April 30, 2013

"There is consternation at Wikipedia over the discovery that hundreds of novelists who happen to be female..."

"... were being systematically removed from the category American novelists and assigned to the category American women novelists."

I remember going to bookstores, circa 1990, where "Fiction by Women" was a separate section from "Fiction." These were places that were pro-woman, I'm quite sure, because I remember seeing Camille Paglia's "Sexual Personae" displayed with a warning label that it might not be what you were expecting and that you should bring it back for a refund if you bought it under the mistaken impression that it was good feminism and then found yourself offended.

ADDED: The biggest problem is leaving the male category plain rather than calling it "American men novelists." (Is the parallelism jarring? It should be "Female American novelists" and "Male American novelists.")

125 comments:

Known Unknown said...

War on Women!

Methadras said...

But, but, but, that's categorist...

Marty said...

My smelling salts!

bagoh20 said...

Separate but equal. I bet the guys wouldn't mind if they were moved to "American male novelists", but we actually are proud of our gender, because we don't vote like little boys.

Original Mike said...

"you should bring it back for a refund if you ... found yourself offended."

Don't know why, but made me laugh.

Paddy O said...

"Female American novelists"

Novelesses.

Original Mike said...

"It should be "Female American novelists" and "Male American novelists.""

Why stop at two categories?

Original Mike said...

"It should be "Female American novelists" and "Male American novelists.""

Were female novelists put in the female novelist category if their work had nothing to do with gender?

Brew Master said...

What, no transgender novelists section?

Sexists!

Nonapod said...

May I suggest a few more catagories:

Female Self Identifying Novelpersons
Genderless Novelpersons
OmniGender Novelpersons

edutcher said...

We must always remember womyn are different.

Ann Althouse said...

I remember going to bookstores, circa 1990, where "Fiction by Women" was a separate section from "Fiction."

Perhaps that was meant to warn the prospective reader women authors aren't was good as authors.

Smilin' Jack said...

It's only fair. It's like the NBA and the WNBA. You can't expect the likes of Jong and Kingsolver to compete with Updike and Roth.

jacksonjay said...


Women Justices
Latina Justice
Jewish Justices
Catholic Justices
Black Justice
Ivy League Justices
Male Justices
Clinton Justices
Bush Justices
Obama Justices
Gay Justices(?) surely we must know

TosaGuy said...

isn't digital categorization basically a virtual binder? In this case, one that is getting more full?

TosaGuy said...

isn't digital categorization basically a virtual binder? In this case, one that is getting more full?

John henry said...

Sarah Hoyt a female author just penned a long screed about this identification of writers by sex. Well worth a read:

http://accordingtohoyt.com/2013/04/27/rats-in-their-heads/

John Henry

Balfegor said...

Does Wikipedia not let articles sit in two nested categories at once? Clearly an article can be in two parallel categories (e.g. "American Writers" and "Mystery Writers", etc.) at once. Wouldn't it be easiest to just leave the female authors in the parent category too? Why is someone deliberately removing them?

Big Mike said...

What do they do when the book is co-authored by members of both genders? Just askin'

ricpic said...

I came into this bookstore for GOOD FEMINISM! None of that provocateur Camille Paglia undermining holy writ subversive stuff for me!

Nonapod said...

It's weird that on one hand feminists bristle at terms like "anchoress" and "stewardess" due to the delineation of gender, only to proceed to delineate gender in situations like this one with "Women Writers".

Balfegor said...

Re: John:

Sarah Hoyt a female author just penned a long screed about this identification of writers by sex. Well worth a read:

http://accordingtohoyt.com/2013/04/27/rats-in-their-heads/


I generally agree with the thrust of her screed there. But I did take a class on Japanese women writers in college, for the simple reason that I had read and enjoyed a lot of novels by Japanese female writers. And had enjoyed them more than the male authors (I have since discovered that this is largely an artifact of what got translated into English -- my favourite Japanese authors are now male, though I still like some female authors).

Anyhow, I was the only one taking the class because I actually liked Japanese female authors. Everyone else was taking it for the agitprop/graduation requirements. And it was full of the usual rubbish about deconstructionism and gender studies and what have you. But there was some actual study on the side.

Shanna said...

I remember a black author complaining about being put in the AA Fiction section at the bookstore.

The wikapedia thing is stupid though. American novelists should include all novelists (or at least whichever get added because can you imagine what a mess a complete list of novelists would be?) and any separate groupings should include just those (female/male/however else you want to categorize it).

