Beyond Selidor

Just some further, rather flippant thoughts on the whole YA Mafia thing. Basically, it boils down to some genuine concerns being lost in miscommunication. Let me break it down for you.

YA bloggers who are also aspiring writers: Hey! We love YA literature! We love talking about YA literature. We find some popular trends in YA literature slightly disturbing, and so we will discuss them!

Some YA authors (whose works were being discussed as containing said disturbing trends): Somebody is being mean to me on the Internet! We don't like being called misogynistic! Being misogynistic is A Bad Thing, and we are nice people! We will warn these bloggers that actions may have consequences, especially if you want to work in the YA field!

YA bloggers who are also aspiring writers: Hey! Some important YA authors told us to be nice! We weren't aware that we were being mean (although perhaps some of our commenters were being kind of vitriolic, but we'll ignore that)! All we were doing was pointing out that some popular YA literature seems to us to be misogynistic!* Also, all those YA authors seem to be leaping to one another's defence! They're all friends! They're so cliquey! There is a YA Mafia! We're scared!

Some YA authors: HAHAHAHA YA Mafia! *proceed to make light-hearted posts about fedoras and sleeping with the fishes* *ignore bloggers' point about misogyny*

YA bloggers: *get more annoyed and defensive*

Sarah Rees Brennan: *continues being awesome* *actually addresses the bloggers' concerns about feminism or lack thereof in YA literature*

dolorosa_12: *disagrees somewhat that writing posts about readers' responses to confident, awesome female characters vs readers' responses to confident, awesome male characters is the same thing as writing posts about problematic misogyny in YA books* *is happy, nonetheless, that Rees Brennan at least noted that bloggers' concern was more about fears of silencing than fears of the non-existence YA Mafia*

In other words, your standard internet drama. Lots of high emotions, lots of people being Wrong On The Internet due to people avoiding listening to one another's most important points.
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* I'm sorry, but when your book has the designated love interested sexually harassing the protagonist in class to the point that the protagonist asks to change lab partners, and the teacher says that the harassment is 'probably because said love interest has a crush on you', when the designated love interest HOLDS THE PROTAGONIST DOWN ON A BED AND THREATENS TO KILL HER AND IT'S TREATED AS ROMANTIC, something isn't right. I'm not saying that the author is a misogynist, but there is no way you can argue that that is not a disturbing and misogynistic book. And there's no way that I - and others like me - are going to avoid discussing it.