Month: May 2016

*Kate is now in the process of becoming an American.  And this is why I’ll borrow beg or hitchhike to go to her swearing in ceremony.  She’s one of us. She won’t take that oath lightly.  And even despite the last 8 years and the present political insanity, she’s CHOOSING us.- SAH*

A Destiny Beyond the Crab Bucket – Kate Paulk

Nature or Nurture, DNA or Culture

 

In a sane world, the answer is “yes”.

 

It’s become self-evident that we do not live in a sane world. We have people trying to simultaneously claim that culture is race (that is, that nature/DNA is all there is) and that humans are endlessly mutable (that nurture/culture is the only factor in what we become). Meanwhile, some of the opponents of said mental midgets are claiming – without apparent irony – that DNA is destiny.

 

No, it’s not. No more than having poor parents is a guarantee of being poor one’s whole life, or that growing up in a slum means never being able to escape it. Unless, of course, you actually do believe that Nature, or DNA, is the whole sum of a person and therefore there is no free will, no ability to rise above one’s nature and become something better.

 

To which I say, bullshit. The evidence is against it. There is no tabula rasa, but there is also no predestined path determined at or before birth. We all, every last bloody one of us, have a choice in how we respond to the shit life dumps on us.

 

To claim that DNA is everything is to insult every person who has chosen to rise above shitty circumstances – to climb out of the crab pot, if one borrows Pratchett’s analogy. All of us have the ability to climb out of the crab pot that is our nature – but not all of us choose to do so.

 

To put it another way – all of us get a bunch of traits, abilities and so forth wired in. Some are more coordinated than others. Some are more intelligent. How we express those traits depends a lot on what our culture – both the local culture in our homes and the broader society we observe as we’re growing up – regards as the proper way. In Australia there’s an extremely strong streak of cutting down the tall poppies, so people with unusual abilities tend to be rather modest about them – yes, even in sports. The tendency is to attribute success to “luck” and misfortune to “not doing it right”.

 

The US cultures I’ve seen since I moved here are somewhat the opposite: success is because one worked for it and did it right, where failure is because you didn’t work or didn’t do things right.

 

Of course there are nuances: you don’t make broad sweeping generalizations without a boatload of exceptions. But the overall trend holds.

 

To claim that because someone belongs to X “victim group”, be it black lesbian unicorns with three legs or whatever they will always be this way is to claim that we are the sum total of our DNA and what happens to us – in short, that we have no free will and our choices are not our own. To reject this view and claim that DNA is destiny is equally short-sighted: DNA is the start. You can have genetic issues out the wazoo and adjust your life so their impact is minimized. You can let them hammer you and wail about your victimosity. Or anything in between.

 

Similarly, the claim that we in the West have to “accept” the atrocities committed by certain parties in the name of their disgusting ideology disguised as a religion is as bigoted as the notion that blacks or arabs (or anyone else, for that matter) are inherently more violent because DNA, and equally disprovable. Ask older American blacks (or check the statistics of the time): in the 1950s despite often blatantly bigoted policy in many parts of this nation, despite widespread poverty, there were a great many thriving black communities, with colleges and schools that – despite far less in the way of resources than their white counterparts – were the equal of many of those white counterparts, and the better of quite a few of them. The young men of those communities did not try to kill each other on a daily basis, nor did they make large swathes of inner cities no-go zones. Their descendants are hardly genetically different, as a group.

 

What has changed is the dominant culture: it’s gone from “beat whitey at his own game” – which ultimately leads to good outcomes for the largest number of people – to “whatever whitey does, do the opposite and call it good” – which does not. Why?

 

The Western culture, particularly the USA variant of it, values the individual independent from his or her ability to contribute to society at large.

 

This shows up in any number of little ways: the US habit of counting every live birth, no matter how premature, as a childbirth even if the baby only takes one breath outside the womb (which, incidentally, does interesting things to the US infant mortality stats as well as to the average expected life span); the notion of the three great inalienable rights – nobody else has this. Nobody. The other major Anglo nations (Canada, Australia, New Zealand) come close, but even they don’t go as far as the USA; the idea that an American – any American – is the equal of anybody else and this is why American Presidents traditionally do not bow to foreign royalty; hell, the arguments over damn near everything that spring up and get carried out loudly and cheerfully in public.

 

Nobody else does this. Every other culture I know about is less concerned about the rights of the individual than the USA. Even Australia, which in many ways comes closest, is more likely to favor the needs of society at large (and small) over the rights of the individual.

 

Thing is, as Sarah has mentioned a few times, when you allow the rights of the individual to take precedence, you get a whole raft of things happening, the majority of which wind up being massively beneficial to society at large and small because the misfits are able to spend more energy being themselves instead of fitting in. Hell, the non-misfits with bright ideas are able to spend more energy being themselves instead of fitting in.

 

It’s a small thing, but over the course of years and millions of people it adds up and you get the USA instead of, oh… Russia. Or China. The average Russian or Chinese person is no less capable than the average American, but both Russian and Chinese culture actively discourage individuality. The State, Mother Russia, whatever… these are more important than any individual Russian or Chinese life.

 

But be warned: America may be more resistant to the culture of conformity, but we’re not in any way immune. Our media and education system have spent decades indoctrinating us with the “society above all” culture and calling it good.

 

It isn’t. The radical American experiment has borne fruit far beyond anyone’s expectations. The poorest American has a standard of living more or less on par with middle-class Europeans (and Australians), and thinks this is normal.

 

Let’s not allow anyone who says race is culture or DNA is destiny to screw that up.

When I was very little mom used to sing a song about standard bearers.  Note the colors were different, since she wasn’t talking about the US.  It went like this, loosely translated:

Soldier in combat
If you see the standard bearer
Fall with the flag in his hands
Pick it up and raise it
A red and green rag
And you hold the country in your hands.

That always gave me chills, even when I was too young to understand the real significance, even when I didn’t know what a standard bearer was, or a war was and only knew the country was something to do with ancestors and dad was very proud of it.

Weirdly, though my allegiance to that country (which was never amazingly strong and was mostly an allegiance to dad who had an allegiance to the country is gone, and my flag is a completely different color, (well, one of them), the feeling remains, and the chill as I hear that song.

I could make a cheap comment about all of us being soldiers in combat in the culture war, but I wont.  Sure, I stuck my neck out and potentially lost the possibility of a normal traditional career.  Sure, someone could come for me eventually.  But those deaths are unlikely to be a death in combat.

It takes a special kind of courage to face death in combat and do it anyway.

And today we honor those who paid the ultimate sacrifice.

*If you weren’t around here yesterday, we’re giving away free stuff and discounted stuff here: Start of Summer Indie Author Sale*

My childhood upbringing included a lot of jokes about Spaniards.  I’m sure they’re the same type of jokes that Frenchmen tell about Englishmen and vice versa, that Germans tell about Frenchmen and vice-versa.

It is one of those funny things that liberals can’t seem to integrate in their war-as-missunderstanding meme. The more two human tribes live close to/know each other, the more they cordially hate each other.  And of course mate.  I mean, there is this whole “Fight, trade and f*ck” that goes with human tribes being near neighbors.  but fight and unkind jokes are definitely always a part of the package.

One of the jokes my mom used to tell — not so much a joke as an allusion to one — was to say “You almost went like the Spaniard’s donkey,” usually when I was very little and she was late feeding me or something.

I don’t know how many times I asked her to explain — my kids for a while would need to have certain things explained every month or every week.  Kids’ memories are funny — but around ten or so the explanation stuck.

It was from a story about a Spaniard who inherited a donkey and who decided to save money by getting it used not to eat.  “And then when it was perfectly fine with not eating, the d*mn donkey died!”

It seems like a stupid joke, and your immediate impulse, even if you were raised in Portugal is to say “oh, come on.  Not even Spaniards.”

But a great part of the trick of a socialist regime is to do exactly that.  To figure out how to get the donkey used to as little as possible without killing it.

Places like Cuba prove you can go pretty damn far into starving the donkey, if you do it in such a way that first it feels threatened from outside or that it’s getting a little more food than before (while the people who didn’t flee consume what the ones who fled left behind.  The Nazis pulled a similar trick, redistributing their victims wealth to others to give a brief appearance of prosperity.)  And then reduce, and reduce and reduce.

