Seems like a lot of George Martin links around here for a guy whose work I don’t care for and don’t read, but I couldn’t resist linking the follow-up to this item: Martin breaks his usual “no comment on reviews” rule to note, with some delicacy, how much in outer space the New York Times review was.

I see this morning that legions of female fantasy readers and self-proclaimed “geek girls” and “scifi chicks” have risen up all over the internet to say all the things that I’m too polite and too busy to say.

The true perversion, though, is the sense you get that all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise. While I do not doubt that there are women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s, I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to The Hobbit first. “Game of Thrones” is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half.

Come again?

Self-hating idiot Ginia Bellafante, meet Susan Young. You will note instantly that she is another member of your physical sex. You might listen to what she has to say.

But don’t try to convince young women raised on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” anxiously waiting for “Game of Thrones” that this is anything but a series geared toward geek girls.

“From my experience, I see more women getting excited about the show than men,” said Amy Ratcliffe, a blogger for Geek With Curves. “The posts and links I’ve seen have been more from women than men.”

The last large group of rabid George Martin fans I personally observed (at a major F/SF convention in Montreal in 2009)? About fifty-fifty, as I recall. (The fact that the overall ratio of sexes at that convention approached 50/50 was in itself a rebuttal to Ms. Bellafante’s misconceptions. F/SF hasn’t been just for boys for quite a while now.)

A confluence of really bad ideas.

Did you ever notice that no one ever tries to sell men a “personal confidence system” involving their genitalia? There are plenty of men who have zero confidence in their genitalia, but no one goes there. (And no one tries to convince men to glue shinies in intimate places, either.) I will let you write your own thesis about social constructs and inherited baggage and gender norms and so forth.

I agree with one of the Consumerist commenters that linking this Onion clip at this point, while not quite entirely germane, is somehow appropriate. (NSFW tag mostly for clip, which might raise an eyebrow or two at the office.)

For some reason I have been seeing a lot of links lately to articles about how pink was not originally the color for baby girls and in fact is a late 20th century change, partly abetted by the baby-clothing industry. I haven’t linked any of these articles because I rather thought everyone already knew this.

Here is a picture of a pretty little girl in a pretty dress, who also happens to be Franklin Roosevelt.

(Hat tip: Shmuel.)

Trying to decide whether the good news aspect of this (Yay for little boy who likes pretty pink toenails) outweighs the politics/nutjob/bad-news aspect, which would normally prohibit its appearing here.

We’re pretty sure that this fuss is far worse for Beckett’s psyche than a bottle of pink nail polish ever could be.

Preach it, Ms. Cowles.