Yeah, there was another huge blow-up online yesterday. It happens. And yet again it was caused by someone who is a former member of SFWA. Please bear that in mind.
These online embarrassments are not an indication that people should leave / not join SFWA. Nor, except in the minds of controversy-obsessed journalists, are they evidence that science fiction and fantasy are still a boys-only club. What they are is evidence that SFWA, and the SF&F community, are changing, and that the conservatives are unhappy about it.
That’s not something to be embarrassed about, it is something to celebrate.
Yes, it was kind of obvious that the exchange was a last gasp attempt for people who hold hurtful/harmful/inappropriate opinions to try and find others who are similarly misinformed.
I guess it must be hard for folks who have forever been in a majority to realise they’ve been “living in the Matrix”, that everything they’ve held to be truth so far, to be a lie. Funnily enough, there was a quote about future readers looking upon our time as an era of Assholism, (or very paraphrased, I don’t want to swim though that filth again, LOL) and I thought– they really don’t know how so very close to the truth they are going… 😉