Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Not in the slightest. My point is simply that sexual exploitation is not confined to male authors, or male readers. In addition to the entire romance/erotica genre, which generations of female readers have enjoyed as harmless escapism, within the SF/Fantasy genre we have huge bestsellers such as the "Twilight" series, written by a woman and aimed squarely at satisfying the sexual fantasies of teenage girls. Can you not accept that it's possible to enjoy escapist fantasy without projecting the attitudes portrayed in such books onto the real world? Sex sells. That's a fact which is exploited by both male and female authors.
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A few points:
- I don't think anyone is saying that women authors or readers can't be sexist against men or women. The fact that there are sexist women doesn't mean that sexism by the other gender suddenly becomes okay.
-There is a double-standard between men and women when it comes to depictions of scantily clad people. However, that's a reasonable response to the fact that there has been a long history in the West of treating women as second class people. If I post a picture of a black person picking cotton while being whipped by a white person, I think people may be justified in being more upset by that then if I posted the same picture with the races swapped. There's no point in pretending that these concerns are happening in a history-vacuum.
Again though, this is all a sideshow. SFWA posted a cover that some readers found sexist and complained and then a couple of editors went out of their way to make comments that were clearly sexist. No one is claiming a right to not be offended, but they are claiming a right to complain vocally about something they don't like.