John C. Wright's Blog, page 87

Saving Science Fiction From Strong Female Characters – Part 3

Let us start with a few questions:

Why cannot both men and women be free, and leaders, and strong?

Women cannot be kings for the same reason men cannot be queens. Women in leadership roles do not lead in the same fashion as men do. They still lead (as we have seen in leaders from Queen Boadicea to Queen Elizabeth or Margaret Thatcher) but the tone and approach is different.

Why cannot both sexes, or (to be more specific) as many members of either sex as wish and can, perform tasks requiring boldness of action and clarity of thought and physical courage?

Physical courage is something boys are good at and proud of and naturally included to do. Even those effete intellectual men such as myself who do not cook outdoors and bowhunt grizzly bears or know how to fix a car engine still nonetheless approach life through a metaphor of conflict, war, duels, and tournaments. The reason why I behave honorably in a philosophical discussion is that I think of it as a duel to the death.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

Testing the Bechdel Test

I had the misfortune of hearing someone refer to the Bechdel test, and despite my misgivings, asking what it was.

“Basically, a work passes if:

1) It has at least two female characters.

2) They speak to each other at least once.

3) It is about something other than about men.”

Such is the test for purity of sexual thought and lack of bias against women in the story. What is the test for racial purity in the story? Two non-Christian non-White must appear together in a scene and talk about something unrelated to Western Civilization and its concerns?

I ask because I remember reading a reviewer once who judged one of my stories as one that did not pass the racial purity test.

This was not because of the race of any of the characters, by the way. The main character was explicitly said to be a Mestizo, that is, an English-Spanish hybrid with some Red Indian blood thrown in, what is now called a ‘Hispanic’ albeit as best I understand the Ahnenpass rules of racial purity used by Democrats, Hispanics do not count as Caucasians, even though they are from Europe, and neither do Persians count of Caucasians, even if they live in the Caucasus Mountains.

So in the story there were no Anglo-saxons at all (all the characters with speaking roles were Mestizo, Hindu, Dravidian, Iberian, Coptic, Tibetan, or an artificial biofact, but this was insufficient race diversity to sate that particular mavin of correct race thought) but I was denounced as a racist. Since I am a Christian and a pro-Constitution pro-limited government free market type, the reviewer in that instance decided that any from Texas two of four centuries from now has to be a White Man, despite that the text said otherwise, and therefore I am a racist.

That experience shows that ideological purity tests have an innate flaw. Any joker dishonest enough and partisan enough to judge a book not on its merits but on its race-purity is also dishonest enough to lie about the test results if the results allow a Christian to pass.

We are the bad guys in the Leftwing worldview, and it is childishly simple worldview, one where the bad guy cannot be an antihero with some redeeming characteristics: all of us without exception are utterly vile and cruel and bigoted without exception, or the else the Leftwing worldview is unworkable.

In this case, sex is being treated like race, so if the story does not have enough characters of the right sex behaving according to this new stereotype of female behavior, it flunks, and the writer has committed thoughtcrime.

Let us quickly see what passes the test of Lefty Ideological Race Purity, or Sex Purity, as they case may be. Of the Great Books of Western Literature:

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

Saving Science Fiction from Strong Female Characters – Part 2

In this space we have been examining and excoriating the attempt of many reviewers and activists in science fiction to increase the number of ‘strong’ female characters in science fiction yarns. I put the word strong in scare quotes because it is my contention, argued in the previous essay, conflates two distinct ideas. Good authors can make strong females characters who are strong with the virtues particular to women, feminine strength. Lazy authors make strong female characters by making them masculine.

Now there are several arguments which can be raised against this position: first is that virtue the same in men and women, so that what I am calling feminine strength in reality is the same as masculine strength, and ergo the distinction on which the argument is based fails. This argument has the strong point that temperance, justice, fortitude and prudence are the same in both sexes. The counterargument, which I think is sufficient as far as this point goes, is that the particular character of male and female virtues comes not from the virtues, but from the difference in priority, emphasis, approach, and skill sets involved.

The argument is experiential rather than logical: if you have not noticed that men, and for good reason, tend to be proud of their physical prowess, tend to be direct and adversarial, and tend to look at the world in terms of winners and losers, then I can do no more than to bring it to your attention. I call upon experience as my witness.

If you have no experience of real life, aside from what you see on the modern television or modern read in books, I might remind you that these jolly past times are not meant to reflect reality, but is instead meant to reflect a vision of the world, a narrative, with which I am taking issue. Your witnesses, modern television and modern books, are corrupt.

Second, it can be argued that while indeed men do act in a more masculine fashion than women, they do not have a good reason for this: that the typically masculine and feminine roles are the product of historical accident or perhaps cruelty and social injustice. They fact that they have always existed hence is an argument for their overthrow, because injustice has always existed, so any alternative is worth trying. The counterargument is that femininity is based on female biology, and that psychology, despite the fact that it can be trained to defy biology, ought not to be, as this leads to inefficiencies, injustices, and a general lack of joy.

Here again I point to experience as my witness: compare the divorce rate, the suicide rate, the crime rate, the rate of drug abuse, or any other honest indicator of social happiness between a modern urban setting, where the modern and Politically Correct ideals have had full sway for more than half a century, with a postwar rural setting where the traditional ideals have full sway. Neither one is utopia, but the number of bastard children belonging to drug running gangs beaten to death by his mother’s live-in lover is far smaller in rural Pennsylvania of 1953 than urban Detroit of 2013.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

The Hammer of Reality

I would say something about the ongoing slowmotion national suicide which is America’s infatuation with getting medical care free of cost from the Santa Clause which once was the US government, the last best hope of freedom on Earth, but another man has said it more succinctly than I. Hear him.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

An Added Comment

Politically Correctness is not built on lies, it is built on aggressively and insolently and outrageously false lies, almost like a Zen koan that shocks the mind into a suspension of thought.