The trick is to balance on the knife edge, between starving the donkey and getting it used to not eating.

There are tricks to keep it going.  The USSR invaded/plundered/exploited much of the third world (while calling the US exploiters and imperialists.  It seems this mirror-trick is a specialty of socialists, as well) which kept its people at home from going too far down in lifestyle.  And Cubans for a long time were their mercenaries, their Hessians, in American revolution terms.  So they too had plunder as well as time abroad oppressing other victim– er… beneficiaries of the glorious revolution.  What they did in the abandoned Portuguese colonies in Africa doesn’t bear describing, nor does it need to be.  Remember the mirror.  “Think of the worst racist colonialist power.  That.”

But sooner or later — sooner if your leaders are total asshats — you fall off the knife’s edge.  It always happens.  The question is always “how much socialism can a human society take in before it dies?” and the answer is always “Depends on how slowly you introduce it.”  See Europe for slow slid.  And us for slower one.

Thing is, there is no such thing as a therapeutic dose of socialism.  It’s not even as near-term beneficial as arsenic.

Because the problem with socialism is that it empowers envy.  And envy is the most destructive emotion/force in human society.  Envy makes you incapable of creating, and incapable of cooperating.  You can’t create, because you’re consume with rage at what others created.  And you can’t cooperate, because you’re sure what they have was stolen from you.

Each of us knows his own capabilities, of course.  Well, we do if we’ve not been raised with self-esteem education, though I suspect even those people know it.

So we know what we can do.  Heinlein talked about how “luck is how morons explain the work of genius.”  This is true and isn’t.  A lot of what is called luck is actually hard work and positioning.  And sometimes just insane amounts of hard work.  For instance, all of our friends consider Dan and I too lucky to live.  Actually we fail at most things we try.  We just try harder (like Avis.)

But there is also luck.  J. K. Rowling would never have crossed the Atlantic in book sales pre-Amazon, then in its early days.

Envy makes you look at EVERYTHING other people have and accomplish as luck and therefore as “unfair.”  It also turns it inward, because you know you’re not lucky.  You know how much effort goes into your breaks.  And when you decide you’re not lucky, you stop being able to do and create.

If on top of that you, like Marx, believe the world is a finite pie, it amps up your envy and hate to eleven, because it means those breaks other people are having SHOULD be yours.  You know you’re better than your circumstances.

And the finite pie eventually stretches to everything.  There is an article making the rounds of the net about how reading to your kids gives you an unfair advantage.  I wish it were satire, but I know one of my kids got told by a teacher that he had “a lot of privilege” at a time when we were barely making it to the end of the month in groceries, because he’d told his teacher that we often pinched money from groceries for books.

In fact, the very concept of privilege is a creation of finite pie and envy. I mean, sure, some people have advantages.

Take for instance a child who wishes to write science fiction and fantasy for a living.  Who do you think would have more privilege?  Someone born to a wealthy NYC family who put her through the best schools in the hub of publishing where she could make all the contacts, or a girl born in a village in Portugal, where they don’t speak English, and where the very concept of science fiction is alien.

And yet, both I and that girl from NYC are professional science fiction writers.  Sure, I had to battle a lot harder to get there, but then I wanted it badly enough.

There is no way to make everyone’s circumstances at birth equal.  We’re all born with different IQs and more importantly different drives.  We want different things.  Even if we were all issued robots as parents, some robot would malfunction and create an inequality of circumstances, let alone what people are BORN with.

You can’t make people stop reacting to pretty people better than to ugly ones.  You can’t make smart people as dumb as the dumbest.  Even if you legislate that, people will get around it.

Which bring us to socialism.  You see, socialists are not the children of the Enlightenment or the American revolution.  (Yes, I know there are a bunch of confused people out there.  I’ve read them.  Rolls eyes.)

Yes, they called themselves that, but so what?  Socialists call themselves a lot of things, like a bad Chinese restaurant changing names.

The French Revolution was the bourgeoisie (which is to say a group of people who were the rulers in all but name, overturning and arrogating to themselves the power of those who had it before.)  This is pretty much every socialist revolution ever.

And to get the people on their side, they manipulated them with envy and the idea of zero sum (though not articulated because Alas, Marx hadn’t been born.)

They promised to make people EQUAL.  Not equal before the law, but equal.  This promise can only be fulfilled by a procrustean process of subtraction.  Because the government creates nothing, it only steals and redistributes.

So the French revolution ended in fire and blood fairly quickly.  But post-Marx its descendants perfected the expropriation-redistribution-denial more and more till they can progressively starve a country and its people adapt to each lower level, stop noticing the descent, until they hit bottom, which — looks at Europe — can be along way down.  Particularly when invaders are brought in to support the government on that descent, invaders for whom the new circumstances are an improvement.

Do not be fooled into thinking this isn’t happening with us.  I bet if you tally the last eight years, you can point to a dozen things that you’ve cut back on.  Staycations were always a thing with us, but we’re doing them less often.  Also going out to eat, also my taking classes.  Just a dozen little things aren’t happening, but we’re so rich and they’re so minor we haven’t noticed.

The thing is we are both the donkeys fed on pound cake (another of Mom’s thing “like feeding donkeys on poundcake.”  If she explained that one, I didn’t get it, and the donkey who won’t sit still.

Our socializification started as early as Europe’s.  Look at FDR and Wilson, sometime.  And while we have here and there clawed a little bit back, at the level of government and taxes we’re not markedly different.  (Not when you add in the stuff we pay to city taxes and local taxes.)

The difference is the American… legend.  The whole rags to riches story makes it impossible — unless you’re exquisitely brought up or a government dependent — for us to wholly buy the socialist envy narrative.

Enough of us retain a clear enough head to CREATE that we keep running ahead of the grey wolf of socialism.

The internet, ecommerce, new tech in movies and music and publishing are just part of that.  Without the new tech those fields would be dead as dead already.

But they’re running ahead of the wolf.  Without throwing other people behind.

Of course, if we don’t start winning that race, it will just be a REALLY slow descent.

So, to you, particularly the younger ones, I say: refuse to accept the socialist tyranny of mediocre expectations.  If you want something badly enough you still can do it.  Yes, the promotion of cronies and party apparatchiks is actually legitimately unfair.  But you wouldn’t want to win like that.  You’re better than that.  So, don’t envy them.

Piss off a socialist today.  Go out and create something that makes money.

 

 

At this point I can’t hide it from you.  Yep.  I know.  You have eyes like the eagle and noses like the fox and minds like something that has really big minds, and frankly, I wish you’d get all that integrated because you look really funny.

Yep. I’m sick.  Well, for me the thing is up in the air.  I’m either really, really sick, or I’m suffering one of those “I’ve never seen an auto-immune attack like this.”  I mean, I am suffering immune attack from h*ll.  You can tell by the fact there’s no skin left on my arms, I’m wheezing and I walk like my legs are broken.  (And then only by the power of ibuprofen.)

You can also tell I have lack of oxygen because I can’t concentrate for sh*t, which is a why a week of writing yielded almost nothing. And because I a) forgot to call to reschedule my driver’s lesson despite stickies everywhere reminding me.  Yeah, okay, that could be aversion, but you know what’s not aversion b) forgot to call my dad on his birthday (not that it would have done me any good.  My phone is inexplicably blocking international calls, which must be fixed.) c) forgot my grocery list when we went to the store (not the one on the fridge, the one in my head.  d) keep feeling like I’m mildly doped and very sleepy.

However all of that just got upped to 11 this morning.  AND to complete my joy, Dan is showing the same symptoms.  We close on Tuesday and I WANT to have Darkship Revenge to Baen by then, which will take all my will power, but it’s okay I write better when half-drunk and this is a similar state.  (Yes, Dr. Freud, I do have issues letting go.  No, Dr. Freud, I’m not Elsa, and H*ll, no, Dr. Freud, I don’t want a girlfriend.)

What is going to suffer is Royal Blood which at this point won’t come out till next month, the collections I’ve been working on for both me and the boys, and the short story I promised you to push Through Fire.  Which means Through Fire will suffer too.  Yes, I know, eventually it will come out in paper and Baen will support it and stuff, but right now it’s underperforming even my vamp books.

