The Visitor to Incel World Is Now Free On Amazon Through May 15

Get It For Free At This Link

It's an alternate world science fiction novel, I'm making it a free promo for a few days, hopefully it will draw readers to the sequel, "The Love Invasion" in which one alternate world attempts to stave off war with another. Here's da blurb on "The Visitor From Incel World:"

Ariana Heppelwhite was a promising Gender Studies grad student at Lacy Swanson College for Women in Bayport, Massachusetts. She had actually written a paper describing three hitherto unknown forms of nanoaggression! She was on track for getting a professorship and a actual job with a real salary and all the perks, maybe even tenure eventually.

Ariana had even met an unexpectedly charming incel (a phrase she had never expected to think, much less say) while doing research on incels for a grant she had. Sure, she'd done some nasty academic infighting that had an athletic department coach looking for her scalp over a transmale gaze incident, but overall, things were coming up roses for Ariana.

Then it happened. Ariana got caught in a freak physics accident while running from the gym coach, and was transported to an alternate world. And it was the exact WRONG world for a Gender Studies feminist to be transported to. It was full of women who walked around naked in public and wore collars engraved with “Property of (their significant other)” and who LOVED their collars -- and who seemed to think Ariana was a barbarian from a violent place.

And the thing was, they were all nice people, and calm people, and they just might be right about Ariana. Even more of a thing was that some not-so-nice Collar Land people thought Ariana's world represented such a threat that they should kill her for security reasons.

Will Ariana ever make it back to good old Earth from Collar Land? Will she learn to adjust to these very strange people or will she subvert their entire society? Will the not-nice people kill her? And what about that unexpectedly charming incel?

All these questions and more will be answered -- all you have to do is read this topnotch science fiction comedy!

Two Great Books About Feminists On Alternate Worlds

So, I noticed that Annalee Newitz, one of the founders of IO9, has written a science fiction novel about feminists engaged in a war with misogynists over control of their timeline. Feminists on alternate worlds, gee, sounds familiar ... wonder where I've encountered that before? Oh, right, I just wrote a book with the exact same theme (though a very different approach).

Of course, Annalee Newitz is someone with a little name recognition, and her book is being published by a traditional publisher with all sorts of marketing clout, whereas I am an unknown outside a circle of deeply disturbed fans (Go, fans!) an indie publisher whose only marketing clout is his wits, which is to say, virtually none.

So I decided to emulate traditional publishers and hitch my wagon to a star! (I mean, really, I don't know HOW many publishers announced that THEIR darling's latest magnum opus romance with just barely enough kink to it to even be noticeable was "The Next Fifty Shades of Gray." But I know it was practically all of them.)

So here's my latest publicity effort for my books. Note that I am promoting Newitz's book, too. Just bein' a stand-up guy:

Have you read The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz? (Sadly, not available on KU) It's about a group of brave feminists at war misognyists to control their timeline, protecting womankind from a future that makes “The Handmaid's Tale” look like a picnic.

Want another book about feminists on alternate worlds? Try The Visitor From Incel World by Barry Anderson, which is totally available on KU!

Thanks to Barry Anderson, you don't have to wait for Ms. Newitz to get around to writing a sequel. In “The Visitor From Incel World,” Ariana Heppelwhite, a gender studies grad student at Lacy Swanson Women's College, is caught in the aftermath of a physics experiment gone wrong and catapulted into another world, which she names Collar World because all the women in it run around naked except for their collars. And their cuffs. And their shackles.

Ariana finds this an alarming sort of world, and a confusing world. And the inhabitants feel the same way about her, with her tales of crazed incel rapist wannabes everywhere and child armies and constant warfare and sex and money being intertwined. Earth, which they named Incel World in honor of its bizarre sexual practices, frightens them. They fear invasion by the barbaric hordes of Incel World, and some of them, being very logical, decide that they should kill Ariana so she can't return to Incel World and tell them about Collar World!

Will Ariana survive? Can she change Collar World by teaching the women of Collar World how great it is to be equals with men in all things? And what about the surprisingly appealing incel (a phrase she ever expected to use) she met back in Bayport?

