SFWA Presidential Election Thoughts

Warning: SFWA business and potential drama ahead!

SFWA elections are coming up again soon, and after three terms, President John Scalzi has announced that he’s done trying to herd this particular clowder of cats. Knowing how difficult writers can be, I can’t imagine how he’s done it for this long, but he has my thanks for his work and service, and for helping to push through some important changes.

The first person to announce his candidacy for SFWA president was Theodore Beale, aka Vox Day. Steven Gould has also tossed his hat into the ring. I knew Gould as the author of Jumper, among other things, and we’re on at least one mailing list together. Beale’s name was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t remember where I had heard it. So I went looking…

What I found raised some concerns. Beale is a prolific blogger, and has written such pieces as Women Ruin Everything, in which he he starts out talking about Title IX and moves onto politics. He writes, apparently in all seriousness:

Orwell put it beautifully.  All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.  And the Sports Guy put it even better: women ruin everything.

Do you really think it was an accident that women were never permitted any voice in the governance of the Roman Republic or the great historical democracies such as Athens, Thebes, Imperial Britain, and Revolutionary America?  Do you really believe it to be a mere coincidence that many modern democracies, including Germany, Italy, and the member states of the European Union, were not able to survive even 100 years of female suffrage?

He also writes columns for WND, such as this one titled Why women’s rights are wrong:

I very much like women and wish them well, which is precisely why I consider women’s rights to be a disease that should be eradicated.

Or this one, wherein he describes the real threat to science:

But this is not to say there is not a genuine threat to all three aspects of science today. Unsurprisingly, it comes from the same force that is the primary threat to the survival of Western civilization: female equalitarianism.

Beale also has a history of referring to current SFWA president John Scalzi as “McRapey.” In case that was too subtle, he also titled his first such post John Scalzi is a Rapist. (Beale also talks about how rapists are more likely to vote Democratic, because one third of all forcible rapists are black.)

I wonder if the SFWA will be concerned that their current president is an admitted rapist or if they’ll take the approach towards him that NOW and the other feminist groups did towards Bill Clinton.  Of course, unlike Scalzi, Clinton never admitted to being a rapist … Wait, he claims his confession is satire?  Well, that might fool anyone unfamiliar with the concept of blown cover as cover.

He was recently asked about the value of SFWA on his blog…

VD, any value with the SFWA?

Considerable entertainment value, but other than that, not so much.

Which does tend to reinforce my gut feeling that he’s running for president for the laughs. He’s been toying with the idea of running for SFWA president for several years now. Back in 2010, after quoting a hateful rant about Wiscon, he joked (at least, I assume this is supposed to be a joke):

I feel inspired to run against John Scalzi for SFWA President next year. My platform is going to involve disenfranchising all of the female members and endorsing a Federal law banning women from writing any science fiction or fantasy that does not contain vampires or wereseals and comes with a warning label: WARNING: this is Vampire/Wereseal fiction, not actual science fiction or fantasy.

Now, Beale has argued that just because people think he’s an asshole and disagree with his personal beliefs doesn’t mean he’d be a bad leader. There’s some truth to this. But in this case, I believe his personal beliefs and proclamations would seriously interfere with his ability to lead the organization. The president of SFWA has to be able to work with others on the board and within the organization. I’ve seen nothing to suggest his ability to do this, particularly when others disagree with him. Nor do I trust him to treat members with respect, particularly if those members happen to have the “wrong” chromosomal pair.

As president, Beale would be the public face of the organization. He would have to work with a board made of up people who might not be white or male or straight, and who might not always agree with him. And my sense is that this is a disaster waiting to happen.

The first five points of his platform for SFWA presidency are here.

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Steven Gould has posted his platform and qualifications as a SF/F author here. I don’t actually have that much to say about his candidacy, save that he seems to have a realistic sense of the internal and external challenges facing the organization, has shared and supported ideas for moving SFWA forward, and certainly has a strong SF/F background.

For me though, one of Gould’s strongest qualifications is that he’s not Theodore Beale.

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For those of you who are members of SFWA, please take some time to read through the discussion forums, review the Q&A with the candidates as well as their platforms, and vote.

Note: There’s a good chance this post will attract trolls. I don’t plan on moderating the comments here, and I suggest not engaging with any trolls who do show up. I’m hopeful things will stay civilized, but if not, well, they say you can judge a man by the company he keeps…