When I was in my last year in college, I had a Fulbright professor from North Carolina, who taught American Culture and Literature.
The one time he brought the entire class of thirty women to a standstill – well besides the time when he said “Poym” and we had no idea what he was talking about. (He meant poem.) – was when he apologized for using the generic “he.”
He made the logical construction “when one does this, he” and then went into immediate, reflexive, panicked apology while we stared at him, blinking. At long last one of us (weirdly not me) said “Why are you apologizing for grammar? “He” is the correct terms for a person of indeterminate gender in anglo-saxon grammar, and it includes both male and female.”
The look of relief on that man’s face, because a group of college women weren’t taking issue with his use of language, was both hilarious and horrifying. It prepared me for things like coming to the states and finding the history section of bookstores labeled Herstory (a piece of philological illiteracy that made me want to stomp things.)
And it prepared me for the nonsense Amanda talked about yesterday with Resnick and Malzberg. It prepared me for the insanity in science fiction at large.
I’ve talked about the war in science fiction before, and about the sheer insanity that has driven a group of odd people to ever more extreme and unpopular positions.
There are many things one can’t violate and be considered a respectable person in science fiction – pretty much all the politically correct shibboleths must me respected and the animal in season sacrificed to each of them: the supremacy of the culture of people with a tan; the inferiority of America, particularly the more traditional segments of America; the superiority of intellectuals; the idea that humans are evil… the list goes on and on. To question these – to even raise in a story the idea that they are wrong, is to commit career suicide. Or was, back when I had to conform. Now I work for Baen and myself, and couldn’t care less.
But quite possibly the worst “victim” group in science fiction is women.
It looks like every other week someone or other is getting outraged over something or other that by itself and single handedly threatens to destroy “all the gains we’ve made” in equality.
Ladies – particularly those of you who aren’t – if those gains are THAT easily destroyed, surrender now, maybe the victors will go easy on you.
No? Of course no. No matter what you think you believe, in your heart of hearts you know the gains in women’s equality started as far back as Christianity’s notion that males and females are equal before G-d. (A fancy idea they got from Judaism, and quite a revolutionary bit of thinking.) From there, and yes, the road was rocky, it evolved through monogamous marriage, and industry that allowed women’s contribution to the family to be as important as the man’s and sometimes more. And then we got the pill – which put the capstone on equality. I know you ladies in science fiction and fantasy like to believe there was some plant or series of plants that was just like the pill only better because it was “natural.” There isn’t. I have reason to know, having grown up in a village where the (state run) medicine was slow and inefficient and the only possible way to treat most things were herbs. If there had been such a thing, the women in the village wouldn’t have used the abortifacient herbs that often killed them along with the child.
True equality – having women working in the world of men and interacting with men was impossible when any slip up might saddle the woman (remember this was before genetic test) with at the minimum a pregnancy and time away from work, and maybe a child to explain and raise (if not given up for adoption.)
Was this fair? No, of course it wasn’t. Nature is rarely fair. It is, however, what it is.
Then came the pill and this changed. Women, if they were careful, could have one or two children, and take very little time out of their career, and they could “have it all.”
Only you can’t. No one can. Yes, a woman can have a brilliant legal career and raise twin boys, provided she either doesn’t care much for the twin boys or doesn’t do both at once.
Most of the barriers to women’s advancement fell and as Marxist (no? Really? The idea of victim classes owed collective compensation isn’t Marxist? Mirabilli Dicta) ideas permeated western society, there were legally enforced aids to women’s advancement.
And even as they were legally given advantages over men (No? Indeed? Men can sue for gender discrimination, then?) women felt more and more like they were being held back.
Look, part of this was the very legal help. There’s nothing to make you feel paranoid and insecure and certain people are conspiring against you like knowing your government thinks you little ladies need special help. (I know anyone saying THIS little lady needs special help gets a mouth full of knuckles.) The other part, of course, is that the average woman got a highly romanticized version of “female liberation” that casts men as the villains and society as a whole as conspiring to keep women down until the sheer force of heroism and sisterhood and marching shoulder to shoulder brought women a modicum of equality. But not full equality, because every male is conspiring against every woman, and patriarchy like a hungry wolf rounds the homes of the righteous in the dark– Oh, wait. This week wolves aren’t dangerous predators. My bad. Having grown up in a village where there were living memory tales of children carried away, it’s hard to remember the fable of the week.
