XPost: alt.cyberpunk, alt.freespeech

William Gibson is the science-fiction author credited with starting the cyberpunk subgenre. In his 1982 short story "Burning Chrome", he coined the word cyberspace, and in his first novel, 1984's Neuromancer, he popularized the term matrix in reference
to a virtual or computer-simulated reality.

Having recently finished Neuromancer, there's no doubt in my mind that Gibson is a mangina.

The evidence:

* In Neuromancer, the protagonist's main love interest, Molly, a tough, black-leather clad contract killer who initiates a sexual relationship and then at the end ditches him for the sake of her career, represents the ultimate mangina fantasy of being
dominated by a strong, independent woman.

* After being unceremoniously dumped by Molly, the protagonist winds up with a girlfriend with the masculine name Michael.

* In my edition (an Ace paperback with a green cover), there's a promotional excerpt in the back from a 2019 novel called Agency. In Agency, every character is a woman: the protagonist, the detective, even the president of the United States!

* Most damning of all is a line from the author's 2004 preface to Neuromancer: "Imagine a novel from the sixties whose author had somehow fully envisioned cellular telephony circa 2004, and had worked it, exactly as we know it today, into the fabric of
her imaginary future." Generically using the pronoun "her" instead of the traditional "him" is a childish, petty way of flipping the bird to "the patriarchy" and signaling allegiance to feminism, especially in the context of science fiction, a genre that
is dominated by and primarily appeals to men. When a man does this, you can be sure his balls are the size of apple seeds.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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