There are really few things quite so entertaining as watching people as ignorant as a box of pig shit offering their opinions on literature. Especially when the people in question are W.F. Price and his gang of misfit boys at The Spearhead, who are back for yet another take on the whole Women’s Lit question.
At this point I’ve run out of jokes on this particular subject, so I’m just going to let Mr. Price dig his own hole here. Here he is, trying to argue that feminism has made terrible lady writers even terribler.*
[I]t appears that since feminism’s triumph, female achievement in the higher arts has deteriorated substantially. When women no longer have to excel to be read and recognized, but simply have to advertise the fact that they are women to be celebrated for dubious achievements, they won’t put as much effort into producing anything of quality. So the sorry state of women today is a direct result of feminist privilege, which absolves them of all responsibility and deflects any criticism. …
Yes, feminism has wrecked Western womanhood, reducing the young women of today to spoiled brats who can’t take a hint of criticism, and immediately turn to authorities to bolster their self-esteem. No woman can be too fat to be beautiful, too dense to be intelligent, or too dull to be creative. They are all equally super-duper goddesses, before whom men must genuflect and heap up mounds of praise.
Price of course gives no examples to back up any of his, er, “arguments,” and somehow I suspect he hasn’t actually read any fiction written by women beyond an odd title or two he might have been assigned in high school. I wonder if Price could even name a half-dozen living woman novelists without having to resort to Google — excluding JK Rowling, Stephanie Meyer and Jackie Collins (who hasn’t heard of them?) and Harper Lee (who wasn’t assigned To Kill a Mockingbird in high school?).
*I am aware that “terribler” is not a real world.
@Hippodameia Now now, nobody said they were badly written.
“Does Noel Streatfield write childrens books Bee?”
Hmm. As the first line on her wikipedia entry says: “Mary Noel Streatfeild OBE (24 December 1895–11 September 1986), known as Noel Streatfeild, was an author, most famous for her children’s books including Ballet Shoes (1936),” it would seem that Noel Streatfeild did indeed write children’s books.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noel_Streatfeild
Before we explore into the endless shit-pit that is his stupidity, especially considering literature, here is an excerpt of what Slavey considers to be the:
“Best books of all time has to be…
3) Star Wars books are endless, Vong series was outstanding from multilpe authors.
There was a series of 3 terminator books that were pretty good and was made into a movie.
I couldn’t even finish the lord of the rings 1st book it dragged on so badly. Movies were great.”
Or, in summary, a series of published Star Wars fan-fiction, sorry I mean “tales from the Extended Universe”, involving Biology-Borgs with pain fetishes are part of his idea of the best books ever, so that ‘s where Slavey is coming from whenever he opens his mouth concerning writing.
http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/e/ed/Yuuzhan-vong-eu2_bg.jpg
Uh…..
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lgogysXSYI1qgm9u6o1_250.png
Yes, NWO, it’s true; there are actually a lot of great books out there to read (by women and by men); no one will ever be able to read them all. Heck, I’d be hard pressed to read all of the books I already own. (I’m a bit of a book hoarder, plus I buy a lot of books that I really really mean to read but never get around to. I’ve probably read half of the ones I own, and that’s taken literally decades.)
“Well, it just doesn’t seem his “offensive” opinions will matter much in the long run.” – From the new Price post
Well, yeah, actually that’s true. In the long run peoples wild, or terrible, opinions aren’t remembered if they contributed something great. Newton is remembered for his physics, not his alchemy. Dunno what Price’s point is though, does that mean we shouldn’t care if anyone says anything sexist, because we won’t care about it hundreds of years from now?
@Nobinayamu yeah… me too! Is this WEIRD? My sister and pretty much every friend I’ve ever had is like this too… I didn’t know it was WEIRD.. esp not at 10.. o_O I was always rooting out the books of ppl I liked. And like I read Billy Bishop’s Winged Warfare when I was 10.. and that started my WWI obsession reading for a while xD but he makes it sound like 10 is like 4… o_O I remembered the authors of every Star Trek book I liked so I could seek out others of their things when I was 10 o_O It never seemed odd to me…
Ya want something good to read, try the creature from jekyll island.
Slavey: Does Noel Streatfield write childrens books Bee?
I wasn’t lying when I said she did. And the link to Amazon that I provided for you helpfully wasn’t lying either. And, just in case you need further evidence, here is her Wikipedia page, which describes her as an author who is most famous for her children’s books. She apparently wrote books that weren’t aimed at children in addition to her children’s books, but I’ve never read any of those.
And yes, I took note of her name (although I thought of her as a “him”) because I loved her books and I wanted to read the whole Shoe series: “Ballet Shoes,” “Circus Shoes,” “Party Shoes,” “Theatre Shoes,” etc. I did the same for Maud Hart Lovelace and Beverly Cleary and Frances Hodgson Burnett and … oh, probably all the way back to Eric Carle. I spent a lot of time at the library and my mom signed me up for summer programs there. It was probably something a librarian told me: Oh, if you like this book, you’ll probably like this other book by the same author.
I know, it seems like such a fantastical tale that you’ll never, ever believe it. Much more unbelievable than, say, ever Americans’ birth certificate being bought and sold on the stock market, which is an inherently common-sense thing to believe.
I think most of the ppl here are older than 4 years old xD I always think I dun read a lot (and honestly I dun) but then when I started to make a list of the books I’ve read in my life I realized holy crap that’s a LOT OF BOOKS O_O;;; It sneaks up on you xD Same w/ video games I’ve played…. omg it’s like 300!? Maybe more o_o;; And yet I’ve had time to watch so many baseball, hockey, basketball and football games xD And bike and run and watch so many TV series. Sometimes I put together all that and go “omfg there’s more time in my life even w/ work and school than I thought” xD Plus the endless shopping xD And the dating… hugging of cats.. and posting here! 😀
Oh, and like Nobinayamu, I too remember the names of a lot of the authors I read as a kid: Mark Alan Stamaty, Tomi Ungerer, Maurice Sendak, Norton Juster, Madeleine L’Engle, Lewis Carroll. I also read a lot of Mad magazine, and I knew the names of a lot of the artists and writers for it.