And it’s particularly hard for women raised here to realize that the fables they were told weren’t true. Was it only the pill that brought liberation? Meh. No. Improvements in medical technology that allowed for fewer deaths at birth and made women better educational investments. Improvements in technology that allowed those of us with smaller muscles to be as productive as the males.
I can’t even figure out how people live with their heads divided like that and think that men want to subjugate them at the same time that SURELY they realize that their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons aren’t like that.
Are there crazy men who count coup? Well, of course. And women too. But by and large, most men LIKE women. (Even those who don’t like them that way. I have gay friends, and the only time I call them horrible patriarchal oppressors is when we’re being silly. And no, I don’t believe it.)
Look, I’m going to level with you: Men on average are bigger and stronger. In the real world, outside your heads, that is the most important characteristic when it comes to subjugating someone. If men REALLY wanted you enslaved and under the heel of their boots, you’d be enslaved. For a demonstration of how look at Islam.
And while we’re on the subject to Islam – do you know how ridiculous it sounds to keep screaming and screaming that you are being oppressed while you completely ignore your sisters held in slavery in most Islamic countries? Women devalued and degraded and living as though in a Sheri S. Teper androphobic fantasy? And you say nothing.
Speaking of holding two contradictory ideas in your head at once – how can you even do that?
And no, please, don’t tell me they’re happy and honored and it’s a traditional and culture thing.
You can tell yourself lies, but you were raised to know better than that. You have studied psychology and you can surely recognize Stockholm syndrome on a grand scale. What do you expect these women to say “we hate these men? We hate being married off as children?” HOW? First, they know nothing else, and second, they still have to live there.
But you don’t really want to think that any culture but your own can be bad, and besides, you’ve hit up against having all your dreams come true.
At one time, in a group I used to belong to, we talked about the first women to be taken seriously in science fiction – much what Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg were talking about in fact. Women used to have to fight hard to succeed because it was harder for them. (And no, don’t want to hear it. Yeah, there are fewer reviews or women bestsellers or what have you, but go down any shelf in a bookstore: eighty percent of sf/f is female, unless it’s military sf/f. And even there there are women authors. And most young ones are female. Yes, the men are more successful. There are dozens of reasons, including that there are fewer of them and so their voices stand out more.)
But now, truly, there is no more barrier for women making it as writers of science fiction and fantasy than for men. It might in fact be easier, simply because it pays so little, and men are still expected to support their families or be big successes (were you under the impression only women had expectations laid on them by reason of gender?) But it’s okay, because indie is likely to bring in more money.
Unfortunately what this means is that women hit up against their inability to be perfect. And they were told they could be perfect. They could have it all. Grrrrl power.
Fortunately they have a readymade scapegoat to hand. After all, if men weren’t actively conspiring against them, the government wouldn’t have made women a protected class. So when SHE hits the glass ceiling SOMEONE must be to blame. The man is holding her down (and there are tons of reasons the glass ceiling is there, but in few places is it pure sexism. The most common one is that women don’t like confrontation and therefore refuse to ASK for promotion – this is evolutionarily bred into women, not cultural btw. That lie of the 70s that everything is cultural is just that. A lie.)
This leads to – is it now three generations? – of women who run around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to find hidden signs of sexism and secret hints and symbols that mean that the males are ALL conspiring against them. A single instance of idiot male gets blown up into “endemic sexism,” grammar gets attacked, they get offended at being called ladies…
The sins get smaller and smaller as they get more and more insecure. It can’t be their fault they’re failing. After all, they were told grrrl power can do anything and everything from morning cartoons to the latest empowerment fable told them they could have it all. So it can’t be their fault. There must be enemies…
This strange idea that men are all conspiring against them leads them to attack people like Resnick and Malzberg, people who are in fact of a generation where men tried very hard to bring equality to fruition. It never occurs to these women that perhaps there is no collective guilt and no grand conspiracy of males, and that in fact, perhaps men aren’t holding them down.
To pause and think about that would mean thinking that the grrrrl power lied. That they’re not perfect. That they’re human, fallible and flawed like the rest of us – that they can’t have everything.
Because NO ONE can have everything. Because evolution shaped men and women differently and both have limitations. Because you have individual limitations too. Because whether you’re an innie or an outie, there is no magical power to make you better than everyone around you, or everyone of the opposite gender.