Only one way to find out: get the book … it's free on Kindle Unlimited. And if you haven't read “The Future of Another Timeline by Newitz, get it, too. You can't have too much mind-bending SF.

Feminism's Big Tent

So in my post on the seemingly contradictory relationship between bondage and feminism,  I said that feminism has been good for bondage, helping create the necessary freedom of choice that makes bondage a fun game for everybody.

"But," some of you may be thinking, "I hate feminism and feminists. They are always going down on men and calling porn a bad thing and trying to make us feel bad for being sexually attracted to women, or this or that sort of woman. WTF?"

It's a fair question, and the apparent difference between me and those who think like that feminism is bad is a product of a different vision of feminism I think.

Feminism is a big tent. There are hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of women who identify as feminists. Many women identify as feminists for very shallow reasons, just as many people identify as Republicans or Democrats for very shallow reasons. A lot of moms buy their daughters Wonder Woman underoos and cheer on equal pay for equal work and are against rape and more access for day care for working mothers, and that's about the extent of their feminism. This is probably (I don't really know, but it seems a reasonable guess) the majority of self-described feminists.

Somehow, I don't think these are the women whom you were thinking of, when you thought, "I hate feminism and feminists."

The ones you were thinking of, I suspect, were the more extreme feminists, perhaps academics who say things like "All men are rapists" and calling just about everything that happens between a man and a woman rape, and for outlawing porn. Those feminists.

What you need to know is that those feminists constitute a TINY portion of women who think of themselves as feminists, and that they fucking LOVE it when you conflate the two. They love it when people think they speak for all women who consider themselves feminists, even though the Wonder Woman mom feminists might not agree with most of what the extremist feminists have to say.

They love it of course because if the extremist feminists positions are uncritically accepted as the position of feminists as a whole then that amplifies the extreme feminists' voices enormously. They speak for multitudes!

They also love it because when you say, "I hate feminism and feminists" you are punching yourself in the face. You are picking a fight with every woman that thinks of herself as feminist, which means you will almost certainly lose. And you're doing it by opposing people who might find your ideas agreeable, and who might dislike the extreme feminists as much as you do. Congratulations, you're doing just what the extreme feminists want you to do.

Remember, feminism is a big tent. Don't fight the whole tent if you don't have to. I would say, oppose the feminist policy, not feminism. For example, I'm down with equal pay for equal work, opposing rape and sexual harassment, better and more child care for working women, and equal opportunities for women generally (i.e., opposed to the glass ceiling).

But I'm also opposed to letting transgender athletes compete in sports where the layout of their bodies because of the gender they were born with gives them a large advantage over people who are not transgender. I'm against assuming a man is a rapist because he is a man. I think some women can and will make false rape allegations against men, and that this needs to be taken into account when a woman accuses a man of rape or sexual harassment. But I also think that many claims of rape and sexual harassment do have something real to them, and should be investigated thoroughly. Some guys have gotten away with too much shit in real life for too long. Jeffrey Epstein is not alone.

These are nuanced positions, not easily encapsulated by "I hate feminism" or "I am a feminist." But they're mostly me trying to go with evidence and scientific proof, and trying to be fair.

But overall, I'm very comfortable saying that I am a feminist, and generally sympathetic to feminism, even though I know that SOME women who describe themselves as feminists and have leadership positions within the feminist movements would despise me just for having a sexual kink for maledom/femsub. It's a big tent, I feel comfy here.

As for those extreme feminists, I will go with trying to minimize them and discredit their ideas, where appropriate. I'm far from the only self-described feminist who doesn't care for them.

Feminism Made Sexual Bondage As We Know It Possible

Kind of an interesting coincidence, the way sexual bondage took off in American culture in the 50s and 60s via Betty Page and Movie Star News, after long being a part of culture generally, but not widely recognized. Then it really got established in the 80s

Kinda like feminism, which took off in the sixties after long being part of American culture, then became established in the 80s. The timing isn't exact, but it's close.

But I don't think it's a coincidence.

