The Cerebral  Writer
  • About
  • Books
  • Blog
  • Links

Guest Author Nicholas Wilson: International Women's Day

3/8/2013

2 Comments

 
Please welcome guest blogger Nicholas Wilson, who offers a provocative, fictitious take on the gender war.  Don't forget to take him up on his free book offer (details below).

Picture
I always knew I was in trouble writing Whores. The title is provocative, and it was hard for me not to feel the politically correct pull to change it. That was my inner coward, who needed to be ignored. The story isn't really about "whores"- that's the epithet slung in the direction of the strong women at the center of the novel. And I knew to tell their story, I was going to have to have a modicum of the strength they had.
 
But before we get too deep into the media of our res, I should mention how those women came to be in the first place. Last year, I became outraged and terrified when politicians started using words like "legitimate rape" in public, without the expectation that it would cost them. But Whores was dangerous concept, and I quickly realized the story needed to be about the characters and how they dealt with that danger, not about my perhaps paternalistic desire to shield them from bad men.
 
So I started with a question. How bad could it really get? Back alley abortion is one of those terms that gets trotted out early in any abortion debate. But would they be in back alleys? Certainly not at the beginning. There would be plenty of people with training, and sympathy, willing to put their livelihoods, their careers, and possibly even their lives on the line to safeguard a woman's rights. I imagine most of them wouldn't think about that last possibility too hard- after all, not that many abortion providers have been murdered in cold blood (unless we're talking proportionally). 
 
That phrase, 'safeguarding a woman's rights,' became a central theme very early on. I think too often the "rights" part of the reproduction debate gets overlooked. This isn't just about a woman's desire not to gain weight and have swollen ankles. It's about a woman's ability to plan her life, and her career- and for employers to be able to count on a woman's ability to do the same- things men like me can frankly take for granted. Not that I disregard that first argument, either; there is no other circumstance I can think of where people attempt to use the government to take sovereignty over a person's body.
 
But, as is often the case, asking that initial question of how bad it could really get didn't get us to an answer. Because the answer was really that it could get fairly bad- but that it wouldn't end there. Illegal abortion doesn't end the discussion- it's just the opening gambit. This isn't just about abortion- it's about the entire realm of reproductive rights, and frequently spills even beyond those shores. Witness the way that Sandra Fluke has been personally attacked for months for daring to suggest that birth control should be included as a minimum standard for health insurance plans.  And of course you have the legislation put forward by Paul Ryan just last month to grant personhood to eggs that haven't even implanted yet- effectively banning the most common and effective forms of birth control. 
 
And maybe, despite the bill being cosponsored by a major party Vice Presidential candidate, that seems like a leap . I'd probably grant you that- in the same way I don't think Orwell thought 1984 was really about to happen in 1948. But if you'd asked your average American in 1910 if the country would ever ban booze, they'd have laughed hard enough at the question to spill their beer- but less than a decade later, America dried up. And plausibility is kind of beside the point. The point was asking the question: if birth control prohibition happened. what then? 

Black market birth control seems like the obvious answer, and a black market birth control crackdown the obvious render, which would leave every woman with an IUD, the implant, or taking the pill for whatever reason to be in possession of contraband, and a criminal.

Picture
I wanted to look at the people on the edges, fighting for what they believed in, or fighting because they were pissed off and crazy. In particular, the 'villains' represent a virulent stray of thought that today is entitled and misogynistic, but left unchecked could quite easily metastasize into a societal cancer that could easily turn fifty percent of our population against the other half. And the women represent as diverse a melting pot as I could create without shoehorning; I wanted to have a platform for women to tell their personal (if fictional) stories, because it wasn't about the chilling world I'd created- it needed to be about how they survived in it. 

I was happy when after the last election cycle, when the likes of Richard Mourdock and Todd "Legitimate Rape" Akin were punished by voters. It's still something I take comfort in. I have no desire to be a prophet. In fact, as far as Whores is concerned, I would be deliriously happy to have history remember me as a delusionally paranoid crank whose fever dream is laughable even to the slowest of school children. But even when we step away from the precipice, there are always forces pushing us back. 

Last year, the Republican House that failed to renew the Violence Against Women Act remained in power. Likely fearful over having an International Women's Day dedicated to ending violence against women pass by while they refused to renew a fairly uncontroversial law that had been doing just that for 18 years, the House finally passed it last week. But their recent failure to avert the sequester means a reduction in funds for the programs in VAWA.  

I want Whores to be irrelevant, for us to be able to live in a world where women's health and safety aren't something to politic over. On this International Women's Day, that's what I hope and pray for. But sadly, we aren't there, yet. 

I invite everyone to download a free copy of Whores at Smashwords this International Women's Day (March 8 through March 10), and to pass it along to your friends, family, or anyone you think it might speak to. And thanks for reading.   

About the Novel:


In the near future, women’s rights are eroding, and those who buck the system are hunted as gender criminals by the authorities and rogue militias. This harrowing dystopia is seen through the eyes of a woman cast into a resistance group by circumstance, and a newly minted gender crimes detective tasked with bringing them to justice, as he grapples with whether or not that word still has meaning. 

Available at Smashwords, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo.



2 Comments
Nicolas Wilson link
3/8/2013 01:17:41 am

Leigh, thanks so much for sharing this. Here's hoping that next year when we celebrate International Women's Day, it'll be less relevant!

All the best,
Nic

Reply
Leigh M. Lane link
3/8/2013 04:57:03 am

Glad to have you, Nic.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    RSS Feed

    Picture

    Privacy Policy:

    No names or e-mail addresses listed in blog post replies will result in mailing list additions or sharing/sales to other sites via the Cerebral Writer.

    All email addresses, unless added intentionally to the body text of a post or response, will remain hidden from public view.

    Archives

    April 2021
    November 2018
    October 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009
    September 2009
    August 2009
    July 2009
    June 2009
    May 2009
    April 2009
    March 2009
    February 2009
    January 2009
    December 2008
    November 2008
    October 2008
    September 2008
    August 2008
    July 2008
    June 2008
    May 2008
    April 2008
    March 2008


    Categories

    All
    Aftermath
    Animals
    Anthologies
    Awards
    Bestseller List
    Bizarro
    Blogging
    Classics
    Contests
    Critical Analysis
    Dystopia
    Edgar Allan Poe
    Editors
    Excerpts
    Film
    Finding Poe
    Flash Fiction
    God
    Grammar
    Guest Blogs
    Horror
    Humanitarians
    Interviews
    Jane The Hippie Vampire
    Language
    Leigh M. Lane
    Literary Fiction
    Lupus
    Marketing
    Movies
    Muses
    Musicians
    My Books
    Myths Of Gods
    My Writing
    My Writing
    Nook
    Novellas
    On Writing
    On Writing
    Opinion
    Other Great Authors
    Paying It Forward
    Pirates
    Poetry
    Racism
    Redrafting
    Revelations
    Reviews
    Rod Serling
    Screenplays
    Self Publishing
    Short Stories
    Speculative Fiction
    Television
    The Hidden Valley
    The Private Sector
    The Twilight Zone
    This Site
    Trailers
    Urban Fantasy
    Vampires
    Weird Western
    Words
    World Mart
    Zombies

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.