Being Wrong on the Internets

[valarltd]

I read Tennessee Guerrilla Women. Sometimes I comment.
Of late, the fanaticism level has been rising, and I posted what I thought was a moderating sort of comment.

WRONG!
I know better than to get between true-believers and their Kool-aid.
The first thing Barbara Hambly taught me was don't argue with fanatics. Sometimes, I'm a slow learner.

I got a whole column devoted to the ways I was wrong.
http://guerillawomentn.blogspot.com/2008/07/is-hillary-clinton-riding-bills.html

And someone in the comments suggested banning me because I'm a romance writer.
Which confuses the daylights out of me.
As a writer (even one of romance), especially one of futuristics and contemporaries, I like to think I stay pretty well informed.

On the plus side?
Website traffic skyrocketed.

Comments

[dragovianknight.livejournal.com]

OMG, a romance writer! We must certainly keep your kind from having an opinion in public.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Apparently, Romance=Tool of the Patriarchy

Even when it's GLBT romance with happy endings.

[dragovianknight.livejournal.com]

Gay men are still men! Down with men!

[nbrooks.livejournal.com]

lolz Ban the eeevil romance writer! We like our kind illiterate and dumb round here!

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Actually, that's what they think I am.

Dumb enough to drive a truck, and stupid enough to like Romance as opposed to Judith Butler and other "important" writers.

[drewbeartx.livejournal.com]

Ah. Literary elitists. The same people who decry all "genre" fiction as being trash and worthless, despite holding up examples of it as high literature. Examples:

1984 & Brave New World: science fiction of the dystopian future variety

Alas, Babylon: science fiction of the apocalyptic variety

Flowers For Algernon: science fiction of the "personal impact" variety

A Christmas Carol: horror/ghost-story (special Christmas-time edition)

etc.