We have one person saying that women are discriminated against because male authors are more nominated more often for Hugos, and another person saying men are not discriminated against because even though they're told OTW is an organization of and for women, they're not legally prohibited from submitting stories to the archive. Which is it?
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Women *are* people. What's wrong with making a space comfortable for one group of people, and saying "if another group finds it useful, they're welcome too?"
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So it's okay to make the whole world comfortable for men, and if women find it useful, they can use it too? You're in favor of that idea?
I simply don't agree with defining who something is "for" in terms of what kind of chromosomes or organs someone has. Kind of funny, I suppose, in these days of identity politics, but that's how I roll.
When various businesses said that women could only hold menial or dead-end jobs, such as Home Depot in California back in 1994, I didn't agree with it.
When an OTW board members said "The OTW is an organization created to advocate for female-dominated transformative media fandom and its artworks. That is its purpose," I didn't agree with it.
And the only difference I see between them is one of quantity, not quality. Neither one is looking at the
person, only at the chromosomes. They're both judging someone on who they
are, not on what they can do or how well they can do it. Home Depot will now hire women (thanks to getting their asses sued off) and OTW will accept works by men (so long as they remember what OTW's purpose is). I can't see either one being a comfortable thing: knowing you are accepted only grudgingly and it's really
for someone else, someone who differs from you not in their experience or ability but in their chromosomes.
Online, I don't have an identity as a man. I don't have an identity as a woman. I don't have an identity as transgendered. I have an identity as Worldwalker. Why do people keep trying to ignore Worldwalker and figure out who Worldwalker's poster is and what pronoun they should use for me? Do you agree with my ideas? Then you agree with Worldwalker. Do you disagree with my ideas? Then you disagree with Worldwalker. You're not agreeing or disagreeing with what bathroom the person sitting between my keyboard and my chair uses -- you're agreeing or disagreeing with
me. I'm not what anyone expects of whoever I am; I'm Worldwalker. Look at what I say, not what you think I should say based on who I am (and if you're deciding what I'm really saying based on who you
think I am, let me remind you that the possibility exists that you may have guessed wrong).
I've many seen people in many places say that the answer to them being on the bottom is for them to now be on the top (if you don't believe me, consider the public statements of your least-favorite political group). But that's not the answer. Our mothers weren't as dumb as we thought when they told us two wrongs don't make a right. They don't; they just make two wrongs where there was one before. If there is a history of discrimination against women in a given field, the answer is not to codify some different discrimination. The answer is to eliminate discrimination, so that nobody is judged by anything but what really matters: who they are, not
what they are.
That's where I disagree with OTW. This is 2010, almost 2011. Nothing should be for men, or for women, or anyone else. Things should be for
people, and we should be able to say that what happened decades ago -- or days ago -- is in the past, and we're not going to repeat the mistakes of the past going into the future. A just and fair evaluation of the past of fanfic will show who the people involved were. People that matters to will know. But the future should be based, not on men or women, young or old, any religion or none at all, or anything else -- the future should be based on writing. That is, after all, what fanfic is about.
(and I will get some links up when I've had something more closely resembling sleep; my current level of consciousness is bordering on "un-")