Author DESTROYS Liberal Feminist Crying Over ‘Strong Female Characters’ In Science Fiction

The Social Justice Whiners at Tor.com are back with another sackcloth-and-ashes lament about how nobody writes “Strong Female Characters” in novels anymore. At least, not the way that the emotional toddlers at Tor want them to – which is kind of hard to track, since they complain about nothing else – even when it’s something they swear they wanted (and then they admit that they don’t read anything not published by Tor – so… who’s really got the problem here?)

Enter Declan Finn, who I’ve written about before. If you remember, Declan is an author and contributor to The Catholic Geeks and he also has his own blog called A Pius Geek. Declan has taken it upon himself to fisk Tor’s latest social justice cry-fest over how women are portrayed in science fiction and fantasy (particularly urban fantasy) and his fisk is absolutely BRILLIANT. I know it’s kind of odd to quote someone who’s quoting someone else in order to mock them, but it’s worth it, trust me. Some highlights –

Every now and then, I come across a blog post or an article about Strong Female Characters. (Sometimes several come along at once.) 

Of course you do. You’re Tor.com. Don’t you guys write half of them?

Often with the capital letters, usually decrying a simplistic reading of strength. True strength, these articles argue, goes beyond mere skill at arms and a sharp tongue. True strength encompasses so much more than shallow kickassery and badass posturing.

Um … you know that those at least help, right? Emma Peel pulled that off with style.

And “shallow kickassery” … so, what? Because Krav Maga is simple and straight-forward, it’s shallow? How about something overly complicated and flowery like Tae Kwon Do.  Are you being anti-Semitic, since Krav is an Israeli self defense system. Are you against Israel now?

I joke, of course … we all know that Tor.com thinks that all kickass bits of business is shallow, because true strength comes from understanding the rapist and the ax-murderer, right, fellas?

Well, you know, I’m not likely to argue with that case. 

Of course you’re not. After all, you schmucks went after Joss Whedon, trying to call him a sexist. [Note from Miss CJ: Ah, how the Left tries to eat its own] We know that Tor is shallow.

Strength, and courage, and virtue—notwithstanding its very manly Latin etymology—encompass more than surface-level traits.

Um, one, you had to have a disclaimer on virtue? Really? Why not issue a disclaimer on the Cardinal Virtues too, while you’re at it.

And how nice, you think that virtues exist.  Wait, you mean they’re not subjective, cultural, completely anthropological?  Or are we just going to go into Lefty virtues?  Any bets? Place your bets, folks, place your bets.

The entire fisk is quite wonderful and I highly recommend it. Mostly because feminists were the ones that started this “Strong Female Character” stuff back in the day and demanded that creators write women who kick butt – but then they decided “OH NOES! You gave us what we wanted! There’s nothing for us to whine about anymore! We must be VICTIMS!” Hence, why the likes of Liz Rourke still have column space over at Tor.

Personally, I’d rather keep political discussion out of my sci-fi and fantasy hobbies because that’s what I use to escape the crappiness of reality for a little while. But then somewhere along the line (and we could have hours of discussion as to when and where this happened, but it’s irrelevant), sci-fi because the social justice vehicle of choice and the politics took over and now the genre and the industry is overrun with that garbage. We’ve even got nitwits telling us that we can’t be conservatives and/or Christians and still enjoy sci-fi. The funny thing is that conservative geeks like me and Declan Finn (and goodness knows how many others) know how to deal with stupid liberal arguments because we’ve been deconstructing this crap nearly every day for most of our lives. These sheltered little liberals wouldn’t know how to take apart a REAL conservative’s argument if it came with IKEA instructions. They can handle the strawman conservative (that guy’s a jerk) – but a living breathing conservative who’s had to contend with liberals taking over the mainstream culture on a daily basis?

That’s barely a contest!