Teenage art #2

Remember this fellow? I found his little friend.

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Speak True

An unpleasant reminder from teh OG today of just how bad most online debate is. Snark replaces insight, jibes replace facts, the "battle of the sexes" replaces feminism, and a general high dudgeon replaces righteousness.

I thought it might be useful to reproduce part of the Introduction to my long-defunct Web site, Kate's Feminism Page, which contains my thoughts on online arguments. In it, I mostly talk about statistics and research, but what I say about insisting on the facts, in your own postings and in everyone else's, applies equally to fannish debate - including exactly what was said and exactly who said it. Fandom is appallingly sloppy about this, from shoving words in opponents' mouths to inventing RTD "quotes" from whole cloth.

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I was thinking about that thing in Larry Niven's Known Space stories where female aliens are almost always non-sentient, and human women are a remarkable exception. Kzin females and Puppeteer females are animals, and it's hinted that the latter are eaten alive by their own offspring. I'm pretty sure there are other examples too (ETA: Yep - Thrint females are non-sentient). Where the heck did Niven get this idea? Not from nature, that's for sure. Weird.