Date: Sun, 09 Aug 2009 23:07:03 -0400
From: "Mike B." <yahoo at omniphile.com>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Worldcon news
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

Michael Walsh wrote:
> The WSFS Business Meeting had a last minute constitutional admendment =
> proposal that the meeting declined to consider, hence there was no debate: =
>
> "We've received one piece of late new business for the WSFS Business =
> Meeting, submitted just before the deadline:  A proposal that would =
> require that in each of the written-fiction Hugo award categories, if no =
> selected nominee has a female author or co-author, the highest-ranked work =
> with a female author or co-author from the "top 15 nominees" list would be =
> added to the nominations in that category."

What a stupid proposal!  It manages, in one short paragraph, to be
sexist, condescending, and incompetent!

Sexist should be obvious.

Condescending in that it presumes that female authors need a quota
system to win a Hugo.  They've done it before without such help, and I
doubt they need it now.  C.J. Cheryh, for example, has 5 of them I
think, and was nominated for at last one more.  Seems all you have to be
is good.

Incompetent in that it doesn't deal with the situation where there are
no female-authored or co-authored nominees in the "top 15 nominees" list.

I'm not surprised that they declined to consider it.  If they had, I'd
consider putting one in requiring that there be at least one deaf
author, one blind author, one lame author, one illiterate author and one
author over 6'5" tall (hey, I might write something someday...).

-- Mike B.