So if you guys have a little extra love to throw at it, even though it’s not on sale, and even if you don’t normally buy Amazon, please do.  And if you already read it and liked it, please review, particularly if you’re a verified purchaser on Amazon.

And now that Kleines Summer Sale I promised.  Lots of our regulars, and I myself have a bunch of free stuff.

If you want to go to Azounding and increase our hits, go for it:

Start of Summer Indie Author Sale

(Yeah I’m full of requests today.  Deal.)

If not, here are the books, same as in Azounding:

Need something new to read for the long weekend? Looking for a new series to start or want to discover a new author? Check out the following e-books. Of course, the standard disclaimer applies. Always check the price before clicking the purchase button. Some of these books are already on sale and others will go on sale over the next 24 hours.

***

Stardogs

By Dave Freer

On sale for $2.99

The Interstellar Empire of Man was built on the enslavement of the gentle Stardogs, companions and Theta-space transporters of the vanished Denaari Dominion. But the Stardogs that humans found can’t go home to breed, and are slowly dying out.

As the ruthless Empire collapses from its rotten core outward, an Imperial barge is trapped on top of a dying Stardog when an attempted hijacking and assassination go horribly wrong. Trying to save its human cargo, the Stardog flees to the last place anyone expected – the long-lost Denaari motherworld.

Crawling from the crash are the Leaguesmen who control the Stardogs’ pilots by fear and force, and plan to assassinate Princess Shari, the criminal Yak gang, who want to kill everyone and take control of a rare Stardog for their own, and an entourage riddled with plots, poisons, and treason. But Shari and her assassin-bodyguard have plans of their own…

***

Sword And Blood (Vampire Musketeer Book 1)

PRICE REDUCED TO $2.99

By Sarah Hoyt

The France of the Musketeers has changed. Decades ago, someone opened a tomb in Eastern Europe, and from that tomb crawled an ancient horror, who in turn woke others of its kind.
Now Paris is beset by vampires, the countryside barren and abandoned. The Cardinal has become a vampire, the church is banned, the king too cowed to fight.
Until now, the three Musketeers, Athos, Porthos and Aramis have stood as a bulwark against the encroaching evil, their swords defending the innocent and helpless.
But last night, in a blood mass, Athos was turned into a Vampire. And a young vampire orphan has just arrived from Gascony: Monsieur D’Artagnan.
Things are about to get… complicated.

Death of a Musketeer (Musketeers Mysteries Book 1)

FREE AT NOON 5/28

by Sarah Hoyt

When D’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos and Aramis discover the corpse of a beautiful woman who looks like the Queen of France, they vow to see that justice is done. They do not know that their investigation will widen from murder to intrigue to conspiracy, bring them the renewed enmity of Cardinal Richelieu and shake their fate in humanity. Through duels and doubts, they pursue the truth, even when their search brings them to the sphere of King Louis XIII himself and makes them confront secrets best forgotten.

Ill Met By Moonlight (Magical Shakespeare Book 1)

FREE AT NOON 5/28

by Sarah Hoyt

Young Will Shakespeare is a humble school master who arrives home to find his wife and infant daughter, Susannah are missing, kidnapped by the fairies of Arden Woods, the children of Titania and Oberon. His attempts at rescue are interrupted and complicated by a feud over throne of fairyland, between Sylvanus, king regnant, and his younger brother Quicksilver who is both more and less than he seems. Amid treachery, murder, duel and seduction, Shakespeare discovers the enchantment of fairyland, which will always remain with him, for good and ill.

 Witchfinder (Magical Empires Book 1)

ON SALE FOR $2.99

by Sarah Hoyt

In Avalon, where the world runs on magic, the king of Britannia appoints a witchfinder to rescue unfortunates with magical power from lands where magic is a capital crime. Or he did. But after the royal princess was kidnapped from her cradle twenty years ago, all travel to other universes has been forbidden, and the position of witchfinder abolished. Seraphim Ainsling, Duke of Darkwater, son of the last witchfinder, breaks the edict. He can’t simply let people die for lack of rescue. His stubborn compassion will bring him trouble and disgrace, turmoil and danger — and maybe, just maybe, the greatest reward of all.

Wings

by Sarah Hoyt

FREE AT NOON 5/28

From Elizabethan England to the Far Future, discover who really was Shakespeare and why Marlowe was called The Muses Darling. Discover the horrifying secret that Leonardo DaVinci found beneath a cave in his home village. In the far future, find a new way to keep Traveling, Traveling. Use cold sleep to find your love again, and join the (high tech) Magical Legion.
Seventeen short stories from Prometheus Award Winning Author, Sarah A. Hoyt. This edition features an Introduction by Dave Freer and a Bonus Short Story “With Unconfined Wings.”

***

BURNOUT

by Stephanie Osborn

ON SALE FOR 99c

Burnout is a science fiction mystery about a Space Shuttle disaster that turns out to be no accident. As the true scope of the disaster is gradually uncovered by the principal investigators, “Crash” Murphy and Dr. Mike Anders, they find themselves running for their lives, as lovers, friends and coworkers involved in the investigation perish around them. What happened to the Shuttle? Who is responsible and why? Why is the government calling it an accident? Why is someone willing to kill to keep it a secret? And how big is the conspiracy?

***

The Case of the Displaced Detective: The Arrival

by Stephanie Osborn

ON SALE FOR 99 C

Displaced Detective is a science fiction mystery in which brilliant hyperspatial physicist, Dr. Skye Chadwick, discovers there are alternate realities, often populated by those we consider only literary characters. Her pet research, Project: Tesseract, hidden deep under Schriever AFB, finds Continuum 114, where Sherlock Holmes was to have died along with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. Knee-jerking, Skye rescues Holmes, who inadvertently flies through the wormhole to our universe, while his enemy plunges to his death. Unable to go back without causing devastating continuum collapse, Holmes must stay in our world and adapt.

Meanwhile, the Schriever AFB Dept of Security discovers a spy ring working to dig out the details of – and possibly sabotage – Project: Tesseract.

Can Chadwick help Holmes come up to speed in modern investigative techniques in time to stop the spies? Will Holmes be able to thrive in our modern world? Is Chadwick now Holmes’ new “Watson” – or more?

And what happens next?

***

Sherlock Holmes and the Mummy’s Curse

by Stephanie Osborn

ON SALE FOR $ 1.99

Holmes and Watson. Two names linked by mystery and danger from the beginning.

Within the first year of their friendship and while both are young men, Holmes and Watson are still finding their way in the world, with all the troubles that such young men usually have: Financial straits, troubles of the female persuasion, hazings, misunderstandings between friends, and more. Watson’s Afghan wounds are still tender, his health not yet fully recovered, and there can be no consideration of his beginning a new practice as yet. Holmes, in his turn, is still struggling to found the new profession of consulting detective. Not yet truly established in London, let alone with the reputations they will one day possess, they are between cases and at loose ends when Holmes’ old professor of archaeology contacts him.

Professor Willingham Whitesell makes an appeal to Holmes’ unusual skill set and a request. Holmes is to bring Watson to serve as the dig team’s physician and come to Egypt at once to translate hieroglyphics for his prestigious archaeological dig. There in the wilds of the Egyptian desert, plagued by heat, dust, drought and cobras, the team hopes to find the very first Pharaoh. Instead, they find something very different…

Noted Author Stephanie Osborn (Creator of the Displaced Detective series) presents the first book in her Sherlock Holmes, Gentleman Aegis series – Sherlock Holmes and the Mummy’s Curse, the debut volume of Pro Se Productions’ Holmes Apocrypha imprint.

***

Tales from the Uplands

By Alma Boykin

Free!

Uncanny things haunt the high country, where mountains bring justice and men tell mysterious tales. A place where churches seek the lost and deadly forces lurk below the peaks.

Contains eight short stories drawn from locations and legends of Central Europe, including the Drachenberg version of a famous folk-tale, and an excerpt from the next Cat Among Dragons novel.

Four Dragon Tales

By Alma Boykin

New Release!

If dragons walked the earth . . .

From a missing hiker (with really bad taste) in the Appalachians to WYRD and Drako’s Dark Roast all-night show, to a water-expert with a talon-t for trouble, and a search for justice, this quartet of stories explore life in a world where dragons and humans live side-by-side.

