Samantha Power is many things: Current U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Former Harvard professor. Pulitzer prize winner. And, as a particularly galling incident involving a French ambassador makes clear, reported in this week's profile by The New Yorker's Evan Osnos, she is also someone who, despite all of those impressive accomplishments, is still expected to take time out of her busy schedule to bow to outdated gender norms.

Here is what happened, according to Osnos' story: Gérard Araud, the current French Ambassador to the US and at the time French ambassador to the UN, sent Power a text one day while they were on the Security Councilthat read, "On behalf of the French delegation, I want to tell you, you are very beautiful." The source for this story is Araud himself.

That's right: Araud, in his capacity as diplomatic representative of France, not only sent an obnoxious text to the US Ambassador to the United Nations, while they were in the Security Council, but later bragged about it to the New Yorker, saying that "As a Frenchman, I'm not condemned to be politically correct."

Araud also told Osnos that he'd expected Power to be an "NGO girl" before he met her, but was pleasantly surprised by her ability when they worked together — a remark that's a contender for the back-handed compliment hall of fame.

That incident is telling about the degree to which international diplomacy remains a boys club, even if some women reach its highest levels.

But Power's response to Araud is more telling still: she played the role that he demanded, sending a reply text that said "This is one of the nicest SMSs I have ever received." Her strategy, apparently, was effective: Osnos reports that Araud became "one of Power's closest collaborators."

I'm not criticizing Power's decision to send that response — it worked, and she had a job to do. But it is frustrating to consider that the US ambassador to the UN — the representative of the world's most powerful country to the world's most important institution — was put in a position of having to simper about compliments to her appearance in order to not jeopardize a working relationship with a US ally.

Compliments can be lovely, but receiving that sort of remark from a professional colleague who isn't a friend places women in a deeply annoying position: either respond positively and risk being seen as unprofessional and flirtatious, or respond negatively and risk being seen as rude. I'd wager that that's a tradeoff that every working woman in America has had to make — albeit probably not in response to the French Ambassador.

Likewise, Power seemed to be careful not to appear too ambitious when speaking to Osnos. She took pains to paint her career as the result of impulse and emotion, rather than ambition and dedication. "My career is not well thought out," she told him. "Every choice has been instinctive and, quite literally, impulsive in many ways."

That description is totally at odds with the actual facts of Power's career: this is a woman who, after writing a paper about genocide in her second year of law school, sent it to Marty Peretz, then the editor of the New Republic, and to Anthony Lewis, then a columnist for the New York Times. And who then parlayed that very paper into a book, the book into a Pulitzer Prize, the Pulitzer into a Harvard professorship, and then her role at Harvard into positions in Barack Obama's first presidential campaign and then his administration. (Some instincts! Some impulses!)

But unfortunately it's not at odds with the truth that ambitious women are often seen as demanding, unpleasant, or unreasonable. That is a tightrope that our society expects all successful women to walk, but it's still frustrating to be reminded that there is no position senior enough to escape the contradictionsof being a successful woman in America. Be high-achieving, but not ambitious. Be attractive, but don't appear to prioritize your appearance over other things. Sit at the table with powerful men, and if they don't know how to handle that, gracefully overlook their misbehavior.

We have progressed far enough to appoint a woman as ambassador to the UN, but not so far that she won't have to navigate those oppressive gender expectations once she gets there.

I have met Samantha Power, and am familiar with her work. I can say firsthand that her looks are the least remarkable thing about her. And I don't always agree with her, but her ambition is inspiring, and her accomplishments are impressive. I wish we lived in a society that let her own that without judgment. Apparently we don't.

Photo: Medil DC. Used via Creative Commons

As many of you know, John Boehner is my representative in Congress. Because of this, I get a fair number of people asking me via the Internet what the hell he’s thinking with regard to this whole shutdown thing. Because, of course, me and Boehner are totally tight, and he calls me up nightly to commiserate and share all his plans, even though I’ve never voted for him and it seems highly unlikely that I ever will. Be that as it may, someone apparently needs to explain him, and since he’s my guy, that job falls to me.

At this point, I think there are actually three reasonable explanations as to Boehner’s actions in the last few weeks, “reasonable” being “having some possible relationship to reality, whether I like it or not.” They are:

1. Boehner has gone full teabag, decided that the looming specter of Obamacare is manifestly worse than the possibility of defaulting on the US’ debts and thereby jeopardizing the entire global economy, and is saying, more or less, fuck it, it’s been a nice run for the US but now it’s time to let China take a turn at running the world, ha ha ha ha those suckers.