There were also plenty of books whose authors I never paid attention to and can’t remember now. There was a book I loved called The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet. I actually went and bought myself a copy of it recently; no idea where the original went, yet I still had to look up the author’s name: Eleanor Cameron.
Memory is weird like that.
Also, I just noticed that a couple of the authors I’ve listed here were women. Oh noes! Obviously I was a mangina even then.
Did I break the comment thread? All of a sudden everything’s in itals…
My bad.
Sorry about the non sequitur, but are comments showing up in all itallics for anyone else? It’s kinda throwing me off. O_O
@Ami Angelwings: Good point. But I think the odds are low that the writing is any good. 🙂
@Nobinayamu: Yes! I was in third grade when I read the two books that have had the greatest influence on my life. I own one and just found the other on Amazon. Both were by Anne Petry.
@David: it doesn’t count as hoarding if you mean to read them. Sometimes I save books for special occasions.
@David you were actually the prototype. Before we had to kidnap/seduce men to manginate them, but we decided to test an experimental process to maginate them as kids. Obv you were successful and that’s why we moved onto widespread magination 😀
Have you read any of them Mr. Kobold. Or are you judging by not reading.
I read em and toss em Dave. Believe me, yard sale resale value sucks. The damn things just take up space. I however just bought a nook before I left for Texas. Takes a bit of getting used to but it ain’t too bad.
Like I said I could care less about the author, the title gets you the series.
And it went away, disregard my last post…
Okay so my eyes didn’t just go wonky xD I thought “wtf.. I SWEAR that’s not the way normal font looked on this thread a second ago” xD
Italics off, maybe?
Heh, I could be contradictory again, NWO. I know that I’ve actively sought out books written by Stephen King and Agatha Christie, because i enjoyed their writing style so much. And their books are one-offs a lot of the time. Its possible to enjoy a certain author’s writing.
I do care about the author xD When I was a kid cuz the first 2 Star Trek books I read were by PAD and Diane Duane, I thought every ST book was gonna be great… and boy did I learn that lesson fast xD So I quickly found the authors that DID write great Star Trek and glommed to those :3
Also NWO maybe you would be happier if you didn’t buy books with the idea that it’s not sunk cost and you can recoup your money o_O
Hopefully you can get rid of the books someway tho and declutter 🙂
Should have refreshed.
I ended up ripping Countdown apart and turning it into an art piece.
@NWO:
There’s nothing unusual about remembering the names of the authors of one’s favorite childhood books. I can recall a few myself: Judy Blume, Beverly Cleary, Laura Ingalls Wilder. I remember the names of these authors because like many children, when I found something I really liked I read/watched/played with it OVER and OVER again. And yeah, as with most people I’ve always taken at least a cursory glance at a title’s cover before reading.
You see this is one of the things that really irks me and other men. If a woman stays at home and a man works, he is also providing childcare by providing money. If they both work and she does the brunt of hauling the child around and such. The father perhaps maintains the house, mows the lawn whatever. This is also part of childcare. Those things still need to be done to provide for the child. Can’t you see that.
Mowing the lawn takes what, an hour or so every week? And that’s assuming that the family either lives in a place with a yard, or doesn’t have a gardening service that comes round and takes care of it for them. Not to disparage the almighty lawn-mowing prowess of Teh Man, but making sure that your kid (or kids) are clothed (taking the child clothes shopping, finding them appropriate and well-fitting clothes, keeping up with the laundry), fed (doing the grocery shopping and cooking), washed (daily baths and keeping the house clean), entertained (finding and buying age-appropriate and values-appropriate books, toys, movies, crafts, etc), educated (making sure they’re enrolled in school, making sure they do their homework, getting them to and from school, taking the time to teach them values, manners and everything else that schools don’t teach) and protected (keeping an eye on them so they don’t drown or get kidnapped, making sure the house is in good repair, teaching them how to take care of themselves, and taking them to the doctor so they are protected from disease) on a daily basis.
In terms of real hours spent, tell me what takes up more time? Go ahead and counter with your belief that the husband is making the money to make this happen and I will tell you: many mothers also work and bring in income, whether away from home or working from home; and that a father’s shift is generally going to be between eight to ten hours a day, five days a week – a mother’s day is much longer than that, and she doesn’t get weekends off.
Here’s an article explaining this:
http://www.businessweek.com/careers/workingparents/blog/archives/2006/12/chores_and_the.html
And a study:
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/social_forces/v081/81.3mattingly.html
XDDDD
I almost did that with Amazons Attack (instead I got some of my favourite reviews out of it on my site, Countdown too! xD) but instead I made a whole bunch of cents back on it xD
I’m glad I didn’t stick around for the rest of CD tho (that’s when I was pretty much done with DC xD ) cuz that would have been a lot of money x_x
My comics collection is almost pared down to a nice amount tho 😀 The giant boxes of comics are almost all gone. 🙂
“Have you read any of them Mr. Kobold. Or are you judging by not reading.”
Yeah I read a couple Vong stuff, they were alright, I’ll stick to Warhammer 40k when it comes to my easy franchise quick trip books. It it takes a special kind of stupid and ignorant, like willfully turning your eyes away from all other books of the science fiction genre whenever they should come into view ignorant, to call stuff like that the best shit ever.
I mean, if you can take away that self-awareness about yourself, you just might learn something.