Freeman Hunt said...

Were I a novelist, I would be furious at being assigned to some gender ghetto.

Rocketeer said...

Do the English and French novelist categories have analogs?

Where do Evelyn Waugh and George Sand go?

I'm Full of Soup said...

Don't we also need a category for gay novelists so Obama knows who to call and congratulate for their bravery?

PianoLessons said...

Toni Morrison (who won Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 - was said to be very upset that her works were listed in African American Literatire and not with the white boys - Hemingway, Faulkner, O'Neil.

I always agreed with her on this. Labels kill and constrain.

Chip Ahoy said...

Wikipedia is amusingly circular sometimes.

On Taranto's Best of Web he has a category called: Fox Butterfield, Is That You?

[fox butterfield]

wikipedia explains so neatly it appears to be written just for my inquiry. It answers why Taranto would categorize like that. It's perfect. Too perfect. Then the wikipedia entry for butterfield concludes with its own category criticism "The Butterfield Effect" is often brought up by James Taranto in his column for the online editorial page of the Wall Street Journal called Best of the Web Today, typically bringing up a headline which displays the effect with the joke "Fox Butterfield, Is That You?"

Ba-doom tish

It's as if Taranto edited the page himself.

Amartel said...

Consternation occurs ...

When your grievance becomes your identity.

When you want to be recognized as "special" and find yourself riding the short bus. The one for the "special" kids.

When your grievance is kinda fake because you don't really want to be associated with anyone else who has the same grievance. (You just wanted the recognition for YOU.)

When you view anything and everything that happens to you as an attack.

JackOfClubs said...

The biggest problem is leaving the male category plain rather than calling it "American men novelists."

Actually, I don't agree. The biggest problem is that the "American Novelists" category should be generic which includes the Male and Female sub-categories. Removing females from the generic category isn't merely sexist, it actually reduces the utility of the taxonomy.

Balfegor said...

RE: Rocketeer:

Where do Evelyn Waugh and George Sand go?

What's the ambiguity with Evelyn Waugh? That was actually his name. It's a fine male name, like Courtney, Aubrey, Leslie, Ashley, and Vivian.

Chuck66 said...

That is the new thing with you liberals. I've heard the words "all genders" several times recently.

Rocketeer said...

Balfegor, I was joking.

I know "Evelyn" was his real name. Evelyn is a perfectly fine name for a man.

Kind of like "Sue."

gerry said...

Where can you find a decent Vegesexual American novelist store?

Chuck66 said...

Amartel....so true. One of my aquaintances.....a 30ish gal from an upper middleclass very white suburban family (parents are 60s liberals). She is trying so hard to be a victim. Kind of a Rosa Parks with a BMW in the carage.

So I constantly hear about "woman's rights", and how proud she felt on the (whatever year) anniversary of women getting the right to vote. How getting free birth control is a basic womens civil right. And how hard women have it today.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Paddy O said...

Novelesses.

Novelasses

Nonapod said...

Speaking as a consumer, from a categorization standpoint the most important thing about the work isn't who wrote it, it's what's in it. I don't care much what the gender, nationality, ethnicity, religion, and/or sexual orientation of the writer is, I just care about what the book is about. Is it fiction or nonfiction? If it's fiction, is it sci-fi or mystery or historical fiction ect. If it's nonfiction is it a biography or a history or sociology or self help ect? What's the topic?

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

Were I a novelist, I would be furious at being assigned to some gender ghetto.

Ah.. but then you would miss out on that whole 'graffiti is art' thing.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

If only they had a workshop in high school to teach them such words as pansexual and genderqueer.

traditionalguy said...

So why can't you gals get yourself a male pen name like George Sands did it? She was great feminist.

And who is afraid of Virginia Wolfe?

Chuck66 said...

Its like black authors. If they just write a book, it is in whatever section (Fiction, History, etc) of most mainstream bookstores.

Unless it is a Cornell West style angry victim book. Then it goes into cultural or socialogy or something like that.

So in that way, it is the content first, skin hue not as much.

Original Mike said...

I never venture into the fiction section. But I think science books should be categorized by the gender of the author. So we know which ones are the good ones.

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

Ill suggest a modest proposal..

If the book jacket has a blurb by Gloria Steinem or someone of her persuasion... the book should be in the Woman Authors category.