Short story set, 15,000 words.

Mischief, murder, mayhem, and music to rock the night away!

***

The Scent of Metal (Argonauts of Space Book 1)

By Sabrina Chase

On Sale for $1.99

The expedition ship Kepler races to Pluto, intent on uncovering the secrets of the alien structure recently discovered under the ice. Computer scientist Lea Santorin can’t wait to figure out the alien technology. Instead, she wakes it up … and it continues its long-interrupted journey across the galaxy, taking Lea and Kepler with it.

Jinxers

By Sabrina Chase

On Sale for $0.99

Young Jin survives on his own in the streets of Thama, using his wits and climbing skills to find food and shelter. On a bitterly cold night, desperate to avoid freezing, he enters the burned wreckage of a long-abandoned warehouse searching for anything of value. Searching despite the danger—for the warehouse once belonged to jinxers, and no one knows how their magic works…or how long it remains. Jin discovers a beautiful crystal sphere in the ashes—and suddenly finds himself transported to the desert world of Darha.

His foreign appearance immediately brands him an outsider, and he must rely on his Darha friends to conceal him from the mysterious rulers of the local fort. But Jin must face the fort’s dangers—for inside may lie the key to his return to Thama…and the key to his own hidden magic powers.

***

Hunted (Hunter’s Moon Book 1)

By Ellie Ferguson

Free!

When Meg Finley’s parents died, the authorities classified it as a double suicide. Alone, hurting and suddenly the object of the clan’s alpha’s desire, her life was a nightmare. He didn’t care that she was grieving any more than he cared that she was only fifteen. So she’d run and she’d been running ever since. But now, years later, her luck’s run out. The alpha’s trackers have found her and they’re under orders to bring her back, no matter what. Without warning, Meg finds herself in a game of cat and mouse with the trackers in a downtown Dallas parking garage. She’s learned a lot over the years but, without help, it might not be enough to escape a fate she knows will be worse than death. What she didn’t expect was that help would come from the local clan leader. But would he turn out to be her savior or something else, something much more dangerous?

***

Take The Star Road (The Maxwell Saga Book 1)

By Peter Grant

On Sale from May 28-30

Nineteen-year-old Steve Maxwell just wants to get his feet on the star road to find a better homeworld. By facing down Lotus Tong thugs, he earns an opportunity to become a spacer apprentice on a merchant spaceship, leaving the corruption and crime of Earth behind. Sure, he needs to prove himself to an older, tight-knit crew, but how bad can it be if he keeps his head down and the decks clean?

He never counted on the interstellar trade routes having their own problems, from local wars to plagues of pirates – and the jade in his luggage is hotter than a neutron star. Steve’s left a world of troubles behind, only to find a galaxy of them ahead…

***

Nocturnal Origins (Nocturnal Lives Book 1)

By Amanda S. Green

Free!

Some things can never be forgotten, no matter how hard you try.

Detective Sergeant Mackenzie Santos knows that bitter lesson all too well. The day she died changed her life and her perception of the world forever.It doesn’t matter that everyone, even her doctors, believe a miracle occurred when she awoke in the hospital morgue. Mac knows better. It hadn’t been a miracle, at least not a holy one. As far as she’s concerned, that’s the day the dogs of Hell came for her.

Investigating one of the most horrendous murders in recent Dallas history, Mac also has to break in a new partner and deal with nosy reporters who follow her every move and who publish confidential details of the investigation without a qualm.

Complicating matters even more, Mac learns the truth about her family and herself, a truth that forces her to deal with the monster within, as well as those on the outside.But none of this matters as much as discovering the identity of the murderer before he can kill again.

***

Ninth Euclid’s Prince

By Daniel M. Hoyt

ON SALE FOR $2.99

Welcome to New Rome!

The far-flung heirs of the empire have been called home to the capital of worlds. In these mean streets, no wife is above suspicion, and no man above assassination. With the Emperor poisoned and prince Oswald in jail, Ninth Euclid, a mathematically gifted secretary from a rural backwater, must solve the knottiest problem of all: How will he keep his liege lord safe from daggers in the back and politically scheming trollops in the night?

***

Cat’s Paw (King of Cats Book 1)

ON SALE FOR $2.99

By Robert A. Hoyt

Many humans know there is a mountain at the end of the universe to which a bird flies every thousand years to sharpen its beak, until the end of the mountain comes, and thus the end of eternity. What few of them know is that of the mountain only a few small grains of sand remain. And the bird that is to end eternity is alive and ready to fly. At half past noon at the end of the universe, the last great hopes of everything that exists, ever existed or has yet to exist, rests with a stray cat with alcohol issues, a Siamese cat with gender issues, and a Persian cat with pregnancy issues. Things are just about to get fun.

Ratskiller (King of Cats)

By Robert A. Hoyt

FREE AT NOON 5/28

… Long before the bird reared its ugly beak, there was beer. And lots of it.

In the humble world of alley cats, Tom has everything he needs: interesting enemies, a long list of girl cats who’d like to scratch his eyes out, and enough beer to make sure his repressed memories and his mysterious destiny stay repressed.

Until Wild Rat microbrewery shuts down.

To restore his favorite beer to its former glory, Tom will have to fight prissy bureaucrats, streetwise alley cats, and Broxton’s most barbaric rats. And behind it all, an evil so great that even Broxton’s most hardened rodents dare not squeak of it.

***

ConVent (The Vampire Con Series Book 1)

By Kate Paulk

ON SALE FOR 99c

A vampire, a werewolf, an undercover angel and his succubus squeeze. Whoever picked this team to save the world wasn’t thinking of sending the very best. But then, since this particular threat to the universe and everything good is being staged in science fiction conventions, amid people in costume, misfits and creative geniuses, any conventional hero would have stood out. Now Jim, the vampire, and his unlikely sidekicks have to beat the clock to find out who’s sacrificing con goers before all hell breaks loose — literally.

ConVent is proof that Kate Paulk’s brain works in wonderfully mysterious ways. A sarcastic vampire, his werewolf best buddy, an undercover angel and his succubus squeeze. The “Save the world” department really messed it up this time.

***

Pixie Noir (Pixie for Hire Book 1)

By Cedar Sanderson

$0.99 from May 27-30

You can’t keep a tough Pixie down…

Lom is a bounty hunter, paid to bring magical creatures of all descriptions back Underhill, to prevent war with humans should they discover the strangers amongst them. Bella is about to find out she’s a real life fairy princess, but all she wants to do is live peacefully in Alaska, where the biggest problems are hungry grizzly bears. He has to bring her in. It’s nothing personal, it’s his job…

Memories of the Abyss

By Cedar Sanderson

Free from May 27-30

Violet is trapped in the prison of her own mind. Her body is dwelling in the insane asylum, but when her friend Walter is killed, she must make a decision to avenge his death, or stay safely locked in her own broken soul. He’d drawn her out of her shell, and she finds she still has honor left… But will anyone believe the crazy woman?

 

 

Destroying our heroes – William Lehman

So now, I’m told http://www.newsarama.com/29456-brevoort-on-captain-america-steve-rogers-1-shocker-we-knew-it-would-be-like-slapping-people-in-the-face.html that Steve Rogers is, and always was, a Nazi. Ya know, in the great circus that is life, such a little thing as this, and compared to a possible war with China, the disaster that this presidential election is, a Submarine nuclear missile capable North Korea, a president that’s selling our country down the unsanitary estuary, the trials and tribulations of my own  life etc. etal. This is really a little thing, should not bother me, but it does.

I quit reading comic books in fourth grade or so (that would have been in the 1970s) so it’s truly only of academic and theoretical interest… But it still pisses me off, and way more than it should.

The thing is this: we (and by we, I mean society and specifically you rat bastard self-designated keepers of society’s values, IE the media) have gone about utterly destroying anything like a good role model, first:

By destroying any dead man’s legacy, if they were the sorts of role models that existed in the era prior to 1970, which could be found.

Then by making sure that everyone knows the failings and falling short of any living man who might step up to be a hero.

Now because that isn’t enough, we’re going to destroy any FICTIONAL character that may be considered a role model!

