Today we celebrate one of history’s greatest, the largely unheralded misogynist douchebag T.M. Zink, who managed to stick it to the ladies even after he died. As Time magazine reported shortly after his death in 1930:
At Le Mars, Iowa, the probated will of T. M. Zink, deceased attorney, revealed:1) His $100,000 estate is to be placed in trust for 75 years; 2) In A. D. 2005 the accumulated principal is to be used to establish, equip and maintain a library on whose shelves will be no woman author, on whose catalogs will be no woman’s name, over whose portal will blaze: “No Women Admitted”; 3) To his daughter went $5; 4) To his widow not 1¢.
As he explained in his will:
My intense hatred of women is not of recent origin or development nor based upon any personal differences I ever had with them but is the result of my experiences with women, observations of them and study of all literatures and philosophical works.
2005 has come and gone and sadly, at least from the point of view of misogynist bibliophiles, the Zink Womanless Library was never built. As a piece in The Guardian noted, his family successfully challenged the will, I’m guessing on the grounds of Quando podeces te regi eorum fecerunt? (“When did you become king of the assholes?“)
CB – No, wills absolutely can be contested. I’m not a lawyer either, but I’m pretty darn sure of this one.
http://wills-probate.lawyers.com/wills-probate/Grounds-for-Will-Contests.html
And now I must perform my famous dogwalk flounce. The basenjis are staring at me.
*flounce*
Best flounce evar 😀
Yeah, when people pull the Contract is Sacred gambit, I always like to ask if a contract to sell their children into slavery would be valid. The answers are always revealing.
CB: Yes, answers to that sort of thing are telling. So are questions about contracts on can’t enforce (e.g. the one’s about revivifying people who have been cryonicly frozen).
Re wills: they can be contested. A good lawyer can help craft a, “fuck you” will so that it will win the contest, but they can be contested.
Also women’s writing has been traditionally treated like a niche interest, so a library of female writers would be working against that stereotype, rather than perpetuating the already-very-healthy impression that men can write about anything.
Well, the thing is, they can… so that impression is pretty much true. Women authors write for women, about women’s issues. Men write about universal themes. This isn’t even misogyny, MRA-speak or whatever you lot always cry about. It’s personal experience and observation. I can count the number of female authors whose works I’ve actually enjoyed on one hand. Men, on the other hand… I can name like a dozen favorite writers off the top of my head, and a dozen more if I stop to think about it. So 😛
The ones making noises about contracts being sacred were also the ones not having a problem trashing public workers’ contracts. Contracts are only sacred when it benifits them…of course.
Ion, both men and women write about universal themes. Grow up. That is one of the dumbest things you’ve said yet.
Wow, good comeback. I bow before your superior argument, hellkell.
This is like that whole thing where everybody not a white straight cis abled man is a “special interest” thing isn’t it? xD
Sorry, Ion, but it’s true. No sex has a monopoly on writing about particular themes. Anyone can do it…provided they have the talent. Biology has nothing to do with it.
Genuine talent transcends gender.
Plus, how do you account for the women who hid behind male names to get published in the past? Are they suddenly untalented because it was an actual woman writing them?
Also, Ion, your false egalitarianism is noted. Because of the power differentials and privilege issues, you can’t say that a woman being misandrist towards men is the same as men being misogynist, like the would-be postmortem librarian in question.
Meh, I’ll believe it when I see it. Because right now, when I look in a bookstore I see Sex and the City, Twilight, and like a dozen shelves of those sparkly books about young 20-something women in the big city dealing with their bitchy friends, new job and various interchangeable hunky love interests while being Totally Fabulous(tm)!
Ion, did you go to any other part of the bookstore? Or were you just in the tween section?
I was going to respond with a list of female writers I enjoy who write about all sorts of things. Well, here’s one. She’s written about pirates, the Boxer Rebellion, the Lusitania.
But I think I’d rather point out how weird it is that people often make this claim, that men write about sweeping, universal matters of the world, and women write small domestic works. As though interpersonal relationships, friendships between women, family disputes, love, and women’s lives are somehow less a part of the World at Large than a guy on a boat is.
Ion, I was going to stay out of this. However. I’ve gotta say that for a ManlyDude you show quite the extensive familiarity with what’s in the Chick Lit section over at Borders. My curiosity is piqued. How is it you pay notice to such things*? How does that come about?
*such paltry things; fixed that
Ion, did you really just argue that male writers are inherently superior to female writers because … you generally don’t enjoy reading books by women? That’s really not much of an argument, I have to say.
For every chicklit book about romance and vampires there’s a Tom Clancy type deal about and ex navy seal manly man who chews bubblegum and kicks ass, but lo! conflict! He’s all out of bubble gum!!
Not every female writer is or can be Ursula LeGuin, but then again, not every male writer is Terry Pratchett either.
