I STAND BY IRENE GALLO (blog post)

[ismnotwasm]

For those unaware of this story, the post provides some background--but hey, what misogyny right? Meanwhile my semi-conservative daughter, who is into hunting and fishing explains to me how award winning female hunters get rape threats because they are award winning female hunters. This shit is everywhere. To me, seeing the massive reactionary defense of misogyny by progressive (and I don't give a good goddam what gender you are) people is even more disturbing

Here are the deets as I see ‘em –

Irene Gallo is the creative director of Tor Books, and associate publisher of Tor.com. She has been a boon to authors and to that publisher. And Tor.com is amazing and lauded for its quality and its bravery of material exactly because she is the type of person who helped foster that environment.

The Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies were the slate-making Hugo-hammer that fell hard like a meteor against this year’s award season. To mix my metaphors, they stormed the beach of the awards they imagined they were being kept from (despite having had nominations in the past), and took a bunch of noisy defecations in the sand in front of people. And, when called upon it — “Hey, you’re shitting up the place,” they only doubled down, as folks of that ilk tend to do.

Irene Gallo made a statement on her personal Facebook page (note those words: “personal Facebook page”) that said the following when asked to explain the Sad/Rabid Puppies phenomenon:

“There are two extreme right-wing to neo-nazi groups, called the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies respectively, that are calling for the end of social justice in science fiction and fantasy. They are unrepentantly racist, sexist and homophobic. A noisy few but they’ve been able to gather some Gamergate folks around them and elect a slate of bad-to-reprehensible works on this year’s Hugo ballot.”

This, of course, made the assholes angry. Because when you call assholes assholes, they tend to flail around and make louder asshole noises — it is the asshole’s natural defense mechanism.

The result was that the publisher of Tor, Tom Doherty, felt the need to pen a public letter of apology to the other spurned authors and readers (translation: the Sad and Rabid Puppies) assuring them that this has been dealt with because Irene Gallo is a naughty, naughty editor (/clucktongue). You can read that message here: “A Message from Tom Doherty.” You should note that someone thought it was a very good idea to leave the comments open (!) and there are now 100+ comments gurgling in that septic system. You can read them if you care to remind yourself what sometimes gets clogged in the pipes below this here Internet.
http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2015/06/09/i-stand-by-irene-gallo/

[mercuryblues]

1. IOW

straight white males are pissed that they are being treated the same way they have treated the "others" over decades and lashing out.

They are being held on equal footing and don't like losing their privilege. So Irene has to go for calling them out on their bigotry.

[ismnotwasm]

2. It's appalling

I follow Lilith Saintcrow on FB--this is where I found this. She's an author who does gritty UF and steampunk. I've always liked her characters and her story lines, turns out she's a straight up feminist as well. She says this isn't the first time Tor protected misogynists and bigots.

[geek tragedy]

3. I find the need to cower before and pander to the extra-chromosome bigots

to be more disturbing than the activism of said extra-chromosome bigots, which is just a given.

[ismnotwasm]

4. I agree

It's very disturbing

[brer cat]

6. Yes, indeed.

It gives the bigots a legitimacy they would not have otherwise had.

[Starry Messenger]

5. I have a feeling some of these groups bleed out to other areas of the internet, if you know what I

mean.