If the book jacket has a blurb by Ann Coulter or someone of her persuasion... the book should be in the Men Authors category.

If the book doesn't have jacket, it should be in the sports section.

KCFleming said...

Why don't they instead use the category "Chronically Offended"?


KCFleming said...

Or better:
To Be Avoided:"

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

what color are they. That matters most.

pink?
brown?
tan?
whitish?
white?
gold?

Dante said...

The biggest problem is leaving the male category plain rather than calling it "American men novelists."

The MC/PCism of modern day intellectuals.

On the one hand, there is the very strong desire to not call out group attributes.

But intellectuals insist dividing groups by their most visible group attribute (which ought to be the least significant attribute) into "Women," "African Americans," etc., all of which have the obvious quality of pointing out people are different based on sex, race, etc.

See how confusing this is.

"you must not apply group attributes!"

"you must apply group attributes!"

The idea is to hopelessly confuse and cow people. It's kind of disgusting, actually.

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

Why don't they instead use the category "Chronically Offended"?

Because some of those books belong in the "Obama's Economy" category.

KCFleming said...

@Dante:

"In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is...in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.
― Theodore Dalrymple

Bender said...

How in the world is it wrong or even controversial to recategorize some "American novelists" as "American women novelists"??

Just yesterday we were celebrating how great it was to recategorize an "NBA player" as a "openly gay NBA player."

Aren't we supposed to label people now?

Anonymous said...

Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Flannery O'Connor. What category do you put them in?

I think "women writers" means vaginally obsessed or (thank you, Pogo) Chronically Offended. Everyone else is just a writer.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
KCFleming said...

"Aren't we supposed to label people now?"

Only the right people with the purest motives can so label.

Even then, mortal sins can be committed. It is a constant struggle to keep the true faith, and not violate its principles, even accidentally.

Shanna said...

How in the world is it wrong or even controversial to recategorize some "American novelists" as "American women novelists"??

Because they removed them from the total list! As balfagor said, an individual can be in two categories at once and it makes the category of 'american novelists' completely useless to remove a large number of american novelists, if one is using it for reference.

BarrySanders20 said...

This was the most amusing line:

"if you bought it under the mistaken impression that it was good feminism . . ."

Oh those dashed expectations of earnest, humorless feminists. Thinking any of it might be good is the first mistake.

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

Amanda Filipacchi belongs in the Hot Authors category.

n.n said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
n.n said...

There is a time for men. There is a time for women. Most of the time is, however, for human beings.

Astro said...

Another reason for people to get their panties in a wad.
Clearly a suppression of women and one more step down the road toward the destruction of civilization.

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

Clearly a suppression of women and one more step down the road toward the destruction of civilization.

All that from just one guy in Detroit.

chuck said...

Well, at least they noticed. I wonder how long it took...

Bender said...

The real outrage is not that they were recategorized from "American novelists" to "American women novelists," but that they were not recategorized from "American novelists" to "American gay women novelists" and "American straight women novelists."

Obviously Wikipedia is populated by homophobes.

They need to disclose who the gay women are. After all, we were told yesterday that it is our business after all to know these things. Even when we do not care, we are made to know. So let's have it, Wikipedia.

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

Its kind of like this Collins basketball gay guy.

The things that we are occupying...

I mean, I don't want to sound like I'm whining either, but...

The soap operas are wearing thin.

Mitch H. said...

Tribalist horseshit. "Oh, George Elliot was a woman, therefore little girls will feel all empowered and proud to have the right set of genitals"! Bah. I'm willing to bet that the majority of novelists I still read have concave nether regions rather than convex, what does that have to do with the price of type on the machinists' market?

Synova said...

It's the essential "fail" for feminism, isn't it? If Hillary Clinton is jetting around the world speaking about "women's issues" she's speaking about something narrower and smaller than matters of State.

The same thing with all of those professional feminists who are all about women all of the time... if the world is a box they've just declared themselves master of the shoebox in the corner and irrelevant to the rest of it.

With literature it's absolutely that way. In New Mexico there's a big deal about Hispanic authors. It's meant to promote them, but it does so by marginalizing them.

If I ever publish a science fiction novel, and someone tries to put me in a female science fiction writer box, that person is not my friend.

As for just keeping up parallel constructions so that there is no longer just novel writers but there are male novel writers and female novel writers (and novel writers in transition)... the men are just going to laugh at how stupid that is.

