If it's starting to feel like we're out here going "NO NO SECOND CHANCES BURN THEM ALL" about harassers in genre, it's because we've been giving them second chances, whether we wanted to or not, for DECADES.

DECADES. I was fifteen the first time a male author I respected put his hand on my ass "accidentally." Given how fast he recoiled when told I was underage, there was no accident there...but could I prove that? Then or now? Nope.

I was eighteen the first time a male editor I respected had time for all the skinny pretty girls who wanted to ask for his advice, but told me that his best writing advice was that I should lose twenty pounds.

(Because yeah, only getting into the room because you're hot is harassment...but so is being locked out of the room because you're not. It's girls as meat. It's girls as fuckability. Period.)

We have been giving these men second chances, and third chances, and fifteenth chances, for longer than I've been alive. And yeah, I get it, it sucks that they've been doing these things long enough in some cases that they had probably convinced themselves...

...that it was okay, that if they were doing anything actually WRONG, they would have been called on it by now, they would have heard. But given that what we're asking for is to be treated like people, not delivery systems for tits, I don't have a lot of sympathy here.

"Girls just see sexism everywhere!" Yeah. We do. Maybe there's a FUCKING REASON FOR THAT. Maybe sometimes it takes the mask off and we're told we'll never write the X-Men because fans don't like to read comics by fat chicks. Picturing us hurts their fantasies.

Maybe fifty years of genre award ballots being almost all male is "normal" and "organic," but ONE YEAR, ONE SINGLE FUCKING YEAR with all-female Best Novel nominees for the Hugo is "pushing an agenda."

Maybe we get to watch the "good guys" in our communities have no time for us, but all the time in the fucking world for the girl who fills out her jeans the way they want her to (and I am not trying to shame attractive women for being attractive; I'm shaming the men...

...for the way "oh she's hot" translates to "worthy of my time," even WITH the good ones, even WITH the guys whose names aren't coming up here, because they never thought of choosing HER as their mentee over someone who looks more like me as sexual harassment.)

Maybe we see sexism everywhere because even when there's no malice or intent, and nothing you could say was actual MISBEHAVIOR--I am not owed your time just because I'm not as hot as someone else--it surrounds us all the time, and it's not natural for us.

We're not fish waking up and saying "oh fuck, the water is wet." We're birds who fell in the river and have been telling you for YEARS that we're drowning, and have finally hit the point of desperation where we remind you that birds are DINOSAURS, and start drawing blood.

And because we're flailing around trying not to drown, sometimes we hurt each other in the process. Sometimes we bite the wrong neck, or push the wrong person under.

We had to fight SO HARD, for SO LONG, to even get a place to breathe that when another woman comes along looking for a rest, we may push her back into the river in desperation. Because the people with the boats have been telling us there wasn't room.

We're taught to blame the other birds, and not the boatmen. Sorry you didn't get a spot, but we had twelve men on this boat, only room for one bird. Sorry, we picked the prettier plumage. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

But it is not the fault of any of the women around you if you're still in the river. It's the fault of the ones who won't let you into the boat. And if we seem a little pissed off and merciless right now, we're waterlogged, and we have reasons to be mad.