Apologies for another flashback to the early nineties.

1993, 1994. I did the single dad thing. I had (and still have)  a particularly visceral reaction to movies and commercials that portray fathers as incompetent boobs who cannot function as an adult without a mother unit supervising them.

That wasn’t me, man. I had my shit together. I made a decision to be the best dad I could be in the half of my son’s life that he spent under my wing. My son always came before any frivolity with my single buddies. To be perfectly honest, passing on friend time was also a side effect of being broke as hobos’ teeth. But…

I did my turn as Class Parent at Ian’s elementary school. I did my turn as drop-off & pick-up monitor. I did everything the moms did. I’d go as far as to say that because I didn’t get to socialize with the other moms, perhaps I was more attentive to the tasks at hand. They were their own little distracted chattering clique. I thought my superior dadskillz made me bad ass. I thought, “Surely one of these cute single moms can’t help but notice that I’ve got my dad shit together and they are going to fight one another to get a date with me! I’m a catch!”

Here’s what actually happened: They leaned in and whispered to one another with looks of concern, all the while watching me suspiciously, as if I was going to suddenly leave the product of my loins behind, grab their snot-nosed prodigy, and run like a striped-ass ape for my beater car screaming “KEEP IAN! I’VE TRADED UP! WHOO-HOO!”

In an attempt to A. Show that I could be trusted and B. Get laid, I finally made the acquaintance of a single mom in my son’s class. She was more thorny than horny, but at least she talked to me. She opened up enough that I could ask about the weird looks I was getting from the female volunteers.

“I’m not sure why you think what you are doing would be welcomed by other moms,” she said.

“What? What exactly am I doing wrong?”

“Not wrong. Just… You know. Volunteering and stuff. Making cupcakes and stuff.”

“The cupcakes were bad?”

“No, the cupcakes were great. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. They think that’s weird for a single guy. It’s unwelcome.”

Ah. Took me a while, but I finally got it. Being SuperDad, being Super Competent Dad was not a plus to the young moms. It was offensive. It was a threat. They didn’t want SuperDad. They wanted incompetent male caveman fucktard who could not possibly function without a woman in his orbit.

Whump! Donkey kick to the head.

That donkey kick snapped me out of my illusions. I could finally see that a fair amount of the relationship-of-the-month failures I was experiencing. were due to the fact I was trying to be the best single dad I could be (intention). The single moms only saw a guy who “thought he was all that” (perception).

Shortly thereafter I talked my way into a Tuperware Party (again, trying to score) . The hostility towards my mere presence could not be mistaken. When I won the door prize, I thought they were going to flay me with a sample cheese knife.

That was enough of that. I let the Ladies have their She-Woman Man Haters clubhouse back to themselves.

Single women don’t want a guy with good taste in curtains. They want a clueless guy with no window treatments so they can install their own.

[/ Homily ]

I had a minor aneurism when I saw the article in The Atlantic, pushing back against the notion that The Fault in Our Stars and author John Green are the saviors of the Young Adult genre. For you non-linkers, the explanation is that some mythical strawman was asserting that we finally have “Smart YA” to replace the abysmal pissbucket YA of Harry Potter, assorted teen vamps and witches, and the full boat of dystopian revelry: Hunger Games, Divergent, etc.

This is shit. Not the literature in question, but the fake outrage. There is no critical pushback or degradation of recent YA trends. This is a strawman. This is manufactured outrage. It doesn’t pass the smell test, not even for a second. Critics were only remarking that TFiOS is a changeup from tropes that have dominated the market for a while. Not better. But different. That is worth noting when your job is to crank out 27 column inches every other week. You gotta write about something, man.

But wait. It gets worse. The Atlantic article scratches further into the heart of their manufactured straw man to interpret that male YA writers get more respect than female YA writers.

In other words, “That John Green sure thinks he’s all that!”

Great googelty-mooglety. Do you know how hard it is for a query with a male name to make it past the intern at a literary agency? For YA? Imagine trying to get a bodice ripper manuscript past the Harlequin readers at TorStar with a byline of Chuck Ballsa-Swingin.

You think the Atlantic piece is not a strawman? You think it  is not manufactured outrage. Fine. Link me two articles from respected industry critics that actually denigrate Harry Potter as less than serious YA fiction. Divergent. Hunger Games. Pretties and Uglies (written by a dude, btw). Beautiful Creatures. The outrage is sourced, but the supposed genesis of the outrage is not.

It’s bullshit.

In 2014, writing is a women’s game. At least at midlist, it is.  Before you say those hallowed names at the top of the bestselling fiction list, I ask you to consider when they entered the game. (1975? 1978?) How many recent male entrants to the biz are there?

Shift to YA. Right now John Green owns the frickin’ list. He’s got four books on the NYT Top Ten chart.

So let’s peer all the way back to 2013. Here’s Buzzfeed’s list of the 21 best YAs of 2013.  Two dudes. Two out of 21.

Geez. Let John Green have his moment, willya?  He’s not saying he’s “all that.” He’s just finally getting his due, and it has been a long time coming as the NYT list will attest. How many books did he write before TFiOS broke him into the stratosphere?

Nothing spurs actual outrage like manufactured outrage. Try harder, trolls. Build a better boogeyman, willya?