Best Semiprozine 2021
Nov. 19th, 2021 02:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
factitiousI don't feel like I know enough about all these semiprozines to judge them properly. I don't even really know what makes something count as a semiprozine. But I do have a judgment about one of them.
One of the Strange Horizons people was awful about Isabel Fall online. Way worse than anything N.K. Jemisin did. Called her a fake woman, claimed her writing revealed her lack of womanhood, said "When I say, 'This reads like it was written by a straight white dude who doesn't really get gender theory or transition & has no right to invoke transphobic dog whistles for profit', I'll stand by my critique" and later deleted that critique.
I realize Strange Horizons decided to make their listing on the ballot absurdly long as a prank, and that the odds of having a transphobe on a list naturally go up the longer the list is. In the future, I suggest they address this by trying to be more selective. I don't think they've demonstrated a level of standards that merits being called Best Semiprozine.
The voting system would allow me to vote for one candidate and express no opinion about the others relative to each other. It does not allow me to purely vote against one candidate this way. If I vote No Award > Strange Horizons, this implicitly ranks Strange Horizons above all the others, which is the opposite of what I want to convey. I'm considering putting the other five in a randomly generated order, then No Award, then Strange Horizons.
One of the Strange Horizons people was awful about Isabel Fall online. Way worse than anything N.K. Jemisin did. Called her a fake woman, claimed her writing revealed her lack of womanhood, said "When I say, 'This reads like it was written by a straight white dude who doesn't really get gender theory or transition & has no right to invoke transphobic dog whistles for profit', I'll stand by my critique" and later deleted that critique.
I realize Strange Horizons decided to make their listing on the ballot absurdly long as a prank, and that the odds of having a transphobe on a list naturally go up the longer the list is. In the future, I suggest they address this by trying to be more selective. I don't think they've demonstrated a level of standards that merits being called Best Semiprozine.
The voting system would allow me to vote for one candidate and express no opinion about the others relative to each other. It does not allow me to purely vote against one candidate this way. If I vote No Award > Strange Horizons, this implicitly ranks Strange Horizons above all the others, which is the opposite of what I want to convey. I'm considering putting the other five in a randomly generated order, then No Award, then Strange Horizons.
