I’m going to have to start this with something unfortunately unrelated.

Hi, if you’re here because of a quote taken out of context, you are likely being used by Yama the Space Fish, also known as Yamamanama, aka Andrew P. Marston. Please refer to the Yama Stalker PSA and the list of various pseudonyms. This is a man living in the US who has been stalking me since 2009 and has been attempting to get people to attack me online as well as trying to defame me as ‘anti-woman with internalized misogyny’ or ‘homophobic’ or paint me as a bigot of some stripe or type by taking my words out of context in often what are several threads deep discussions, quoting them in other websites with parts removed (like my mentions of Yama being a stalker of women). His deep hatred and misogyny has been long documented, and he has a years-long vendetta against me that includes his threatening my children for my disagreeing with him in a discussion, a threat he has repeated again and again over the years. Lately he has been trying to drag other people into his vendetta, or trick them into doing the kind of behavior they condemn.

Larry Correia fisks and dissects very neatly how racist and exclusionary the call by someone I shall refer to as Princess Teacup Tempest to ‘read only (insert racial/skin color/sexual/sexuality-based minority / non-hetero / male) writers is. It’s worth a read, especially if you are sick and tired about radfems/tumblr feminists. For the record, I’m an equalist and value meritocracy. And before someone decides to dismiss me as white and male, with all due (dis)respect, I’m not either of those.

The funny thing is, the comments themselves observe that the list of such writers would include Larry himself, as well as Sarah A. Hoyt, along with a number of authors mentioned in the comments to be female, or black, or well, not Caucasian, or not Christian, or not heterosexual (C.J. Cherryh is a lesbian? News to me… and I honestly don’t care because booooooks) – heck, I myself, if I wanted to, could tick the non-white box (I’m Filipina), the non-male box (I’m female – in fact I gave birth only last month) and quietly am not Christian (I consider my religious beliefs and practices personal and have nothing to do with my writing). By those criteria, we’d all be on the list of ‘approved authors worthy of approbation’ and Princess Tempest in a Teacup would be recommending our works to everyone!

But I don’t want to tick those boxes. I’m more than ‘just’ female, Asian, non-Christian, heterosexual. Those are only facets of what make me as a whole, and not the entirety of who I am. I am a fan of fun, inspiring, exciting stories, who wants to write stories in the hope that other people enjoy their visits to my imaginary worlds, that my readers want to know ‘what happens next?’, who dreams that young readers pick up my stories and enjoy reading, maybe outgrow me and move on to other stories by other authors, their love of reading growing with them. If anyone could accuse me of a dastardly plot, “I want people to have fun reading” is the extent of it.

When I’m writing fiction, the fact that I’m female has nothing to do with the story – after all, it’s not my vagina typing out the tale, is it? Continue reading →