Michael K said...

We had "aviatrix." Why not novelitrix ?

Scott M said...

I've said it once...I'll say it again...

Just how affluent does your society need to be before things like this become a concern?

Rocketeer said...

Another reason for people to get their panties in a wad.

I think I'm offended: I wear boxers.

Synova said...

"There is a time for men. There is a time for women. Most of the time is, however, for human beings."

Well put.

Amartel said...

Pogo,
Thanks for the Dalrymple quote. Summarizes beautifully some vague accumulated suspicions I've had about the intellectual investment in The Narrative. I see the emotional investment, that's obvious, but always felt like there's got to be more than that. Once you're in you've got to be ALL IN and stay there. Sit. Stay. Or there will be shame. As the Facebook guy is finding out.

gadfly said...

it is all my brother's fault. As a voracious consumer of fiction, he absolutely refuses to read female authors.

George Eliot, of course, was the first author to recognize this attitude to be prevalent among sexist males.

Freeman Hunt said...

I wouldn't want to be on a women's list at all. If I were a novelist and found myself on it, I would sign up for a Wikipedia account and repeatedly delete my entry in that category.

Luke Lea said...

Obvious compromise: one list for American novelists, one list for American male novelists, one list for American female novelists.

KCFleming said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
KCFleming said...

Is there a Writes Like A Girl category?

Hagar said...

OTOH, there are several quietly good women historians these days.

KCFleming said...

It's probably beneath the Gay NBA authors category, newswise.

Michael K said...

Two of my favorite novelists, both dead, are Helen MacInnes and Mary Renault.

Helen MacInnes wrote spy novels from the 30s to the 70s that are great travelogues and spy stories. Her "While Still We Live," about the early days of Wold War II, is considered the best description of the Polish Resistance in fiction. Her husband, Gilbert Highet, was with MI 6 for a while and is thought to have told his wife some classified info.

Her "Assignment in Brittany" was required reading for British and American agents going into France before D-Day.

I have spent many pleasant hours searching for her locations in Europe when on trips. She was told that many GIs did the same looking for the village in "Assignment in Brittany" after D-Day.

She was staunchly anti-Nazi and later anti-communist, which might be a handicap these days.

Four of her novels were made into movies.

Mary Renault wrote wonderful novels about ancient Greece and the history in them is considered solid. They were all about men and some had the most sympathetic treatment of homosexuality I've read. She, herself, was gay and lived with her partner in South Africa until she died.

I have read everything that those two writers wrote and usually many times. They are not, of course, what we would now call feminist. They were just hugely successful writers at the time.

Mary Beth said...

When you create college courses to study female authors separately you teach generations of people to think of them as a discrete group.

Mark said...

Wikipedia is showing its age here. Even althouse.blogspot.com allows the author to tag posts in multiple ways, and to find posts by those tags.

Kirk Parker said...

Nonapod,

All those attributes you focus on, while omitting the one truly important question: Is it any good?

Dante said...

@Pogo: thanks for that =(.

I used to think of MC/PCism as merely being so obviously flawed, it's adherents were intellectual infants.

But it is very clever, the Orwellian "2 + 2 = 5." I wonder what happens when you put a bunch of illogical crap into a child's mind? I suppose we are finding out now what kind of adults those make.

Chuck said...

It was all a terrible mistake. They meant to assign them to the "American Womyn Novelists" category.

exhelodrvr1 said...

It's not writing writing if the author is male.

KCFleming said...

@Dante
"But it is very clever, the Orwellian "2 + 2 = 5.""

Exactly. I am now taking a different tack: mocking them.

Reading them the Dalrymple quote is useful, too. They hate it when their method is revealed. I have read that at city council meetings when bullshit is being pronounced.

dunce said...

Who got the job of checking personal plumbing?

KCFleming said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
bbkingfish said...

The categories are market-driven. Many readers search specifically for fiction written by women. Not so many look for fiction written by men. (Does UW have any courses in Fiction by Men? My guess would be no.)

KCFleming said...

"personal plumbing"

Damned anatomiconormative.

It's the plumbing you identify with, you other-phobe.

caplight45 said...

I would hope that a wise Evangelical Christian man with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a Latina woman who hasn’t lived that life.

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

A Tiger Woods Memoir would be in....

ricpic said...

Writes like a girl would be the gothic horror niche. Women own that genre and have since the Bronte sisters and Mary Shelley.

ricpic said...

