The future of the red pill

Orson Scott Card is not a good person.  I don't like him, not one little bit.  However, he did write one of my favourite books, Ender's Game.  I find it hard to reconcile these facts; generally I decide to just make sure that I never do anything that gives Card money but still read the books I love.

This weekend I started reading Ender in Exile, a book following Ender after the events of Ender's Game.  I figured I would enjoy the book and it would be a guilty pleasure.  Instead the book pissed me off and I don't even plan on finishing it.

Ender In Exile in many ways a predictable followup to Ender's Game, but it goes off the rails with Card pushing his crappy sexist bullshit.  Much like many other highly successful authors before him, Card pushes out sequels to make cash but inserts bigoted views because he is big enough that he can get away with it.

This time it is all about relationships.  Card makes it clear that the only way that human society can function is monogamy, and that it has to be enforced monogamy.  This is silly and flies in the face of all of the evidence, but initially I was merely irritated.  I am all about non monogamy, but fine, the characters in the book are ignorant, I can cope.  The thing that really got me was a scene where on a planet where monogamy has been arranged and is seriously policed.  In the scene, a top male scientist had a subordinate female scientist desperately try to convince him to have sex with her to give her smart babies.  She desperately wanted to lie to her husband explicitly because she wanted better genes for her children.

I am disappointed that Card has added 'red pill' sexist bullshit to his repertoire of evil.  He wants to portray women as requiring enforced monogamy, because otherwise they will just cuckold their husbands for higher status / better genetics / prettier men.  Card's sexism was evident in previous books but this particular one really slapped me in the face with it, and because it also pushed my buttons I couldn't just ignore it.

I just don't know how to cope with straight men who so obviously hate women.  It is such a mess to have that combination of desire and bitterness, attraction and repulsion.  It is wretched and awful, and I am glad I have no part of it.

Don't read Ender in Exile.  Further, if you must read anything Card wrote, try not to give him money for it.  That message is an important one to send.