For me, this story begins here, with Paul Constant commenting on Slog about the fanboy backlash against Twilight that is now occurring on the interwebs. In his post, Constant links to this post, on Movieline, that links to a bunch of other posts that all, in their own way, with their own brand of misogyny, put down the movie. Constant calls the writers of these posts on their sexism, and plays the "small dick" card, essentially stating -- surprise! -- some fanboys are not secure enough in their masculinity to allow a female-created piece of sci-fi/fantasy to be a success. The comment thread quickly devolves into a boys against girls debate about the all-male hegemony of the fanboy culture. What gets overlooked is the fact that it should be anyone's right to hate Twilight, not on any sexist or feminist principles, but solely on the fact that the whole enterprise is a piece of shit. One commenter points to this post on The Escapist, which attempts to explain the cultural relevance of the Twilight phenomenon and what it might mean for popular culture and those how abide by its whims (short version: Twilight fills a void where there existed no sci-fi/fantasy aimed at the female demographic). It seems to me that Twilight is merely a romance novel dressed up in pseudo-vampire language, or something. I don't know. I can't explain its popularity. I'm only observing the trend and its attendant hubbub as it passes by. The Rejectionist wins the day, however, with this post in which they lament the rise of Twilight and its inevitable copy cats, noting that there are plenty of terrific genre fiction that feature proactive female protagonists and that they aren't difficult to find: ie they're all NYT best sellers.
