I do think the gender bias is a big part of what occurs. I also think it’s heavily romance influenced.

I agree that there’s a strong gender-bias at work here, although I also agree that that sucks. But the Cult of Nice is highly subscribed in the mainstream romance world, whereas not so much in SF; in that community, even the women don’t tip-toe quite so much. Maybe it’s because romance is stereotypically “girly” and the writers and readers are so overwhelmingly female? :/ As someone said in your comments, women do police each other, and sometimes rather brutally. (Which is ironic given the topic, but anyway….)

Angie

PS — your link from the RTB page goes to http://www.jordansummers.com/js/ which gives a 404 error. Although I did make it here eventually.

I agree that there are very few writers who write fearlessly. I’m happy that some of my favorites do.

I’d hate to think that it boils down to gender. Then again, I know a whole lot more men who aren’t afraid to say what’s on their minds, the offended be damned, than women.

Then there’s a whole other angle such as to what’s deemed as “unprofessional” to blog about, and whether or not a writer should care about potentially offending readers. Because hot topics generally lend themselves to heated debates, and before you even have time to [perhaps] clarify something you’ve just lost a reader.

Writers, especially novelists, are told to write fearlessly, yet there are only a handful of them [that blog, in any case] I’ve seen that do just that.

I don’t think sad is the word…I’m going to go read that Scalzi post now.