Here's the thing. One of the key points in feminism is that “No means no.” I'm down with that. Women have the right to refuse sexual roles, experiences, whatever, that don't work for them.

But the obverse is also true. “Yes” means “Yes.” Women have a right to their choices, and the ability to say “No” and have it mean something also implies the ability to say “Yes” and have it mean something.

And for sexual bondage to be possible, women have to be able to say “no” and “yes” and it has to mean something (or whatever the safeword happens to be). The personal and cultural freedom that feminism has created for women is what allows them to participate in sexual bondage.

This is why feminism is essential to sexual bondage play. I'm sure there have been exceptional women throughout history, who could do the sexual bondage play and understand it as play even in a society where women are second class citizens with great limitations on their choices, but that's what they were – exceptions.

There is a tendency on the part of people who don't understand sexual roleplay that if it's maledom/femsub play, that the participants must not be aligned with feminism. They're acting out their social/political agenda in the bedroom. There probably are people out there doing that somewhere. I just don't know if you can call it “sexual roleplay” under those circumstances, because it doesn't sound much like play.

So bondage fans owe a lot to feminism. The feminists may not have been intentionally working to ensure that women have the freedom to participate in bondage play and have it be actgual play, but that's what they did. And good for them!

 “Thanks, feminism!” -- NSFW link

What if there was no rape or sexual harassment -- the Dinosaur Conundrum!

Suppose we lived in a world where dinosaurs lived in our forests and jungles and plains and were dangerous and frequent predators of human beings.

Do you think movies about dinosaurs eating people (like Jurassic World) would be the same experience in a world where most people have uncles and cousins and brothers and sisters and parents and children who were eaten by dinosaurs?

Of course not, the movies would be a LOT scarier and would probably have trigger warnings attached to them. The dinosaurs would probably be treated a hell of a lot less sympathetically, too, not being a fantastic beast of old but a current and horrible problem.

By the same token, I don't think there was a LOT of recreational BDSM of the fun, consensual variety going on in the American South prior to, say, 1860. I'm sure there was some, human beings are human beings and we know that the bordellos of Europe offered entertainment for gentlemen that liked to tie up, cane and flog women, or be tied up, caned and flogged, etc.

But it wouldn't be as open or accepted as it is nowadays, given that nonconsensual slavery was a thing. What's going on in the culture has a LOT to do with how accepted entertainments and behaviors of various sorts of are, including sexual kinks.

That's why I think BDSM as she is now practiced is part and parcel of the success of feminism. Because we have granted women greater freedom and autonomy over their bodies, they get to use them in a wider variety of ways, for their own profit and pleasure, and for the profit and pleasure of others.

This is something many feminists do not “get.” They think BDSM of the maledom/femsub variety is symptomatic of patriarchal control of women. They ignore women who LIKE being submissives and try to deny them agency over their own bodies and decisions, without appearing too flagrantly to do so. They say submissive women have internalized the patriarchy and are acting out that internalization. They say such women are self-hating and need to be healthier and discouraged from doing all those awful things from the era of male dominance in all things.

This is not ALL feminists. There are plenty of sex-positive feminists and others who give submissive women agency to express their sexual desires just like anyone else. That's a mistake that a lot of anti-feminists make, conflating all feminists as one group. Feminism is a HUGE tent, and there are a lot of women who call themselves feminists for a lot of different reasons. Picking a fight with ALL feminists when you've only actually got an issue with SOME feminists is stupid.

But to get back to writing -- and yes, this is all related to writing, it's not just a political screed, though I'll admit it sure sounds like one – how about we take our thought experiment one step further? What if rape and sexual harassment were rare, very rare? I mean, what if women got raped about as often as people get eaten by sharks, or alligators?  We know sharks and alligators are out there, and they're dangerous animals, but very few people actually worry about being attacked by them, because it happens so very rarely.

How would women behave in such a society? How would women in OUR society look to them? And how would THEY look to women in our society?

Thinking about it yields some interesting results for the thoughtful science fiction writer, but maybe for you, too. More on that later.