2. Boehner recognizes that the Tea Party contingent in his caucus is unrealistic but also recognizes that not spinning this out until the very last minute will cause the Tea Partiers to rebel, jeopardizing his speakership. So basically he’s stuck pretending to be irrational about the shutdown and debt limit until we get to the point that everyone (and I mean everyone) except the most irrational Tea Partiers are terrified about the default, at which point he can (quite reasonably) say “look, we gave it our best shot,” and send along a joint debt ceiling/government funding bill that takes care of this problem for another year, at which point everyone will be in election mode and in no mood for a shutdown.

3. Boehner realizes that his Tea Party wing is a bunch of irrational and fundamentally undemocratic yahoos who would rather watch everything burn than not get their way, and that this fact represents a danger, not only to the GOP but to the function of government in the United States at large — but that the tea party still remains popular with the GOP base. And so Boehner is strategically acceding to their demands, not because he is weak but because there is no other way to show the moderates and rational conservatives of GOP that the Tea Party represents a clear and present threat to the party and to the function of the nation, and they will, no joke, be happy to run the country into the ground if they don’t get their way. The moderates and rational conservatives, thus shocked, wake up from their slumber and actively engage in grassroots and funding of rational GOP candidates to fend off another wave of frothy Tea Party dim bulbs in the primaries, thus keeping the GOP a viable institution rather than punting itself further down the path of unelectability as the demographics of the US change (despite the GOPs efforts to disenfranchise as many poor and/or non-white people as possible, which is, at best, a temporary tactic).

Of these three options, I see 1) as the least likely and 3) as being rather too complicated for Boehner, for whom Machiavellian-level intrigue has never been noted to be one of his characteristics. That leaves 2), which, frankly, sucks, not in the least because it leaves open the possibility that Boehner will at the last moment have a failure of nerve and refuse to allow a vote, plunging us all into dangerous and uncharted territory because he’d rather be the Speaker in Hell than deposed rank and file in, if not Heaven, at least a world where a rump of bratty children are not allowed to push the United States to the brink of default via a temper tantrum.

My own personal opinion on the matter is that Boehner is a fundamentally decent conservative who believes in the processes of the government , and realized too late that he was dealing with people who, whatever their superficial commonalities in political philosophy, don’t have the same respect for process that he does. When should have he realized this? Oh, the opening months of 2010 might have been nice. But on the other hand up until this point, it’s all been reasonably manageable , which is to say the Democrats and Obama have been willing to concede points to keep things going. From a practical point of view, you can’t blame the GOP for using a tactic that works.

The failure of the Tea Party people is in being either unwilling or actually unable to recognize that Obamacare was a bridge too far for them. Obama’s been through the Supreme Court and the 2012 election with it, and won both times. There is absolutely no percentage for him to concede anything now, especially when the majority of the public (correctly) sees this shutdown and debt limit crisis as a fight that the Tea Party manufactured and drove the GOP to have. Obama’s far from being his most popular these days, but even there he has a substantially larger margin to work with than the congressional Republicans, who are in aggregate about as popular as cholera.

So here we are. And now here Boehner is. We’ll see where he, and we, go from here.

Which is to say,a note to those (mostly) dudes in geek circles, who decide it’s their job to determine who is geeky enough to enjoy the same entertainments and recreations that they do (hint: If you’re a woman, you start off with a failing grade). Yes, we’ve talked about this before, but they’re still doing it, because apparently some dudes just have a hard time learning.

So this time, let me talk to these dudes from the point of view of being a creator, i.e., one of the people who creates the stuff these (mostly) dudes spend their time defending from the horrible encroaching interest of others (mostly women).

Dudes: Cut that shit out. You’re fucking with my livelihood.

Let’s break this down a bit.

First: I didn’t ask you to be a gatekeeper. Did I, John Scalzi, come up to you and say, “Dude. I am so worried that the wrong people will like my stuff, and by ‘wrong,’ I mean ‘teh womans,’ ‘mostly people with ovaries,’ so if you’re not too busy I totally want to deputize you into the Society of Dudes Keeping Scalzi’s Stuff Safe From Teh Womans”? Mostly People With Ovaries”?

No? Then it’s not your job. Quit pretending that it is. When I want your help, I will ask for it. Directly to you. Until then, back off.

Second: I don’t needyou to be a gatekeeper. You dudes understand this is my job, right? As in, this is what I do for a living. As in, if I don’t sell what I produce, I don’t pay my mortgage, my kid doesn’t go to college, and my pets start evaluating me for my protein content. Books, which are what I produce, aren’t terribly expensive, and I don’t get to keep every penny of their sale price — I get a percentage. So in order to make money from these books, I have to sell a lot of them. Some of them get sold to geeky dudes. But a lot of them get sold to other people, who aren’t necessarily geeky, or dudes.