Ladies, if it seems like you are surrounded by enemies, put down the soma and consider that perhaps the system lied to you. Consider that the reason that you now take offense at being “slighted” as ladies, and next protest because someone didn’t mention you were a woman, is that you are looking for evil intent and offense where none exists.
And your proof is that men like to buy books with naked women on the cover? Oh, my dears, don’t worry – only hetero males. The rest of them like naked men on the cover – as much as women do. Crying that “females on the cover is sexist” is both denying the history of the field and denying a fundamental fact about humanity. We kind of like the opposite sex. It’s why there is still humanity around.
You are, in fact, in a war with reality.
Reality always wins. The chicken with the head cut off, running around, always dies.
We are entering a very difficult time (and a very glorious time) – a time of great technological change. The ladies of SFWA (even those with penises) have already hit the wall. Their way of doing business is vanishing and they’re locked in this endless “don’t wanna” scream as though their attacking Amazon, pouting and making faces would make the innovation go away and bring back their safe lifestyle.
Consider that perhaps you’re flawed, like the rest of the world, and deserve no more and no less protection. Consider that in the difficult times ahead men and women will have trouble staying afloat. Consider figuring out a path that doesn’t involve innocent bystanders – a creative path to how to make money in a changing field. And then help your friends, male and female.
There is no grrrl power. Anymore than there is men power.
We are not exactly alike. We’re different in all sorts of interesting neurological ways. We’re not better and men are not better. We each have an advantage over the other in certain circumstances and tasks.
Find what you’re good at and do it. And stop attacking innocent languages which never hurt anyone and nice men who never even looked at you cross-eyed. If a pronoun can cost you your liberty, I shudder to think what the real world can do.
You are seeing yourselves as brave freedom fighters, but from where I stand it looks remarkably like you’re sitting in a mud puddle engaged in a fight to the death with your own toes.
Stop fighting your toes and get out of the mud. The adults are building the future of the field.
If you clean up, if you stop focusing on who done you wrong and how you’re a victim, maybe you’ll find an exciting new world to make your own and a future better than you could have imagined.
Mad Genius Club 
39 responses to “Ladies, Put Down the Soma”
Reblogged this on mishaburnett and commented:
Another excellent post from the Mad Genius Club
You know, I’m almost scared to see what Vox Day has to say about this.
Brava! We’ve gotten to the point where these… whatever they are, females, I suppose, but even that offends them… are grinding men under their heels for no other reason than they are drunk on power. Sometimes I’m almost ashamed of my sex.
It’s the same problem with activist groups everywhere. Once they have reached their original goals, they don’t want to stop, so they have to start looking further down the road. If the end of the road isn’t far enough away, they start flailing around, looking for SOMETHING that will give them the sense of purpose and importance that their activism once did. The ones who see the goal reached and are satisfied leave, and only the most radical are left.
I’d say don’t be.
Do I let Bundy, Dahmer, Gein, JFK or WJC make me ashamed of being male? No.
A lot of people of both genders are monsters.
That doesn’t reflect on you if you choose to not be a monster.
The modern feminists are just fitting the pattern that the others do.
I do believe that one of the reasons that there seem to be more women than men writing these days is that writing is hard to do with a full time day job, and women are much more likely to have a partner willing to support them so they can write full time.
Yes. I think that’s a great part of it. Around the nineties you got a lot of women, gay men and independently wealthy people of both genders and all persuasions.
I’m going to disagree with Sarah here. While that may be the case some of the time, a lot of the time these same women are holding down a full-time job and writing either before the family gets up or after the kids go to bed. I know too many of them who do just that.
BTW, ask some of those women who are home all the time to “write” just how many hours a day they get to write while their spouse is gone, especially if they have kids in the house. Yeah, I’m cranky today, but I know too many in this field who are juggling one or more jobs and writing and being successful at it.
Amanda — I attended cons and met the people being published. There were, yes, mothers like Becky and I, but the push was to get us in the “has been” pile ASAP. We weren’t at ALL the cons. We didn’t make the right contacts. They pushed HER out — inexplicably, considering her first book had two reprints and her second book four or five. I am, of course, more stubborn than dirt, but I probably neglected the kids to stay on. MOST people were not so encumbered. In fact, sometime back I wrote an article about this and about how a lot of the books reflected the POV of people who’d never done serious work. Most of the women coming in traditionally had full support and no kids. Those were the ones that got “promoted.”