Then we (again that societal we) will sit around and wring our hands at how the criminal element is so strong, the men are brutes, the women are sluts, drug addiction and crime in the streets etc etc etc.

The author of this particular bit of buggery says: “We knew it would be like slapping people in the face,” confessed Brevoort. “The idea of Captain America means something very primal and very strong to the people of this nation, and they have a very visceral reaction when you get to something like that. You want people to feel and react to your story. So far, so good.”  OK so he admits that he’s trying to piss off his audience…

Now I am aware that there is a certain section of the artistic community that feels that if they’re not offending and shocking their audience, they’re not making “art”.  As an aside, I note that this same set of Avant Guard morons can’t figure out why they aren’t making any money, and write it off to “the fools just can’t understand my work”.   This mind set has however, no place in Comic books for pity’s sake!

I can’t say that I’ll make the coffers of Marvel any smaller by boycotting their work, because as I mentioned, the last time I bought a comic book it was with lawn mowing money.  Still, I think this goes to damn far.

Further I see this as part of a grand conspiracy. Now, hold on, before you tell me my tin foil hat is too tight, I’m not saying that the members of this conspiracy ACTIVELY conspired, each and every one of them, to tear apart the values of the nation.  It’s not that simple.  What I am saying is that the news headquarters for all the major news networks, newspaper conglomerates, publishers, etc (the self-designated arbiters of culture) are clustered in two relatively small areas (I’m talking 40 miles square or so each) and they all know and party with each other.  They all go to the same schools, send their children and protégés to the same schools, and have a “group think”.

We saw our first evidence of that group think back in 1968, when someone that I had admired, and as the child that I was then, believed, told me that the Tet offensive was a horrible defeat, and we had lost Vietnam.  I was raised thinking that Walter Cronkite was “the most honest man on TV”, so when he says we got our butt kicked in ‘Nam, well of course I and my family believed him.  As we know now, that was bullshit.  The Tet was a massive disaster militarily for the NVA, and in fact we never again faced them on the field of battle.  The Tet should have been their Collodion Fields.  It wasn’t, because after we destroyed over half their troops on the field, in exchange for casualties that were damn light in comparison we allowed ourselves to be told we had lost the battle and the war.

It was shortly after that, we started seeing the rise of the “anti-hero” in the media, and on the screen, and we started reading articles about how Audi Murphy was an alcoholic and general dirt-bag, Babe Ruth was an alcoholic womanizing racist, Captain O’Kane and Adm Burke where genocidal, etc…

Oh I’m sure that there’s no one guy sitting back in a room somewhere orchestrating this stuff (though if I had to list a suspect, George Soros leaps immediately to mind) No it’s more of a group think thing, done by conversations at dinner parties, and over drinks.  It’s created by contempt for the masses of this country that live in what these folks dismissively call “fly over country”.

It’s an attempt to “fundamentally change” America (now where have I heard that before?)   And now that they’ve destroyed all the living and dead heroes that they can, they’re going after those that exist only in our imaginations, because in spite of everything they’ve done to date, there are still those that cling to their values of honesty, loyalty, patriotism, liberty etc… and these things are anathema to the left.

There seems to be this idea that if we can just get the kids early enough, we’ll have achieved our goal of making the nation over in our image.  So suddenly we get dark and brooding superman, who wonders if saving the nation and the whole “Truth, Liberty and the American way” thing is right after all.  And we get THIS SHIT, a Captain America who’s secretly a Hydra agent. (of course all of his story to date would indicate that he’s the WORST secret agent in history, as he’s foiled more plots by Hydra, and stopped more global domination schemes by them than Michael Moore has eaten cheeseburgers)  I say ENOUGH.  These clods have not only declared a social-political war for the heart of America, they’ve decided to use my children and grandchildren as pawns in the fight.

Folks it’s time to fight back.  Fight with your wallet, fight with your stories and tales of heroism and bravery, and if it comes to it, fight with that fourth box we really don’t want to break open.

 

So, the short story will get done, promise, sometime tonight or tomorrow.  I wasted — not quite, but — all of yesterday trying to break into instapundit.  Not that they locked me out on purpose, mind.  They just changed systems and the fact my computer hates me did the rest.  I’m back in, now, but it took some doing.

Anyway, so that leaves me behind on Revenge (a dish best served edited) and with the story still unwritten — though I know it’s about Simon — and with Royal blood to finish, and…

Which brings me to this:

“…writing is antisocial. It’s solitary as masturbation. Disturb a writer when he is in the throes of creation and he is likely to turn and bite right to the bone…and not even know that he’s doing it. As writer’s wives and husbands often learn to their horror.
And – attend me carefully, Gwen! – there is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized. Or even cured. In a household with more than one person, of which one is a writer, the only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room, where he can endure the acute stages in private, and where food can be poked in at him with a stick. Because if you disturb the patient at such times, he may break into tears or become violent. Or he may not hear you at all…and if you shake him, he bites.”

Robert A. Heinlein
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

The thing is, mark my words, that Mr. Heinlein never thought of the truly horrible scenario: a household with three writers, or, let us admit, even though he’s not consented to publishing anything yet, four.

It gets very weird.  Not only because there seems to be some commonality to the mind, like there is someone pouring inspiration in buckets and it hits us all at the same time — must the be reason that both Robert and I ended up with characters named Tom who have to sacrifice themselves to escape in the same week — but also sometimes it feels like all these worlds are crowded in the house and you can feel your relatives’ worlds elbow-jostling yours.

Actually that feeling that other minds are too close is one of the most prevalent writers’ characteristics.  Friends who complain their office is too close to the neighbors’ house just make me feel like I’m not so crazy.  The best writing space I’ve ever had stood a floor and a half above all the neighbors.

People — and by people I mean other writers, at conventions — are always stunned that Dan and I can write in the same hotel room during our writing weekends.  Brother, it’s a relief.  It’s just two minds, and we’re fully concentrating on writing.  Except for some very pleasant interludes, we don’t SEE each other.

So, if you’re blessed or cursed with a writer (or more) in the household, here are some tips:

1- If they’re wandering around with this vague and lost look in their eyes?  Stay out of their way.  they’ll walk into you, and then they’ll argue.

2- DO NOT allow them to trap you into an argument.  It’s a ploy to avoid dealing with the story in their heads.

3- If they’re at the kitchen table clutching their heads and mumbling “I hate you so much” it’s not about you.

4- If they tell you they’re broken and will never write again, pat them on the shoulder and give them a soothing beverage.  DO NOT under any circumstances get into an argument over it.  See point 2.

5- If they come to you with a bright and shiny new idea that means they should give up the current work and start a new one, demur.  It COULD be the best idea since Lord of the Rings met Starship Troopers, but if you encourage them they’ll never finish the current one.  Or the new shiny one, either.

6- If they try to argue on 5, remember two, and shove a cat in their lap, then wander off on some REALLY URGENT ERRAND.  Make one up if you have to.

7- If your writer is between projects, watch your mouth.  Robert A. Hoyt’s Ninja Nun came from my mispronouncing Ninja Run.  Yeah.

8- If your writer has decided to give up writing, and what they do as a distraction is clean, let them.  You know damn well he’s going to start another ten projects and the place won’t get cleaned again for two years.  Let them clean for about two weeks, at which point they should be attempting to vacuum the cats and mop the children.  Then drop a few story ideas across their path.

9 – Make sure they eat, drink and shower SOMETIME.  You might not be able to manage all of these every day, but put in some effort.

10- If they just finished a book or a series, let them talk about the characters until they talk themselves out of the people/setting, so they can start a new one.  This is the time for long walks in the park.  DO NOT let them near bonfires, though.  Before anyone sees the manuscript, the temptation to burn it is high.  And burning thumb drivers or computers will get you in trouble with the EPA.  (Making copies of your writer’s product while he’s in the post novel sleep is also a great idea.  Then let him destroy how many copies he wants, until he goes “What have I done?  If only!” Then present him with the printed, copyedited manuscript and a copy of it electronic.  He’ll be fine.  Until the next novel.

I’m actually hoping to put up a short story to support Through Fire, which is now available in ebook only on Amazon.  But I’ll be honest and it might be tomorrow, as I’m trying to finish Darkship Revenge before the packing to move recommences.