The idea that the 1950′s, an era when women were respected and practically worshiped was worse for women than the modern era when even a Disney teen ends up as a trash whore is aggressively and outrageously false.

Compare Donna Reed with Miley Cyrus.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

Saving Science Fiction from Strong Female Characters – Part 1

Anyone reading reviews or discussions of science fiction has no doubt come across the oddity that most discussions of female characters in science fiction center around whether the female character is strong or not.

As far as recollection serves, not a single discussion touches on whether the female character is feminine or not.

These discussions have an ulterior motive. Either by the deliberate intent of the reviewer, or by the deliberate intention of the mentors, trendsetters, gurus, and thought-police to whom the unwitting reviewer has innocently entrusted the formation of his opinions, the reviewer who discusses the strength of female characters is fighting his solitary duel or small sortie in the limited battlefield of science fiction literature in the large and longstanding campaign of the Culture Wars.

He is on the side, by the way, fighting against culture.

Hence, he fights in favor of barbarism, hence against beauty in art and progress in science, and, hence the intersection of these two topics which means against science fiction.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

Wright’s Writing Corner Relaunch

Latest writing post from the beautiful and talented Mrs. Wright:

The Trick: Raising expectations in one direction but having the story first go in the opposite direction.

The Trick is the secret to writing, the thing that makes a story work: expectation followed by something other than the expected outcome – but something that is thematically consistent with the original events.

In art, artists use shading to emphasize the lighter portion of their work. The shading provides contrast that draws the eye back to the non-shaded part. In a story, writer’s need to do the same thing. One way of providing that contrast is with The Trick.

Of all writing techniques, The Trick is the easiest to do. You just decide where you want the story to go, and then you indicate—through dialogue, character thought, or narration—that the opposite is coming. If you want to have a happy incident, you make your character glum. If you want something bad to happen, you make him unexpectedly happy. It is that simple, and it is tremendously effective.

You just have to remember to use it. That is all.

To read more:  http://arhyalon.livejournal.com/

 

 

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

Feminist Islamophobia

From Robert Spencer over at PJ Media:

Late-night comic Conan O’Brien tweeted Friday night: “Marvel Comics is introducing a new Muslim Female superhero. She has so many more special powers than her husband’s other wives.” The predictable self-righteous firestorm ensued.

O’Brien was referring to “Kamala Khan,” Marvel Comics’ new Muslim superhero, unveiled with great fanfare last week. They are only introducing this Muslim superhero because of the hugely successful post-9/11 campaign by Islamic supremacists and their Leftist allies to portray Muslims as victims of “Islamophobia” and “hatred” — when actually the incidence of attacks on innocent Muslims is very low (not that a single one is acceptable or justified), and the entire “Islamophobia” campaign is an attempt to intimidate people into thinking that there is something wrong with fighting against jihad terror and Islamic supremacism.

Will Kamala Khan fight against jihadis? Will Marvel be introducing a counter-jihad superhero? I expect that the answer is no on both counts.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

True Love and Mere Lust

Lacking the time to write an essay for this week, I offer to the gentle reader this essay from back in the days when I was an atheist. Note please that none but purely secular reasons for admiring virtue are here given.

I have been asked what the vice might be in a man and woman, both adults, and unmarried, fornicating. The question is not rare in the modern day, where we have all been taught, and are continually reminded, that fire does not burn and water is not wet.

It is only after we are burnt or drenched that we begin to wonder if the modern Epicureans are all so very wise.

I used to be a loyal partisan of the sexual revolution: firmly libertarian, and firmly committed to the principle that whatever harmed no other did no wrong. Then I became a father, and I realized that I did not want my sons to be raised to believe this empty doctrine. Pleasures have consequences, not the least of which is, the pursuit of false and temporary pleasures hinders the discovery of true and lasting pleasures.

When Hugh Hefner, a man every partisan of the sexual revolution must admire, got married, and then divorced, I realized that he is a sad and lonely man. A big looser.

No matter how successful in pelf or worldly praise, no matter how admired by every horny schoolboy on Earth, his life is not worth living. He should hang himself from a oak tree branch.

In contrast, I have found true love, with a woman to whom I am and shall always be faithful, and I was a virgin before I met her. I live in the suburbs with my three and a half children, and work nine-to-five. I am everything the Playboy philosophy disdains: but I am as happy as the shining gods who dance on Olympus, far above the storms and stinks of earth, compared to him.

My joy is like strong sunlight, shining: his pleasure is like a wine-cup, drained to dregs. My joy grew a garden for me, my plowing and planting has produced fruit, which will give me further joys in the winter-tide of life: I mean my family, my children. He has the filthy dregs of an empty cup, and a headache. Who was wiser?

You see; my view of human nature is different from the Playboy view. Hefner says we can disport ourselves like minxes and stags in heat, coupling like satyrs and nymphs, without commitment and without consequence.

Satyrs do not marry, and nymphs are not given in marriage. Perhaps they can fall in love, true love, for an afternoon.

Humans are nobler creatures. An afternoon is not enough: we seek immortal love. We seek true love, a love true as a sharp sword, that will not shatter in the hand, a weapon equal to the task of keeping all life’s rude attacks at bay.

If you have the Hefner view of human nature, dear reader, nothing I say can make sense to you. Read no further.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

The First Dr Who

…was actually a sinister and mysterious figure cut straight from the mad scientist mold of not explaining things to lesser mortals, and electrocuting them if they meddled with controls…

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.