Communities naturally have subsets and intersections with other sets. I regard my activity within SFWA as a tie that connects me with the larger SF community, and with other subsets within the SF community, such as the artists, the editors. It is also a tie that connects me with other communities of writers.

To me, the organization represents a spirit of including and drawing-together.

It doesn’t represent the entire sci fi and fantasy writing community, nor the vast fandom, nor any of the other aspects of science fiction and fantasy in other art forms (art, TV, movies, etc.).

It is an exclusive subset — and I mean “exclusive” not in a tony sense, but in the sense that it aims to exclude. It seems to pride itself on how well it keeps others out. As to benefits it offers those fortunate enough to be favored with membership — what, truly, are those benefits? Parties?

What else do they do to advance alternative fiction?

I would like to know. It’s not readily apparent what exactly the organization is good for — besides embarrassing the entire community with their ridiculous in-fighting and their use of the term “skiffy.”

I laud your noble reasons for joining, but when I qualify, I won’t hasten to join. On a matter of principle — because I believe that any organization that is meant to represent those who dream about the future ought to do more to bring into the present the better parts of those imagined futures. Sadly, SWFA does not even try.

I prefer the term “community” - a group with a common interest. Our genre is the thing we have in common. We ought, I believe, to embrace this commonality, not the differences among us.

The metaphor would be that of a number of individuals living in proximity to each other, who form a village or town so that they can work together to build streets, wells, a fire department. What the villagers have in common is their location; the village is the organizational structure within which they act in common.

That happens to be, in our case, SFWA. I think SFWA is not really better or worse than most other such organizations, except perhaps it is a tad bit more vocal about it. Or, to use your analogy, as if someone were broadcasting the private disputes within the house on a loudspeaker to the world outside. There are better ways to resolve our differences.

But to me, it’s not SFWA that’s the issue, but the community that SFWA is supposed to represent. If this organization were dissolved and a new one established, I fear that the same sort of factionalism would develop within it, unless people learn to take the community itself more seriously than their differences.

What I am not so happy to see is when such sub-communities turn their backs on the larger communities of which they are a part, when they decide to break off and away from the larger community, when they reject differences and diversity of opinion.

Doris Lessing has a skinny little book called “Prisons We Choose to Live Inside” that addresses this exact social phenomenon. It’s a fascinating book and vastly overlooked. I highly recommend it.

I am an outsider looking in at SFWA, a writer who has only started writing in this genre in the last couple years and has not published in this genre yet. My impression of SFWA as an organization (not individual members) has been almost entirely negative. This was not what I expected, as I came in to the fringes of this community with nothing but good expectations, with really no thoughts about what such an organization could one day do for me personally, just thinking it would be a cool organization. But sitting on the sidelines, I can’t help but note the very public slapfights and mudslinging that goes on.

I mean, it is like living next door to a family that has screaming, brawling public fights. There may be some lovely family moments going on inside that house, but the screaming on the front lawn isn’t making a great impression on the rest of the neighborhood.

As for the family metaphor, being a SFF writer and reader doesn’t necessarily make me part of a family, since I can do these things alone. In other words, the larger SFF community seems less to me like a family I was born into than like a family I might MARRY into. By choice. And if one is dating a person and goes home to meet The Family and discovers that said prospective family-in-law is a dysfunctional mess, well, a smart person steps back and thinks about the upcoming nuptials and what that might mean. LOL. So, IMHO, for many of us newbies, we are madly in love with our gorgeous genre of SFF but the in-laws, such as SFWA, are looking a tad psycho.

And I, for one, am thinking maybe I can marry the fantasy genre but move to another country and just, yanno, send SFWA Christmas cards.

Just my take. I’m an oversensitive introvert, though, so others might well feel very differently.

What I am not so happy to see is when such sub-communities turn their backs on the larger communities of which they are a part, when they decide to break off and away from the larger community, when they reject differences and diversity of opinion.

I think this happens everywhere that creative people congregate, be it online or off.

My first encounter with this phenomenon was in college. I was a member of the symphony, and when our conductor retired, the new woman they brought in was atrocious. She played favorites with the pretty boys, giving them chairs higher than their ability deserved. She made the harpist cry for being incompetent. Eventually, the group splintered and one faction formed a pops orchestra, while the other faction rallied around the new conductor. I, being the naive little filly I was back then, tried to play with both and got severely pummeled for my sins. In fact, the fall out was so bad that I had to drop music as my major.

I’ve seen this scenario play out again and again in online writers’ groups, theater troupes, dance schools, and pretty much everywhere that high-strung, opinionated people congregate. Hell, it even happened in my science club when the math teacher and physics teacher had a difference of opinion on how to grade work and assign projects.

It pretty much sucks, but, well, it is what it is. These days, when I see a quarrel brewing, I generally excuse myself and politely stay gone until the storm has passed.

Love, C.

I’ve been an Associate member of SFWA for four years. There are moments when it’s still a rush.

Then again, maybe it’s not so much prevalent as just an extremely loud minority.
Overall, there are still large groups of writers, forums, blogs, etc, where new voices and additions are welcomed even when disagreeing.
David runs a very open and welcoming blog, for example. John Scalzi’s Whatever forum has taken on a life of its own, and I think that’s good, letting people connect without the need for Scalzi to unify them.
But in places like the SFWA lj community? ehm, no.