Patricia Highsmith is another horror show view of the world writer and possibly a woman.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

It's an important distinction. Call me a pig or a snob (or both) but 95% of modern female novelists are unreadable. Unless recommended by someone whose judgement I trust, I don't even bother to read the dust jacket if the author is a woman.

Dante said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Peter said...

The term "Yellow Pages Problem" was used in the past for categorization problems.

But ye old Yellow Pages had limited space; Wikipedia effectively does not (esp. as all that's needed are additional links).

So why not list 'em under multiple categories?

KCFleming said...

Clearly the nation needs a National Day for Feeling Offended.

The 'Airing of Grievances' at Festivus is too lighthearted for such a fathomously deep topic.

I smell university grants.

Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...

Is this another case of "We're DIFFERENT!. We demand to be treated the SAME AS EVERYONE ELSE!"

(Not particularly directed at women as a group - we've all seen various segments of humanity saying this.)

Strelnikov said...


Personally, I think the parallel system would be very helpful. That way, when you want a collection of maudlin drivel you can directly to the source.

Paco Wové said...

I think there's a lot of conclusion-jumping-to going on in this thread. From what I can tell, the recategorization wasn't prompted by any sort of feminist agenda; rather, it is yet another example of an Aspergery OCD-ridden editor, something that Wikipedia is full of. I doubt he cares one way or another about promoting Feminism! as long as everyone is lined up in proper order (alphabetical by last name, then by height).

KCFleming said...

No, Paco, that can't be right.

There must be a devil in the details.
It's how I roll.

Unknown said...

Gender trumps nationality.

Sam L. said...

Original Mike said...

"It should be "Female American novelists" and "Male American novelists.""

Why stop at two categories?

I was surprised at the #s--551 pages for women, 111 for men. Is this because women talk so much? OM's right. there should be LGBTQ pages as well. Or just one, so that someone who's just teddibly, teddibly upset, doncha know, about a woman whose name starts with Z being stuck at the end of the listings because Those Damned Greeks and Romans and every misogynistic bastard who had a hand it developing our alphabet...

Dante said...

Forget about the chafe (all those useful idiots who support this stupid crap).

It's a conspiracy by the ultra-elite are thinking of a way to confuse and screw up the populace, make them bow down before society instead of standing free as individual thinkers.

The goody two-shoes people who studied hard in high school but never learned to think for themselves have their concentration entirely on "Fairness." Exactly where socialists want it to be.

And if you don't believe it is a conspiracy, then how did this sprout up in Europe, only to infect the US?

And why are we following that once exemplary standard of Western Civilization into the decline? I don't get it.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Ann,

It should be "Female American novelists" and "Male American novelists."

Damn straight it should.

Palladian said...

Wikipedia also keeps extensive lists of Jews.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Yeesh, people. Cornel West, one "l". George Sand, one "s." George Eliot, one "l." Virginia frakkin' Woolf.

The illiterates here are not really doing themselves many favors.

CWJ said...

I am so tired of Wikipedia or however it is written. Are they really the only on line source of information? Look, they reflect the culture of which they are a part. You could say the same about Britannica.

But because it is mainstream intellectual posing, it means you're going to get the same asininity as Entertainment Tonight only gussied up in a patina of self conscious respectability. Outside of dates and recitations of fact, I have little confidence in them providing analysis other than the communally agreed upon sense of wisdom. It is only as good or accurate as those who care about Wikipedia. And caring about Wikipedia does not grant you any degree of truth much less dispassionate objectivity.

Authors - women authors, I could not care less. It is all posing and trying to control the narrative. What else could you expect from a communal attempt to classify the "truth."

I am soo tired of reading or seeing something of which I want to know more only to have every search engine on earth send me to Wikipedia. Obviously, I have no idea how to phrase my query correctly.

CWJ said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Astro said...

Look, there's a simple way to figure out how to sort-out the shares of Wikipedia positions for novelists.

Just do this:
Shares

caplight45 said...

I posted this on my Fb page last night having grown weary of the constant parsing and partitioning of America into groups, sub groups and sub sub groups each with their own agenda. If it's OT forgive me.