So, for now, there’s this, if you’re inclined to buy and read.  And by the by the by there will be story.

I will first confess, mea culpa, that I’m always doubtful when I see headlines that say “Collapse Imminent.”  I’ve seen them every other week since I have lived in the US.  I’ve come to the conclusion that anticipating collapse is an American past time. Perhaps because we are aware of how much we have, and how well we live.  Perhaps it’s a sense of “this can’t go on.”

On the other hand nations do collapse, and I lived through a controlled, slow collapse where the statistics looked much worse than the real world facts. (Except for the violence, which looked much much worse on the street than was reported.)

The thing is none of these nations in collapse ever publishes this sort of thing.  Oh, maybe in very small and very regional press, but not naturally.  It’s rather whispered from person to person, and you just sort of kind of end up hoarding dollars, or gold, or something.

What I mean to say is that we have a VERY different culture and way of looking at things from countries who have collapsed in the past, which makes things hard to gauge.

BTW for those who think that genetics are the be all, end all of a country’s success, I’ll point out that Brazil has an awful lot of Britishers, Germans and Italians… maybe not the same proportion as the US, but enough to play with.  However, their culture is like others that came from Rome, and that means it is bound by internal rules and beliefs that make it perpetually the country of the future.  (That never comes.)  I’m sure a great part of what we’re seeing in Venezuela is also Latin culture in play.

However, I’ll admit our own country is giving me chills.  There’s a lot of ruin in a country, but we’re afflicted with a political class determined to ruin us.  Somehow we stopped hanging traitors and started electing them to political office instead.  I don’t think that’s an improvement.

Mind you, I still think that our collapse will be slow…  Which is why I have hope.

My hope is in the ways America is great, which is not the ways our government thinks we’re great.  It’s that we are a nation with a high proportion of Odds, and our culture still gives enough leeway to the “different” that we can try and do new and unexpected things.

I will grant you the new tech is only halfway through replacing the old.  As we’ve found to our own chagrin this election cycle, traditional media still holds a lot of sway.

But it no longer has it all its own way.  In the same way traditional publishers still hold a lot of sway, but Indie is coming up nicely.  And let me tell you guys, without fracking and the price oil wars we’d al be increasingly worse off.

I’m sure — not being an expert I can’t be specific — there are many other industries on the verge of this type of change.

You could say — runs — we’re the change we’ve been waiting for.  And it’s not what our elites expected.  Not at all.

They thought they had us bound and gagged for deliver to our foes.  I’m not going to lie to you and say things won’t get worse, but as long as it’s not sudden, we can fight the rising tide.

Participate in, promote and create disruptive industries.  We’re the underfunded rebels against an overarching and feckless establishment.  The only way we win is by hitting them where they don’t expect: in the tech and in the economy.

Put your shoulders to it and push.  The American people isn’t finished.  The American political class needs to be.

 

 

Pia Glenn of xoJane again attempts to Explain feminism- Julie Pascal

Pia Glenn of xoJane again attempts to Explain feminism.  (I know it’s “again” because this is the second most important thing that feminists do.)

A bit ago actress Maisie Williams of “Game of Thrones” innocently announced the plain truth, the elephant in the room, the evidence before her own eyes, and the shock of it all is still being felt.

“And then someone explained [feminism] to me.  And I remember thinking, “Isn’t that just like everyone?” And then I realized everyone is not a feminist, unfortunately. But I also feel like we should stop calling feminists “feminists” and just start calling people who aren’t feminist “sexist” – and then everyone else is just a human. You are either a normal person or a sexist.”

Because what Miss Williams got was the “Explanation”.  I’ve gotten it before.  So have you.  Feminism is about equality for everyone, it’s pretty simple the Explanation goes, women are equal to men and deserve to be treated the same.  And Miss Williams is entirely correct in her complete obvious honesty… “Isn’t that just like everyone?”  Why yes, it is.  It’s exactly “like everyone” except for a few people who actually and truly are sexists.

Well, Pia Glenn simply won’t have it.

“…Women who have lived longer lives and suffered seriously due to sexism might be less likely to find beauty in her blitheness, of course, and she does go on to say, “Because it works the other way, as well. A lot of men have it hard too,” which is an unfortunate follow-up that reveals her not fully embracing the idea of sexism as a systemic ill that actually doesn’t work the same way in reverse.”

Because women, that’s all of us BTW, who have lived longer, who understand, know that the unfairness in women’s lives is entirely different from the unfairness that men experience.  Feminism isn’t about equality and not being sexist, it’s about a “systemic ill” that only flows in one direction, ever.

So, because explaining what feminism is never works very well but results in logical and clearheaded young women getting it ALL WRONG, Pia Glenn is now going to explain what feminism is *not*.

Feminism is not a buzzword.  

It’s DEEP.

“Feminism is a movement that is vital to societal progress, not the latest headline or hot topic.”

Turns out that young ladies tend to say foolish unhelpful things when they are cornered by reporters and Pia would like reporters to ask older women and men questions about feminism.  Yes, I think that would work out about the same as you do.

(By the way, “ladies” is Pia’s word choice, not mine, so we can safely assume that “ladies” is no longer an inherently sexist term.  Good to know.  I’m sure certain people involved in a SFWA brouhaha a couple of years ago will soon be issuing apologies.)

Feminism is not determined by your career.

I honest to dawg have never heard a single person claim it was.  I will say this… some people are professional feminists.  They spend their time policing the expressions of young women who foolishly think that feminism is the opposite of sexism rather than a systemic ill that men can never experience.

Feminism is not a 100% lovey-dovey sorority pact.

Pia explains, “My feminism is such that I want gender equality and specifically to support women, but I’ll tell another woman she done fucked up if that’s what went down, and I expect the same.”

Pia, you done fucked up.  I realize you believe that’s impossible, and you do go on to explain that you’re talking about trivial stuff like making mistakes at work because women are “new” to many careers and don’t have experience which “hasn’t been doled out evenly”, which is sort of… interesting, because we all enter the world naked and hungry and we all arrive at our first job completely and entirely unexperienced.

But patriarchal logic aside, we should understand the rules of fighting: “I can read you to filth without attacking physical appearance, like history so often has with women, or using gendered/coded insults.”   Because, again, history never does this to men… right, I forgot, systemic and only in one direction.  Well, what about this then?  The choice of insult is irrelevant to the validity of an argument.  If you insult in non-gendered, non-appearance attacking ways, you’re still issuing insults.  You haven’t achieved some get out of jail free card because you yourself made a rule about proper and improper insults and then followed them.   Insults have a rhetorical purpose and it’s not a nice one.  They attack the person, no matter you never mentioned gender or appearance, and serve the purpose of allowing you to just skip the part where you ever have to prove your point.  If my purpose is to insult someone rather than prove my point, a gendered insult is as good as any other.

Feminism is not about your appearance.

Of course not.   I’m pretty sure it’s actually about concocting pure fiction and then being really mad about it.  (See the next point.)

Feminism is not automatically pro-abortion.

“Ultra-conservatives like to paint ugly pictures of so-called feminazis sneaking into the bedrooms of pregnant women at night and forcing abortions upon them. We know this is bullshit,…”

Yes, so do we.

Just as we know that “feminists” like to paint ugly pictures of so-called pro-lifers impregnating women against their will, locking them up, and making them carry to term.  Apparently feminists make up both versions of this story, the one where ultra-conservatives lie about an abortion squad sneaking into your house and forcing an abortion on you, and also the lie about women being made to have babies against their wills.

No one thinks that a woman shouldn’t have a choice.  As Maisie said, “Isn’t that like everyone?”  Yes, it is.   So is belief in bodily autonomy.  That’s like… everyone.

Since no one wants to force any woman to reproduce if she does not want to reproduce the question comes down to when in the reproductive process those choices are made and how that bodily autonomy is exercised.

If you’re anti-abortion you believe that women are fully capable adult humans able to make informed choices before becoming pregnant and you think that the unborn are entitled to bodily autonomy as well.   If you’re pro-abortion you feel that women are not able, or at least ought not to be expected to make their reproductive choices until they darned well get around to it because it’s just not that important as the fetus is just cells.  Shockingly there are people in the world of both opinions who can be in profound disagreement with each other without hatred.

