oh, and also, OSC? fuck you.

[hth]

I don't know if I could really respond better than this to the latest salvo of unhinged homophobic batshittery from Orson Scott Card.

I remember reading the Memory of Earth series in college, back when it was even harder than it is now to find even vague references to homosexuality in genre fiction. One of the main characters was a gay man who married a woman because it was required of him, and I remember thinking it was just a really intelligent, poignant treatment of a character who had made this terrible choice between two mutually exclusive types of happiness. It's weird to look back now and realize that whole arc was not, as I believed at the time, *descriptive* of what it's like to live under enforced heteronormativity, but *prescriptive.* Card doesn't hate gay people; he just hates gay people who selfishly destroy civilization by refusing to enter heterosexual marriages and breed.

Oh, and by the way, the reason Card doesn't consider himself a homophobe is that he subscribes to a very specific definition of the word, where homophobia means a fear of homosexuality that is so crippling as to interfere with one's life. Well, I sort of think he's crossed that bridge now, since he's so terrified of teh gay conspiracy to destroy everything good and pure in lif that he can't think of any other recourse than civil war. That sort of seems like it's getting in the way of being, you know, a normal human being who doesn't want to incite civil wars? Oh, and also, a lot of his former fans now wouldn't buy one of his books if it came with a lifetime's supply of cool shoes and lubricant, so it's not been a great boon to his career, either.

Also, fuck Orson Scott Card.

Comments

[ratcreature]

Especially with still living authors who get a percentage from my money when I buy their stuff it really makes a difference to me whether or not I object to them. And with sf/fantasy I usually end up buying what I read, because my local library doesn't have a good sf/fantasy selection in English (and I avoid reading translations if I know the original language). And well, with my very limited funds for books I'd rather they end up with someone I don't regret paying.

[tieleen.livejournal.com]

Actually, on that one you're in luck; I live in a non-English-speaking country, and even I can usually find Ender's Game in a used book store if they have any sci fi in English at all. Buying used takes a lot of the moral dilemma out of it -- for me, at least; it makes it less of a 'how does it affect the writer', because he'll never really feel it even in that tiny way, and more 'do I want this thing to live in my brain'. Of course, someone else who can't find the used copy you bought might then buy it new, but that's a bit too advanced for me...

(I'd suggest yes on that last part, by the way; it's a very interesting book.)

[ratcreature]

The public library system in my city actually does not have a copy of "Ender's Game" in English. Really not. I've never been able to determine what their system of buying and keeping English books are. They do really badly with older SF and fantasy, whereas you might find newer bestselling titles sometimes (e.g. they do have the Temeraire series), but I'm not sure they actually keep them, because sometimes they have the later volumes of series but not earlier ones.