I know, TL/DR, but this bothers me. Stream of consciousness writing here.
Right now there is a huge fight in the sci-fi writing world about the attempt to ban or discredit any scifi writings which aren't progressive in thought. In other words, the only scifi that is worth reading is that which promotes a progressive political agenda and/or is written by gender/color/orientation not normally represented in scifi. There have been folks suggesting that scifi books should do away with the idea of only having two genders, or that people should make a vow only to read scifi written by non-white non-male non-straight authors (or any combination thereof). It's a major issue in the Hugo Awards this year, when a bunch of authors tried to steer the awards away from the Hugos going to PC progressive Social Justice Warrior unreadable bullshit and back towards works winning the Hugo because they are GOOD WRITING regardless of politics, color, gender, etc. of the author. The SJW backlash has been HUGE. Even authors like GRR Martin (Game of Thrones) have taken to attacking the authors who pushed thru a slate of nominees that don't discriminate for any reason. And the attacks have been brutal. The main author leading the charge has been called a racist, misogynistic, homophobic wife beater. (He's Portuguese and is also none of the other things either). The other author involved was called the same things and he is married to a black woman and they have a biracial child. So yeah - slander and libel first. Entertainment Weekly actually published an article repeating those exact things until the guys threatened to sue them, and they quickly retracted the story. But the damage was done.
I say all of that to get to this: the evolution of the Internet and social media have allowed a new breed of hate to infest society. The unaccountability and anonymity of the web allows anyone to say anything they want about anyone else with very little to no fear of repercussions, especially when it comes to things like political correctness and the means by which society defines it now.
One of the authors mentioned above wrote the article I linked to. It's pretty spot on when it comes to how the progressives do the very thing they accuse others of doing - labeling, stereotyping, and discriminating against anyone who does not take up arms against the scourge of -ists and -isms which they are rabidly convinced are pervasive in society today. And they are ruining lives using social media to attack and destroy those who draw their ire. And if you don't join the mob and pick up a torch and pitchfork, you get cast into the flames too.
I've been following this fight in SciFi and it sickens me. And I see it happening EVERYWHERE - in schools, in universities, in play groups, in pop culture.
This has got to stop.
Read and discuss if you'd like. I just needed to vent.
https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/04/20/ringing-the-bell/