Now? Well, indie changes everything. But you needed to be crazy, as I was, to work for thirteen years WHILE watching the kids, with no hope of breaking in. Most of the people breaking in (and certainly the darlings) were single, childless and supported by parents or married and supported by partner and either childless or the kids had left the house. Also, the requirement you attend cons and meet the editors/agents (because no one took unsolicited) made that “privileged” requirement stronger.
It’s possible our disagreement is generational. In SF/F you are a generation behind me. You came in and started paying attention to author bios when Indie was already starting to make a difference. But what Misha says is the reason I believe in the nineties and early 2000s childless, well-to-do women dominated the scene.
Sarah, it’s not generational and you are right — about what happened in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. But that isn’t necessarily the norm now. That said, what set me off was the way the initial comment was phrased, You know I am anything but the typical feminist, so if it set me off, it is going to set others off.
Yes. I read his comment differently possibly because I have long been mad at the ladies of privilege who got all the breaks and who constantly demand respect, on top of that. I was mad at what they did to the field as a reader, and it only gets worse when they put on the Sturm und drang.
I know. But since I didn’t read them in the first place. . . .
I am not saying that all women who write are supported by their partners, or that no men are. What I am saying is that it is more likely for a woman to be supported by a partner than it is for a man to be.
I stick by that assessment. I will bet you that if you were to look at a random 100 beginning authors who are able to write full time because of a partner who is willing to support them, you will find significantly more than half are women.
Considering the fact that, at this moment, I know more women who are supporting their husbands for various reasons, I have to disagree with you. Add to that the number of writers, men and women, I know who work full time and who also write, well. . . .
Well, the people I know personally are the opposite. Neither sample is statistically significant. It would be interesting to find some actual statistics on this issue.
Depends on your definition of “supported” — yes, Dan gave me the chance to stay home and try to write. BUT it meant that I looked after the two toddlers, cooked everything from scratch, cleaned (and I demand clean), refinished the furniture and — back then — made a lot of our clothes. It probably amounted to more than a full time job. But it gave me the chance to write because it wasn’t 9-5 or brain work.
I think now that you can earn a little from early on, you’re seeing a lot more women doing that. So “supported” with qualifications.
But yes, society expects the man to be the bread winner, so way more women in that position than men (though I have a couple of men writing friends in that position with their wives supporting them and they as stay-at-home-child-minders-and-writers.)
I REALLY liked this bit..
“And your proof is that men like to buy books with naked women on the cover? Oh, my dears, don’t worry – only hetero males. The rest of them like naked men on the cover – as much as women do. Crying that “females on the cover is sexist” is both denying the history of the field and denying a fundamental fact about humanity. We kind of like the opposite sex. It’s why there is still humanity around.”
Now…….forgive me Mama Taz, Amanda… because I’m gonna cut loose…
Yep and let me turn that around for you bitter, busy bodying old biddies, screaming about this subject and saying Resnick and Malzberg are troglodytes and other fancy names. If you want to get all pissy about nearly naked females on some [nowhere near all or a major percentage of] book covers in Scifi….then how aggravating do you think YOUR panting like cat in heat reaction to the male models on the covers of nearly EVERY GODDAMN ROMANCE PRINTED,[I swear] is to us guys? And do NOT tell me that ain’t true. I worked in a major big name, well known book store for 5 long years. I always got either a laugh or a surge of aggravation when the girl who was responsible for Romance was out….because they usually dumped it on me, and sometimes they dumped it on me even when she WAS there, so I got to know the section well…since it was right next to my area of responsibility. Especially those of us that AREN’T 6′ 2″ eyes of blue[or whatever color you prefer] long flowing locks in the breeze and a body sculpted by untold hours in the gym? Hmmm….didn’t stop to think about THAT one did you? Feeling a bit hypocritical now? No? well you fucking well should be! Now shut the fuck up, sit the fuck down , and stop screaming like a goddamn banshee, and go forth unto your chosen career, whatever it might be,and carry on with it proudly instead of squalling like spoiled brats..
Oh and Sarah was right about another thing…the vast bulk of scifi fantasy nowadays is female written. It’s also oddly enough, outside of authors I’ve been reading for YEARS, comprises quite a bit of the NEW stuff I buy…because I like what those particular ladies write.. “but but..” Oh WILL you shut up?! I didn’t say there weren’t a lot of male autthors still on the shelves. I said most of the stuff that’s NEW..written NOW and in the recent past…is written by women. I didn’t say nothing was written by men or that that there weren’t a whole lot of male authors on the shelf! Jesus Christ pogo sticking across the Rockies on an inverted cross! You preachy, holier than thou wenches are hard of hearing. *walks off mumbling*
Now, now. Don’t hold back, you poor repressed fellow: tell us how you really feel.