When you attempt to gatekeep my work, you’re trying to wave off peopleI want to have buy my work. If you manage to do this, then congratulations, you’ve made it more difficult for me to be successful with my work, and thus, make more of the work which you also like. Well done you. I’m curious how you think I should feel about people who make it more difficult for me to make a living. Do you think I should feel grateful? Because of the many words I would use to describe how I would feel, “grateful” isn’t one of them.

I write books geek dudes like. But I don’t write books for only geek dudes to like. The difference there is subtle but real. Which brings me to my next point:

Third: Gatekeeping runs entirely counter to my intent as a writer. I’ve always been very clear that I write science fiction that’s meant to be readable to people who aren’t science fiction fans — or as I prefer to think of them, people who don’t know yet that they might like science fiction. Old Man’s War, Redshirts, Fuzzy Nation — all of these books were written with the intent of being readable to outsiders to the genre. To people who are willing to take a chance on trying something other than what they already know they like. I write gateway science fiction — science fiction designed to make the reader want to read more science fiction.

So, when I take the time and effort to create a gateway, to invite people into the genre, and then some dude shows up at that gateway, unasked, telling people they can’t come through unless they can name every Heinlein book in reverse chronological order (or whatever), I am, shall we say, less than pleased. One, demanding that people new to something be versed in all its trivia is stupid (it’s also stupid when they have liked it for some time). Two, assuming that one’s own interests are the only interests that define real geekdom is also stupid.

Three, get the fuck out of my gateway, asshole,I’m working here. Working to expand not only my audience, but the audience for written science fiction and science fiction in general.You are not helping. Go find someone one who really wants to you to gatekeep their work.

But here’s the thing about that:

Fourth: Almost no one wants you to be a gatekeeper. Geek dudes: Do you honestly think Marvel comics, owned by Disney, wants you to harass women away from enjoying the X-Men? Do you think DC Comics, owned by Time Warner, appreciates when you demand a woman present you with a list of every Green Lantern in order to be worthy of “true geekdom”? Do you think Paramount Pictures, owned by Viacom, is grateful that some dude has appointed himself Arbiter of Star Trek Fandom? Do you believe that Tor Books, owned by Macmillan, one of the world’s largest publishers, will pat you on the head for judging any potential customers of their books, including mine? Do you actually understand what it is these corporations do? They producecommercial art. To be widely enjoyed. By as many people as possible.

Moving away from corporations, do you think individual writers and creators really want you to wave away potential fans from their work? Almost all of them are in the same boat as I am, either directly or indirectly dependent on volume of sales for income. They are happy you like their stuff. They would be even happier if not only you liked their stuff. When you attack other people who like their stuff, you’re potentially cutting into their livelihood. You’re not making friends with the people whose work you’re making a centerpiece of your life. You’re hurting them.

Do you think the staff of the conventions you attend are in any way happy when you troll the other attendees? Those attendees go on Twitter and Facebook and blogs and talk about how unfriendly or even dangerous that convention is. Others pick up on that and amplify the complaints. The people who are trying to run the convention have to deal with it and have to apologize for the fact that you are being an asshole, becausethey are getting some of the blame for it. Who do you think the convention staff would prefer to have as an attendee? The cosplaying woman who is excited to be there and is enthusiastic about the convention, or the geek dude who spends his time shitting all over other people’s enjoyment of a convention, which the staff has invested so much time in to make work?

Nearly every creator wants you to enjoy what they create. Almost none of them want you to police it.

Now, bear in mind that I understand that when you’re off haranguing a woman (or anyone else) on the subject of geek worthiness, you’re not actually thinking of me or any other person or company who makes the work you enjoy and have made a focus of your life. You are effectively working under the assumption that all this stuff just magically appears out of nowhere, a golden store of treasure, of which there is a limited supply, and thus must be defended at all costs against the unworthy, which in this case are usually Teh Womans. the people with ovaries.

Well, surprise. It doesn’t come out of nowhere; we creators make it. It isn’t a limited resource; unlimited; we can make enough for anyone who wants it. It doesn’t need to be defended from anybody; we like it when it’s shared as widely as possible, including to Teh Womans. people with ovaries.

And as for who is unworthy of it: Well. It’s not the women or anyone else who wants to try it, or who has tried it, liked it, and wants in to get more. It’s the people who are trying their hardest to keep them out.