Strange Horizons Discussion Forum: Women Are Ugly, by Eliot Fintushel

Thank you Eliot. 'Women are Ugly' was certainly the best story I've read on Strange Horizons, and indeed, the best short story I've read, full stop, for a long time. As a bloke, some aspects of that story resonated so well, it was like coming home, or some such feeling (the 'home' of a shared experience with another human being). By this I don't mean that there is some type of misogyny excreting itself from myself, or I don't think so :), to be truthful, although I'd love to hear opinions from women who've read the story, I don't read this story as misogynist at all ... it simply works, for me at least, on an emotional level that 'connects' with my own experience, portraying an element of male/female relationships that lies always below the surface (that love/hate thing of losing self), that I've not experienced any writer come so close to before (other than perhaps Lewis Shiner - whom I wish would get published again).

Also the experimental nature of the prose, the short, fragmented sentence structures nicely imitates the feel of the attention deficit supermen.

I don't feel I've explained myself very well. I guess to better encapsulate my reaction to the story, as a male, I can simply say, '[censored] that was good'. As a wannabe writer, such writing makes me very envious, and hence, a little depressed :) Would that I could ever get that good!

But, as stated, I would love to read reactions to the story from a feminine point of view.

Well done also to the editors who're willing to take the risk of printing such a story as this, in these politically correct times, that could be considered reasonably controversial (albeit, all Eliot is doing is putting on paper a uniquely male experience - which is not actually women hating, indeed, which derives complexly from quite the opposite emotion.)