In any case, the answer was yes, feminism is automatically pro-abortion.

Feminism is not against men.

“Again, we’ve all seen and heard the “scary” propaganda. But there is a space to address the difference between misandry as a playful pushback against misogyny that we know can’t have the societal gravitas of historic woman-hating, but can still be used to express fully justified frustrations, and… straight-up hating men.”

I think the term for that is “word salad.”   I’m tempted to just leave it with her own amazing eloquence explaining why hating men with “fully justified” reasons is different from just straight up hating men.   And it really doesn’t matter how hateful the man-hating is because it “can’t have the societal gravitas of historic woman-hating“.  In other words, and trying not to commit word salad myself… it’s not hate when women do it.

And so we arrive at Project Consent… good people Pia usually admires, undoubtedly feminists themselves, but they made a mistake.   They said that “rape is not a feminist issue”.    Except that it is.

“… feminists certainly know that male victims of rape absolutely matter as well, while fighting the highly gendered scourge of rape overall.”

Male victims matter, yes they do, but rape itself is gendered.   Apparently like sexism and hard times and lots of other things, while it can happen to men, it’s really all about women.  And forgetting that fact for a moment requires apologies and some groveling.  No one can just assume good will and intentions.  That would be silly talk, right there.  Time to throw about some non-gendered insults because they done fucked up, no?

Which brings us to the first most important thing that feminists do – they make people on their own side issue apologies for doing feminism wrong.

Feminism is not in need of backlash.

I just have to quote most of it because it’s amazing.

“Ultra-conservative ladies of social media, you can keep your signs about why you “don’t need feminism.” You’re operating on behalf of the enemy, and the devil needs no more advocates. (…) …what we don’t need are the women who seem to think they’re doing something revolutionary by loudly declaring that they choose to be subservient to their husbands or they prefer to assume a “lesser” role in the home.”  (emphasis in original.. remember it for later).

(…)  “They’re unable or afraid to assert that work done in the home, including child-rearing, is valuable beyond belief and they should be prized as contributing members of society. They might have been made to feel inferior or somehow inadequate for choosing a path that looks from the outside like what feminism seeks to combat, and, unaware or not in command of their agency, they think they’ll take up arms for those they perceive to be on their side.”

Eventually all feminists will reach this point.  What you’ve just observed is a writer who feels superior for not using gendered insults explaining to you that women don’t know their own minds, they don’t know who is on their side, and they aren’t “in command of their agency.”

Men used to do this.  Pat you on the head.  Say “little lady”.  All in a “oh, isn’t that cute, it talks!” sort of way.   Now feminists do it.

“We are on your side. Feminism is on your side. It bears repeating that choosing to be a devoted wife, mother, or female partner of any kind who works to maintain a home for yourself and your partner/family because you want to does not exclude you from feminism or make you the enemy.

Doing so because you feel that’s “a woman’s place?” Well, that kind of does.”

She honestly can’t keep her story straight.   If I support my spouse and family “because I want to” that’s really okay?

Do I get to “choose” to be submissive?  Am I allowed to “prefer” to assume a role that is supportive of my husband’s fully capable adulthood and agency?  If I explain that it’s far too easy for women to transfer all of the feminine management and authority over their home and children into “bossing” their husband and therefore they ought to make a concerted and thoughtful effort not to do so, if I explain that would that make me the enemy?

Feminism is not a quality pickup line.

Considering how many male “feminists” are shit lords (Bill Clinton, cough, cough), it must work or they wouldn’t do it.

Feminism is not an insult.

Well, since you already said that gendered insults were off limits.

“This goes back to the narrow minds who spread hateful propaganda and are ignorant, willfully or otherwise, of what the word means. To the fools who spew “oh she’s one of those feminists” as though it’s a negative thing, I’m sorry that you’re so lost, but you’re damn right I am.”

Feminism can be used as an insult because of the feminists.

Women proclaim themselves not to be feminist because of the feminists.

Women who get the Explanation and are amazed because “isn’t that everyone?” can’t escape the fact that there are others, there are “those feminists” out there.  The neurotic hysterics who think that even when men are raped it’s about women, that men can’t be oppressed, that it’s okay to be hateful toward men because, even if you wanted it to, your hatred of men would lack historical gravitas, who believe that women who point out the foolishness of these positions lack agency and self-awareness, and that women are too ignorant to understand and control their reproduction at the source.

There are the Marxists and the man-haters and the “PIV is rape” nut-jobs.   There’s that never ending foolishness about the Patriarchy.  There’s the slut walks followed by outrage over fantasy armor and video games.  There’s giant pink vagina costumes and demands to be taken seriously.  There are the language police, the tone police, and whoever it is who issues the lists of words that are sexist this week.

It’s the double standards.  It’s the fact that feminism can bring the hammer down on Project Consent for failing to present rape as a gendered issue but they can’t be bothered to bring the hammer down on “all PIV is rape”.

Pointing this out is not hateful propaganda.  It’s not being confused in our poor weak female brains about what the word means.

And really, if we want to talk about delusions – there is no “gendered” insult or insult to a woman’s looks that is more offensive than the insult of suggesting that those women who disagree with “feminism” are lacking agency or understanding about their own lives.   People know what feminism is.  They know what it is not.  And feminism has earned every last insult.

Feminism is not going anywhere.

And we come to the last reason that people hate feminism.

“It’s not a trend. It’s vital to progress, and if you’re not with us, you’re against us. What Maisie said.”

Stealing the voice of women.  

Maisie didn’t say “if you’re not with feminism as imagined by xoJane, you’re against us.”  You don’t get to steal her voice.  She said that feminism as it was explained to her already described everyone except for sexists, and that it also applied to some of the hardships that men face, and that we should just have “normal people” and “sexists” and not have feminism at all.  She was clearly not using the xoJane definition of feminism.

What else she might say now, older, and with better understanding of just how much trouble she could be in for using a word wrong or suggesting that men have troubles too, I couldn’t say and neither could you.

 

The first time I heard the Heinlein dictum about not handicapping your children by making their life too easy, I was still technically a child myself.  Technically, because I was around fourteen I think.  I didn’t know how easy I’d had it, relative to the world at large (who does?) but I knew I had it better than my parents, who only didn’t have to walk up hill barefoot in the snow because it rarely snows in Portugal.

So I was mildly resentful of the idea that it was bad for kids to have it too easy.  I no longer am, and in that way of aging children and their parents (though Heinlein could only count as a mental parent) I’ve come to think the old man had a good point.

Look, I had it much easier than most people in the generation previous to mine.  Too easy?  That’s relative.  The family was never wealthy enough that I could have whatever I wanted at the drop of a hat with no worry about how much it cost.  In fact, my incentive to tutor a lot in college was that I could pay for my own books and also for additional language courses on the side.  So I was conscious of financial limits, and not so sheltered that I didn’t get in my share of physical danger and fights.  (Though I wonder if my parents were aware of those, having grown up in different times.  Well, mom was aware of what use I put my umbrella to, hence buying me the weaponized umbrella, but I wonder if she had any clue how often those were deployed against real weapons.  My brother seemed to have a little more clue than the parents, as he told them if I didn’t learn to keep my mouth shut, I’d end up disappeared or dead.  I didn’t.  I don’t know if the old man (RAH) was right again and it’s easier to be a live lion, or if I got lucky.  Who knows?  The fact that I invented “fight like a cornered cat” before it was hip probably didn’t hurt.)

However, life has its way of giving you challenges neither you nor your parents could have anticipated.  For instance, I will not claim to have been an indifferent student, because none of you would believe it.  I was usually at or near the top of my class (and if only near, I was working my tail off to be top.)  I was/am one of those people “born with something to prove” and quite capable of being unconscionably hard on myself to make up for natural deficiencies.

And natural deficiencies I did have, as I found out when I started going up against others in intellectual arenas.

I am not going to talk about IQs, because IQs are…. slippery, particularly above a certain level.  I’m simply going to say by the end of elementary school, most of us know exactly where we stand in relation to those we’ve encountered.

