Weighing in on the Orson Scott Card Kerfuffle

I'm weighing in on the Orson Scott Card kerfuffle, the one where he rewrites Hamlet to be about the evils of homosexual parents and this brings further to light his homophobia, as on display in this 2004 speech. I wasn't going to comment because if ever there was preaching to the choir, it's here in this corner of DW/LJ. But then, umadoshi linked to this other kerfuffle about YA novels being rejected for writing gay characters, and I realized that outside my little fantasy corner of the world the prejudice remains so glaring that it behooves as many voices as possible to speak against it.

So, to Card's 2004 speech: his basic contention is that anything other than a married man and woman raising children in the pre-1960s model is destructive to civilization because a married man and woman are needed to provide children with a stable family and role models of both genders without which children are very likely (though not, he acknowledges, guaranteed) to grow up troubled and low-functioning. There is a germ of a point here. As someone facing low-income single, adoptive motherhood with a 90% female social circle, I know intimately that my life will be less stable than if I had a full-time, live-in partner. I will have to search for male role models, who are important to children's understanding their society (and to just not feeling deprived relative to their peers).

Card's fallacy, however, is to mistake correlation for causation. ( Read more... )

Women Fandom Loves to Hate--Anna Grant, Day 5

Reading a lot of the other awesome posts people have been making for this meme, I realize I've been rather lukewarm in my discussion of Anna, spending a lot of time either criticizing the writing or begging for benefit of the doubt.

So here is list of things to like about Anna:

* She's smart. Oh boy, is she ever multi-talented.
* She recognizes that Servalan is a tasteless megalomaniac.
* She wants to overthrow the Federation in favor of a more reformed government. (I see no evidence that this is not true.)
* She's willing to put herself in the line of fire for her cause.
* I guess she's a fairly good orator (though we only hear her speech in the background).
* Her brother clearly loved her, so she must have done something right (given that he presumably knew her all their lives).
* She doesn't bother to pretend to be in love with her husband.

RL: Kitty

I think Kitty is happy to be home after her sojourn at my parents'. She is currently sleeping on my bed. She is the snoringest kitty ever.