commenting to a fellow-writer that, in the slush piles I read, lately female main characters outnumber male main characters so much that the males stand out more and might have an unfair advantage because I find them refreshing and different. She lamented that we’ve “gone too far the Read more…
I’ve written before about the bizarre snobbery in genre fiction, where some genres (science fiction) think they are better than others (fantasy). In the SF community this snobbery usually takes the form of, “That trope isn’t plausible. This isn’t SF, it’s fantasy!” (As though a fantasy magazine would buy your Read more…
My first novel, Galactic Hellcats, features a matriarchy. My third novel, The Gods Awoke, takes place entirely within a matriarchy. I’m revising a novel right now that has, well, a matriarchy. Why do I keep returning to this theme? When I was in sixth grade, I had to come up Read more…