I’ve started and trashed some further posts on the Clarkesworld “Attack Helicopter” story. As you are aware, I use this blog as a dumping ground for thoughts and I still have many on this topic. However, a long ramble that adds nothing to what I said earlier probably isn’t helping. Instead, here are some links to reactions I have found interesting that have come either from people I follow on social media or were forwarded by people I follow on social media.
There remain a host of questions but on most of them I think it is a matter of waiting.
I tried to read the story, but I’m just not into philosophical wrangling around abstract frameworks that are mostly meaningless to me. I tend to think that people’s gender and sexuality is more defined by gut feelings than by careful reasoning. The latter mostly used to defend what is already felt.
Speaking as a participant in another sexual minority community, I sometimes think it is a disservice to a community to be defined and guarded by the most verbal and academically prone people who will dissect single sentences and measure them against a framework that has been built up piece by piece to sometimes be hardly understandable to others. From being a participant in forum for alternative sexuality, I know the basics and a bit more, but can become quite lost when everything walks too deeply into theorising around philosophy.
I understand the need many people have, I’ve had my time of doubt and fanatical reading myself when I first started to understand how I differed from others. But having seen too many forum discussions waylaid into discussions about exact definitions of words (that have no exact definitions) or meaning of single sentences, I will try to avoid stories that are based around such discussions.
Also, having been a forum moderator (I quit most forums end last year) on a website for alternative sexualities, I’ve long since lost count of how many posts I have removed with variations of the texts in the meme (when there are kinks based on traditional gender roles, they tend to attract a certain kind of people). Seeing the title by itself tends to put me in a really bad mood and my first thought when seeing the story was “is this really necessary?”.
Camestros Felapton 
6 responses to “Some responses to the Isabel Fall story”
Bogi Takacs makes a good point.
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Carmen Maria Machado has a lengthy thread on the story and reactions to it here: https://twitter.com/carmenmmachado/status/1217204877610377217
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Interesting
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I tried to read the story, but I’m just not into philosophical wrangling around abstract frameworks that are mostly meaningless to me. I tend to think that people’s gender and sexuality is more defined by gut feelings than by careful reasoning. The latter mostly used to defend what is already felt.
Speaking as a participant in another sexual minority community, I sometimes think it is a disservice to a community to be defined and guarded by the most verbal and academically prone people who will dissect single sentences and measure them against a framework that has been built up piece by piece to sometimes be hardly understandable to others. From being a participant in forum for alternative sexuality, I know the basics and a bit more, but can become quite lost when everything walks too deeply into theorising around philosophy.
I understand the need many people have, I’ve had my time of doubt and fanatical reading myself when I first started to understand how I differed from others. But having seen too many forum discussions waylaid into discussions about exact definitions of words (that have no exact definitions) or meaning of single sentences, I will try to avoid stories that are based around such discussions.
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Also, having been a forum moderator (I quit most forums end last year) on a website for alternative sexualities, I’ve long since lost count of how many posts I have removed with variations of the texts in the meme (when there are kinks based on traditional gender roles, they tend to attract a certain kind of people). Seeing the title by itself tends to put me in a really bad mood and my first thought when seeing the story was “is this really necessary?”.
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The death of the author?!
Here are the threads I saw:
https://twitter.com/EffInvictus/status/1215994150094626816
https://twitter.com/scribblesassin/status/1215809735909347328
https://twitter.com/MariaHaskins/status/1215902798786596864
https://twitter.com/Wolven/status/1215694212957704194
I think only the first one overrlaps yours.
–Greg
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