*giggle*…*snort* ROFL
But the stupid fantasy covers featuring women dressed in nonfunctional armor and the like are just exploitative while the male models flatter the male sex by expressing their strength when showing the muscles, and besides the half naked men are more historically accurate as a bared chest would have been possible for them at almost any time period.
(Hm. There are those stories of women who used their bared tits to distract the enemy males in a fight, aren’t there? At least Anne Bonny and Mary Reed supposedly did that, I think. And some Viking woman. Okay, you can’t show nude female nipples in the cover of a not-prn book, and anyway, would be exploitative anyway since female.)
Heh. Don’t jump me, that’s something I happened to find in one of comment sections on one of the complain posts about Malzberg and Resnick after I got curious and did look around a bit. The comments in that one veered to romance covers after somebody had pointed out the half-naked men.
I’m rather fond of all those covers, male or female models or both. Pretty is pretty, and usually nicer to view than not-pretty, no matter what you are talking about. Admittedly the armor can be rather funny at times.
I love the covers too, but I like the human body. Perhaps these people are “I hate humans” and therefore themselves too insane?
Or scared of comparisons?
Okay, that’s a bit nasty, especially considering I’m nowhere close to a model, plus-sized, old or any definition, myself nowadays. But I didn’t mind the covers even when I was young and did worry about my looks (now I worry more about my health).
“And some Viking woman.”
Yep. Freydís Eiríksdóttir, Leifr Eiríksson’s sister. The story has it that she drove off a band of attacking Skrælingjar (Native Americans) by going at them with a sword while pregnant and shirtless.
It must’ve been an impressive site to behold, and I’m trying to imagine the Two Minutes Hate that image would’ve caused, had it appeared on the cover of the SFWA Bulletin. In addition to the “sexism” of the half-nekkid warrior woman, there could’ve been much additional Outrage about the depicted Oppression of the Peace-Loving Aboriginal Peoples. You know, the ones that the Greenland Inuit still use as bogeyman figures to scare their children, despite not having had contact with them for many generations?
She also murdered several of the Norse members of the expedition in their sleep. Not a woman that you wanted to get on the bad side of, to be sure.
“And some Viking woman.”
Yep. Freydís Eiríksdóttir, Leifr Eiríksson’s sister. The story has it that she drove off a band of attacking Skrælingjar (Native Americans) by going at them with a sword while pregnant and shirtless.
It must’ve been an impressive site to behold, and I’m trying to imagine the Two Minutes Hate that image would’ve caused, had it appeared on the cover of the SFWA Bulletin. In addition to the “sexism” of the half-nekkid warrior woman, there could’ve been much additional Outrage about the depicted Oppression of the Peace-Loving Aboriginal Peoples.
She also murdered several of the Norse members of the expedition in their sleep. Not a woman that you wanted to get on the bad side of, to be sure.
“Impressive sight“. Durr..
[…] Oh, and because you need more than one starter for a proper bonfire, there’s a related post over at Mad Genius Club. […]
Related to Sean’s post – and as I’d mentioned elsewhere – a majority of these SF books, especially the ones that feature incredibly sexy heroines on the covers, are written by women, and marketed to women. Often with female editors/etc. Odd that, even women readers like attractive women on the covers. I get an ironic chuckle out other women then complaining about the choices women are making….
Also related:
Ditto in other places. Came across a few articles today about someone trying to put together a “coding camp” JUST for girls, to address the imbalance that remains after decades of trying to get girls into the computer science field.
Now, I have known a couple awesome lady programmers. I’ve known a number more who managed to get a degree – in some cases personally watched them get schlub guys to help – who couldn’t THINK like a programmer.
Reportedly, the ones who’ve been “in ” a while before all the extra help and encouragement loathe the kind of ‘lady’ who made such a fuss at Pycon recently about dongles and forking repos even more than some men do.
What does it have to do with camp? Well, with the awesome resources available on how to develop websites, learn the bash shell, learn php, Mysql, python, ruby, perl, and C, and fully functional computers available dirt cheap ( for as little as $35 now if you have a TV…. a few hundred bucks years now, especially used) the only barrier for years has been a willingness to invest the time, and set aside a small amount of spare cash. Women have had no less opportunity to go buy a computer and to use their time on it programming than guys have. And no-one at the many, many language tutorial sites knows if the reader is a guy or a girl.