I had a good enough reasoning and could do things like reconstruct/invent methods of solving mathematical problems, if I’d forgotten formulas.  I had words at my command with almost lightening ability, compared to my classmates.  I could reason through philosophical principals and, due to a defect in character, find flaws in the best constructed arguments.  My memory was good enough for either words in context, or for numbers given a place I could reel them off from (I used to know all the history of the renaissance in relation to Leonardo DaVinci’s birth date.) My reasoning was useless for anything spacial.  I couldn’t — quite literally — think myself out of a paperbag.  It was non-existent for visual puzzles.  (Let me touch the pieces, though…)   And my memory was NOTHING for random syllables, arbitrary words, and unconnected/not logical strings.

Because G-d has a sense of humor, I was pushed — through a chain of circumstance and events — into humanities in 9th grade (which is when you make the choice in Portugal.) In the humanities, you were pretty much consigned to teaching, UNLESS you studied languages.  I could easily have taken philosophy.  Baffle them with bullsh*t has been a strong point since I learned to speak.  But at the time, for reasons known only to Bob, I was convinced I’d hate teaching.  (Actually I was wrong and right.  I do love teaching in itself, almost as much as writing.  I purely hate the bureaucracy and in Portugal it was/probably is worse than here.) So I took languages.

What do languages offer?  Ah, yes, the endless opportunity to memorize endless strings of what is to a foreigner arbitrary syllables.

Part of the reason I loved English from the first is that the verbs are MUCH simpler, and there was less arbitrary bullsh*t to memorize.  There is also a certain internal logic to English which I couldn’t explain because it’s a back-brain thing, but once I had acquired a basic vocabulary, I could start reading in English, which gave me the “roots” of things and made it easier to learn English by making the strings of syllables less nonsense.

German, because it’s both arbitrary as to genders, declines everything including nouns, and is more strict as to structure was my least favorite and more easily lost language.  (Also our teacher tried to teach us by translating nothing, which fell into my competency black-hole.)

That said, I will note I was still among the top of my class for languages, which included German.  I managed it by packing in an inhumane amount of work around my busy social life.  I must have worked four to five times as hard as my colleagues who were GIFTED in languages.  (I’ve seen gifted in languages.  My brother is.  I’m not.)

At the end of it, I spoke five languages with enough fluency that on my first-to-stay flight into the US I found myself the hub of translation going through customs.

I’ve lost most of that fluency in acquiring near-native fluency in English.  (Well, it seems close to native to me, but I might be wrong.  OTOH English is the language I think in and have for thirty years.)  Because English is what I needed to make it in a fiction writing career, where I had neither acquaintances nor help and perhaps not a natural talent for.  Perhaps not?  Who knows?  Some people seem to me to be natural storytellers, but then what I do with characters might seem all supernatural to them.  WHO KNOWS?  I’m not in their heads.

Anyway, the purpose of this post is not to brag, and I’ll admit readily most of what I’ve done is not through natural talent or intelligence, but through hard hardheadedness, refusal to give up and the sort of determination other people put to more useful ends, like trying to cure cancer or map the brain.

I was thinking about this while contemplating my sons’ generation.  These kids are screwed five ways from Monday, and there will be another post on this later on.

BUT the way in which they’re screwed worse is that they were raised with “self-esteem” teaching.  Okay, not my kids.  I was the horrible mother who would look at the proffered childish drawing and go “You can do better.”  Now I wasn’t stupid, and I knew what they were capable of at any given age, but if it was something they knew they hadn’t put any effort into, I knew it too, and could call them on it.

Many people and most of their classmates’ mothers were shocked by this.  Didn’t I know I was destroying their self-esteem and their chances at success?

Well, no.  I was giving them an honest opinion.

I suspect they resented it as much as I did my parents’ honest opinions, but then when Marsh first showed me his art, when Robert first showed me his writing, and I said “this is good” they knew I wasn’t fooling, and that my opinion was something they could build on.  (Marsh’s writing is very good too.  Think Bradbury with better plotting.  Someday I’ll convince him to publish it.  Right now the perfectionist doesn’t consider anything ready to let go.)

But most of their generation PARTICULARLY THE GIRLS are coddled and protected within an inch of their lives and treated as prodigies.  And don’t argue with me on the girl thing.  If you don’t have kids in school — particularly sons — you don’t know how skewed it is.  Most of the work is geared to “a woman’s way of learning”, things are demanded at appropriate ages FOR GIRLS who develop faster than boys (for instance to deliver work on time with no demands.  Teen boys can’t do that till about 16, but it’s demanded at 11.  If your male middle schooler is floundering, you know why.  Add to that that most teachers are women, and women of a certain generation, who feel they are “sticking it to the patriarchy” by “encouraging” girls more and what you have is a recipe for disaster, particularly for girls.

Let’s right now admit men and women are different, with different capacities.  If I ever persuade my brain-researcher friend to give you a post on how hormones influence brain development, we’ll have a biological base to build on.  But still, statistically across all the various cultures of the world, men and women are different in raw capabilities.  Men prefer spacial and mathematical reasoning (well, abstract, where mathematical is iffy) and enjoy danger more.  Women are linguistically inclined and able to multitask or work in an “Interrupted environment” better.

Now these are all statistical capabilities, which applied to real life mean very little, and applied to real humans are not predictive.  I mean, you’d expect to see more male engineers and more female linguists — and you do — but it means nothing as to whether your own very special male or female apple blossom should be one or the other.

Remember where I said above that NATURALLY I suck at languages (other than native) but I did get to the top of my class in them.  In a different leg of pants of time I’m a damn good mechanical engineer which is what I WANTED to be.  I was always pretty good at assembling machines (well, mostly disassembling them and streamlining them, ie. ending up with spare parts, but never mind.)  It would have taken a lot of work because of my tendency to transpose digits and I might do things by either feeling the parts or cutting them out of cardboard so I could feel them (how I do carpentry) but it COULD be managed.

I’ve known women engineers and women mathematicians who beat out even gifted men.

I’ll add here that I don’t understand the NEED of the cognoscenti in our society to fight natural inclination and make male nurses and female engineers. It seems to me they’re working out some bur under their own psychological saddle, so to speak, by playing with the lives of others.

On the other hand if women want to be engineers and are willing to work hard enough they should stand the same chance as any man.  And yet, we have classes that start out with equal numbers of male and female, in engineering, but by the end it is, as younger son puts it “a sausage fest” most women having deserted to Business or Art or Art of Business or Business of Art or whatever.

A lot of these were probably never that interested, and were pushed by parents/teachers.  But those that were were handicapped.

Any number of boys quits too.  Fewer than the girls, because they weren’t as handicapped.

These kids are handicapped by making their lives too easy.  If the school goes out of their way to value “a woman’s way of learning” a woman will never learn to stretch her winds.  If even boys are taught “you’re special and unique” and every thing they toss out with little thought is praised, they don’t learn what their blind spots are or to compensate for them.

What this means is that sooner or later they’ll come up against things they’re bad at — the best “rounded” person has things they suck at — and they don’t know what reserves they have, nor how to fill in the holes in natural talent with work.

Yeah, there are places hard work won’t take you.  There are natural abilities you can’t compensate for with really insane levels of work.  For instance, I’m tone deaf (and mid range deaf.)  I remember before the pneumonia that likely made me so (around 12) being able to write down notes as heard from piano.  Now?  Not all the hard work in the world would get me to do that.  I simply don’t hear it.

However, absent physical disability, I have yet to find one single “gift” that you can’t make up for by working harder and LEARNING.  Even if that means insanely hard.

But if all your life you were praised for your genius and your “gifts” for which you had to do nothing or very little, you will never learn that you have defects in your abilities.  And worse, you’ll never learn to compensate for them.

We’re destroying entire generations, particularly females, by making their lives too easy.  And what’s worse, they will have absolutely no resilience when they come up against something that’s actually difficult.  The fact that this is being done to the girls particularly by a generation of women who think they’re making it so girls “win” is tragic and scary.

I don’t know if you can learn to work and compensate later on in life.  I’d say we’re about to find out.  The idea terrifies me more than a little.

Meanwhile, teach your children well.  They’ll have to make up for generations scarily ill-suited to the adversity that’s coming.

And make up your mind to it that we’re going to have to work harder and smarter to get this boat to shore.  Put your shoulders to it, and let’s do it.