Editor of SFWA Bulletin resigns
 

I don't know is anyone has been following the SFWA Bulletin kerfuffle, but the editor of the Bulletin has resigned effective immediately.

http://www.sfwa.org/2013/06/editor-o...letin-resigns/

Background on the controversy:

http://www.metafilter.com/128715/The...ll-for-respect

Can't say I'm surprised by the resignation.

Hmmm, the link didn't really say she was taking responsible for it, just that she was leaving. She might be falling on her sword, she might just be sick of the squabbling. ;)

Does this cover say it all?

http://www.geekingoutabout.com/wp-co...r_vol_47-1.jpg

Weil, as it's just a statement from the current President, John Scalzi, I'm not surprised. As she was the editor when the columns were published, she was ultimately responsible. So, yes. Falling on her own sword.

Looks like they reprinted a Frazetta painting of Red Sonja. Questionable in these days of women in field plate (as opposed to "breast" plate), but not as bad as some Conan covers I've seen.

If it'd been of Conan, though, everyone would've been demanding brain bleach from seeing a guy in a fur battle thong.

I read Resnick's blog post about this. (Or maybe it was just the one from the author in the UK who reacted to it so strongly...can't remember her name...and made it clear she blamed a good portion of the US as well). His comments seemed ridiculous to me....I hadn't seen anything from the editor specifically, especially nothing that....whiny!

He did point out that a female editor (I think he called her a "lady editor" which people took exception to since it sounds condescending) approved the cover, so I can understand why she might feel she needed to resign.

Do I think that cover is ridiculous? Oh, yeah. Sorry - but you can't say she's a serious warrior woman and then put her in a (chain mail) bikini on the top of a snowy mountain! Maybe if she was in a desert setting that getup could be explained away...maybe.

So yeah, get the folks talking. I just wasn't sure I understood why the editor should resign. She would have done better to use the next (available) magazine to open a dialogue about the issue, rather than just throwing up her hands and saying "I was bad, I quit!"

The only thing in Resnick's rant that I remember being worth considering was that he mentioned that as many romance covers are equally "fantasy-fulfillment" as are the sci-fi covers like the one on this magazine. (Not his words, exactly, but I think that was ultimately what he was trying to say). Believe me, I cringe at many of those covers. If he had said, "well yeah, some of the SFF book covers are pretty amazingly bad" then he would have been on par with a lot of romance readers who think the same about their book covers. We pick up the books despite the covers, not because of them! (And thank god for ebook readers that no one has to see those covers and judge what I'm reading without having a clue about the true content!)

But instead he went on a rant about it's turning into a PC world where men can't be men, yadda yadda.

What's wrong with the cover?

We see this in video games now too.

It's funny, in the past everything was censored out of prudery.

Now things are censored out of political correctness.

Do you really think it's PC for women to say that no true warrior woman would be dressed like that in snowy mountains?

There's a lot of overtly sexy kick-ass women on the covers of Urban Fantasy novels, and while I wonder about some of the contorted poses, at least they're flippin' dressed! Even skin-tight leather would protect them in a fight more than a chain mail bikini.

What's being censored, JeremyR? Are you really objecting to the membership of an private organisation deciding collectively what it will and won't pay for and publish, using its own democratic principles and procedures to do so?

This is not censorship based on political correctness. It's not even censorship.

Malzberg and Resnick are being disrespectful to women and they think it's OK because they are men. How is this censorship due to political correctness?

Then they have the gall to say that those that complained are trying to sensor them and compare them to Stalin and Mao.

Then there is an article saying that Barbie is a roll model for women.

Again, it's not censorship based on political correctness. It's crap based on childish immature men. And I do feel that if you agree with them, then (IMHO) you don't have respect for women.

What nonsense. At least as many fantasy books portray scantily clad men on the cover. Does this illustrate a lack of respect for men?

Like it or not, semi-nude heroic figures (of both men and women) on covers are a staple of the fantasy genre, and have been since at least the 1920s.

It's not the cover that's the real issue, but what was said in the articles.

This.