Birds, Dinosaurs, and the Secret Life of Labels
10th September 2012
This twist was hardly surprising given the controversial discussions of the underrepresentation of women in SF — particularly Hard SF — that have been unfolding at SFsignal and elsewhere in the online SF community. However, it did bring into clearer focus something that has surprised me over the last few months: the gusto with which people have been flinging around labels. Feminist SF. Women’s SF. SF by Minorities. White Male SF. People have been deploying these phrases as if they were listing elements in the periodic table. As if they thought that they had some objective lock on the difference between the writings of men and women, or of people with differing skin colors. As if they thought that the author photo on the back cover was the single relevant datapoint for determining which genre a book belongs to and who can reasonably be expected to read it … you know, for fun, and because it’s good science fiction, instead of just to fulfill their annual guilt-expiating requirement for reading books by people who don’t look like them.
One of the distinguishing characteristics of the degeneration of modern culture is the intrusion of Identity Politics into every nook and cranny of life — especially the concept of ‘underrepresented’, as if ‘representation’ has any legitimate significance outside of the political realm. (But, of course, under Identity Politics, there is nothing that is outside of the political realm.)