"The last few weeks have been pretty bad news wise but upon reflection I think the American people have acquitted themselves very well. Sadly, it takes those gut-ache moments for us to drop our differences as people and run to the fight. For some it meant literally running into the smoke, fire and carnage to protect their communities and to save their brothers' and sisters' lives. When a third of your town just got blown up in a conflagration of biblical proportion or when your legs are hanging by a thread as a stranger lays down in your blood and bits of flesh to tend the wounds and give you comfort no one ever asks who is a Democrat or Republican, progressive or conservative or even if a Jew, Christian, Muslim or atheist is holding their hand. The reason simply put is in that moment what matters is that we are Americans whether by birth, by life journey or by aspiration and ideal.

I pray we can live into the hope that gave birth to our nation and that our vision will do honor to our founders and to the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness that they envisioned for themselves, for their children and for generations unimagined.

So in that spirit and claiming my Philly roots here is a cover of the O'Jays, "Love Train,"
with Hall and Oates (Temple University!), Billy Ocean and Maxi Priest. "Love Train" was written and produced by Gamble and Huff, recorded at Sigma Sound with the great MFSB house band for Philadelphia International Records. It's got "Philly Soul" written all over it. Enjoy! Oh, and if the opportunity presents itself and the need arises, run to the fight and should some knucklehead ask you who you voted for, tell him, "I voted for an American.""

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=flsYdU64SGE

Nomennovum said...

Isn't fiction just making shit up? Women should be great at that. I say, " Give 'em a whole book store." That's what I say.

KCFleming said...

Terrific, caplight.

Known Unknown said...

Where do put Nicholas Sparks?

He does have a vagina, after all.

Chip Ahoy said...

Matt, rcommal, Please forgive the double post here and at the barely Pink Café but I do not know if you are time travelers such as myself and I would not want you to miss the autistic child Mead shown with his preference for pink Princess Peach rolling backpack for his trip to Disney World.

That was really fun. I love that kid.

Dante said...

Damn straight it should.

Sounds like you feel strongly about this. Why?

DADvocate said...

THe same phenomena as Black History Month, etc. It's supposed to be an great honor to be singled out by race, gender, sexual preference, shoe size, and such. Funny how someone so honored actually noticed it's actually a put down.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Dante, I feel strongly about this because I think that it's preposterous to have a separate category for one gender/sex/whatever without doing the same for the other.

Dante said...

More fun in the PC sun.

Oompa Loompa doompadee doo
I've got another puzzle for you
Oompa Loompa doompadee dee
If you are wise you will listen to me

Who do you blame when Chris Brousard's a brat
saying that gays are sinners and crap?
Blaming the black is a lion of shame
You know exactly who's to blame:
It's got to be society!

Oompa Loompa doompadee dah
We only need one rule for all
Then we'll live in harmony too
Like the Oompa Loompa doompadee do

Dante said...

Dante, I feel strongly about this because I think that it's preposterous to have a separate category for one gender/sex/whatever without doing the same for the other.

Got it. So if it's OK to have La Raza, then it's OK to have white supremacists.

Personally, I would rather get rid of La Raza, but on the other hand I don't have a problem with whatever group doing whatever they want so long as it's not against my rights.

Known Unknown said...

THe same phenomena as Black History Month, etc. It's supposed to be an great honor to be singled out by race, gender, sexual preference, shoe size, and such. Funny how someone so honored actually noticed it's actually a put down.

Every month is a black history month.

Every month is an American history month.

Mitch H. said...

The illiterates here are not really doing themselves many favors.

It's a second-rate mind that can't find but one way to spell a name.

SGT Ted said...

It is ideological policing. Nothing more than that.

raf said...

Who got the job of checking personal plumbing?

Perhaps the jacket picture should be required to display a nude portrait of the author engaging in "its" preferred sexual activity. Just to be sure, you know.

Fred Drinkwater said...

Paco Wove hints at the proper solution, which has been known on the sunrise side of the pond for decades. In one of Dawkins' popular evolution / genetics books ("Blind Watchmaker", IIRC), he has a chapter on categorization. He gives as an example of the general difficulty, the ongoing and contentious arguments at his university's library over categorizing and shelving books. Apparently this was only ended when a very senior prof proclaimed that "everyone knows the right way to shelve books! Shortest on the left, tallest on the right!"

Æthelflæd said...

" On the subject of the feminist business, I just never think, that is never think of qualities which are specifically feminine or masculine. I divide people into two classes: the Irksome and the Non–Irksome without regard to sex. Yes and there are the Medium Irksome and the Rare Irksome."

- Flannery O'Connor