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The hate campaigns don’t work. The slates don’t work. Yet these targeted campaigns of hate and abuse have served their purpose in another way: they have driven some women of all races, men of color, and queer, trans, and other nonbinary people away from online spaces and discouraged them from writing in speculative fiction genres.
Failure is only useful if you’re learning from it. Failure because you panicked and sent shit out the door is just failure.
It turns out that when folks say “Why is character X a woman?” my response now is “Why not?” Because there’s no legitimate reason why not. I will say that again: there is no legitimate reason the stories we create, the stories we read, cannot include a true representation of the makeup of the actual world around us.
Let’s be real: if women were “naturally” anything, societies wouldn’t spend so much time trying to police every aspect of their lives.
It puts me in mind of those angered at the idea that science fiction is only good if it isn’t “political,” which is code for “does not reinforce or adhere to the worldview shaped by my personal political beliefs.” The reality is that all work is political. Work that reinforces the status quo is just as political as work that challenges it.
Women’s backgrounds are also combed over more than men’s, especially in geek circles, and you see this with the “fake geek girl” backlash, too. Is she a real engineer? Okay, but did she actually work for NASA or just consult for them?