Programming will have a correct answer (or rather several of them) that is tested by reality and use. It doesn’t care how you feel about it or who you are; it doesn’t care if you are tired or grumpy or sick; it isn’t scared of HR or being browbeaten. You do it right, probably 99% by yourself; or it doesn’t work, and that is your responsibility.
The official announcement of Jean Rabe’s resignation is up on the SFWA site.
I’m glad to see that several of the authors here are not members (including Sarah Hoyt and Dave Freer, both of whose books I’ve purchased and read with enjoyment), ’cause I’m not buying any books by SFWA members until those responsible for this little witchhunt lose their jobs as well. So… if you belong to SFWA and you want my money, you’re going to have to choose.
Yes, I’m looking at you, Scalzi. You’ve gone from “buy or preorder as soon as I’m aware of a new book” to “do not buy”. The same goes for any book edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden.
You thought throwing someone else to the wolves means they’ll eat you last? You thought that knuckling under to the fascists just because they were screaming the loudest was the safe thing to do? Guess again.
I’m just one guy, true enough (albeit a guy with 12,000+ paper books and close to a thousand Kindle books), so I don’t expect this to impress them per se. That’s fine. Continue enjoying your little fascist circle-jerk. You’ll just be doing it without any of my money.
It’s become a little frenzied ‘_I_ denounced first. You can’t suspect me!’ ‘Well, I denounced louder! and I sent the whole family to Siberia!’ ‘Ha, well I cut the unborn baby out of his neighbor’s daughter’s belly and put it on a spit, still wiggling. That shows you how pure _I_ am.’ I barely know Mike, but the little I do I’d say he was a loyal SFWA member (he told me how wonderful it was), and did his level best to fit in with the ethos of the group, play the game by their rules, be in line. He certainly was no John Norman. My impression is that he’s like so many authors who played nice with the publishing establishment – never really got much in the way of rewards for that, and are scraping along into old age. So many old sf/fantasy authors seem to die impoverished, it does make you wonder how the establishment squares that with its credo? If they were taking someone like me or Sarah down, I’d kind of understand. Perhaps someone should start a little trial by internet push-back – vote with your money.
“It’s become a little frenzied ‘_I_ denounced first. You can’t suspect me!’”
Indeed. It reminds me of the stories about Stalin’s all-night drinking parties. At the end of the evening’s festivities, anyone he judged to be insufficiently loyal was taken outside and shot.
“Perhaps someone should start a little trial by internet push-back – vote with your money.’”
That’s exactly what I’m planning to do. I hope others follow suit.
Cut me some slack, please? My membership won’t lapse until the end of this month…
Well, if they have a provision for that, you could resign. 🙂 That in itself would send a valuable message, I think.
I stopped purchasing anything by Scalzi after the post about the white male being the lowest difficulty setting (or something like that) and I was a huge fan prior to that. Now I’m done for good.
Patrick Nielsen Hayden is an arrogant fucking twatwaffle — that alone should have resulted in him being boycotted a couple decades ago.
I stopped reading his blog after he (knowingly) marched in a Stalinist-organized “antiwar demonstration” during the Bush era, but before now I didn’t want to take it out on his authors.
That’s changed.
Note that this isn’t due to the antiwar stance as such. I had, and have, many friends who were, and are, opposed to war (both those wars in specific and war in general). It was the Stalinism.
I have no idea if he still thinks it’s a moral imperative to lend his support to the intellectual heirs of the worst megamurderer in human history, though I’m sure it must be a little harder nowadays — the Stalinist parades appear to have dried up since Obama took office. This, despite the ongoing fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama missiling the crap out of Pockyston on a near-daily basis, the recent horrors in Libya, and Syria standing right there in the on-deck circle.
Nobel Peace Prizes: is there anything they can’t excuse?
I think I’ve heard that Mao out scored Stalin. That said, Stalin appears to have played a role in that man ending up in charge.
“Yes, a woman can have a brilliant legal career and raise twin boys, provided she either doesn’t care much for the twin boys or doesn’t do both at once.”
Or, my option was to go part-time. That works, too. You do have to let go of the “brilliant” goal. Also, you have to be lucky or a subject matter expert so that they want to keep you.
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