Also?
But I think I’d rather point out how weird it is that people often make this claim, that men write about sweeping, universal matters of the world, and women write small domestic works. As though interpersonal relationships, friendships between women, family disputes, love, and women’s lives are somehow less a part of the World at Large than a guy on a boat is.
This.
I was going to respond with a list of female writers I enjoy who write about all sorts of things. Well, here’s one. She’s written about pirates, the Boxer Rebellion, the Lusitania.
Never heard of her, but ok. I’m not saying there aren’t any, that would be absurd. Just a lot fewer. That’s actually a good point you made with the “friendships, interpersonal relationships etc” versus “guy on a boat”. The latter is about adventure, the first is a soap opera. Maybe that’s why many of them don’t appeal to me that much.
bekabot: I used to work in a bookstore, no big mystery. Most female authors I saw were either in the tween or romance section, SatC knockoffs and the like, and of course Twilight and Harry Potter in the fantasy section. That’s about all I saw.
What about all those English Professor Contemplates Divorce books? Are those universal themes because they’re written by a dude? Because I know a lot of people who are really alienated from those books (they usually call them “privileged asshole books”).
Or Fight Club, that’s a great book that focuses on masculinity written by a man.
OTOH, a book like Speak, written by a woman, is a very universal-theme book– all you have to do is watch the video the author compiled of the letters she was sent from both men and women sharing their stories of being raped or abused, or having a friend raped or abused.
David, after sucking up to Amanda Marcotte and proclaiming Kate Beaton the best comic writer ever, I’m not surprised at that attitude. There are indeed many more male writers I enjoy than female writers, but in my experience there are also many more books written by men which appeal to everyone, than those written by women. BTW, comedy is one category I haven’t talked about yet. Male comedy authors write about pretty much anything. Female comedians write about their periods and guys they’ve slept with. Har har.
Ok, so you admitted that your argument from authority is based on anecdotal evidence?
Well, that’s a start, Ion.
Or Fight Club, that’s a great book that focuses on masculinity written by a man.
No argument there, that’s all about masculinity. The female equivalent of that type of book seems a lot more prevalent though. And also much more boring, because there’s no fighting. They share their feelings instead.
Ok, so you admitted that your argument from authority is based on anecdotal evidence?
My what now? Are we starting this highschool debate team shit again?
Ion: Well, the thing is, they can… so that impression is pretty much true. Women authors write for women, about women’s issues. Men write about universal themes. This isn’t even misogyny,
No, it’s not misogyny, it’s idiocy.
One… what do you mean by, “Universal Themes”, and, “Women’s Issues”.
Two, are you limiting this to just works of fiction (which it appears you are)? Why? Zink didn’t.
If you are, what makes the writings of Shakespeare, on love and family, “universal”, while those of Jane Austen are about, “women’s issues”?
Are you arguing Frankenstein isn’t a, “universal theme”? Sappho wasn’t writing lyric poetry (just like the men)? She wasn’t praised, by men, for her work? Hasn’t been kept (for something like 3,000 years) as an example of brilliant writing?
How about Karen Armstrong, who wrote, “A History of God: the 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam”. Seems pretty Universal. Lest you think her a one-hit wonder, she has 23 books in print, most of them on history and religion.
Or What of Hannah Arendt: She wrote on Political Theory and Philosophy (though she disdained the latter as a description, saying philosophy dealth with the issues of man in the singular, and she was writing about groups). Her list of publications is too long to tally; that’s not even dealing with the Poli-Sci and Philosophy texts which use, or are based on, her works.
What of Delia Bacon, best known for helping to ingite the (still raging) controversy over the authorship of shakespeare (showing that an woman can be as full of folly as any man)?
What of Ban Zhao, the Chinese Historian (ca. 75 AD)?
For fiction: Natalya Baranksaya wrote of life in the Soviet Union.
Willa Cather: who wrote of the settlement of the Plains (My Antonia, O, Pioneers)
C.J. Cherryh, who writes SF. Astronomers named an asteroid (77185 Cherryh named after her. They said, ““She has challenged us to be worthy of the stars by imagining how mankind might grow to live among them.”
Lois McMasters Bujold, who writes military SF (which, since you place so much value on personal experience, I saw a lot of male soldiers reading it, it’s a series, so I guess they liked it well enough; they kept buying the new ones).
How is Dashiel Hammet, or Robert Parker, different from Agatha Christie, or Ngaio Marsh?
What of the women who wrote under male names, some of whom were only known to be female (e.g. James Tiptree) after their death. Tiptree was criticised more than once for not having a good understanding of female characters; of being to masculine in “his” ascriptions of motive and behavior for them.
I could go on, but why bother? The fact of the matter is your argument isn’t misgynist, per se, but it’s patently false, plainly stupid and pathetically sexist.