What facts made you come to the conclusion that her popularity and ratings are boosted "more for being a particular gender than for her ability"?
The specific claim that "she was pretty much forgotten outside of sci-fi readers for a long time" seems suspicious, considering she won a National Book Award in '73, was a finalist for a Pulizer in '97, and was declared a Library of Congress Living Legend in 2000. When was this period of forgetfulness?
You're replying to someone that uses dogwhistle language ("sjw blogs"). The unstated reasoning is that since women or trans people are inferior, if they are popular or acclaimed it -must- mean that there is some politically motivated push behind it, while more deserving males are ignored (see the issues with reactionary Hugo awards voting slates in the near past).
You seem to be reading a lot into a comment that was very upfront and open about what they meant. SJW is a commonly used term that is well understood by most people.
Your claim that the poster is calling certain groups inferior is entirely unwarranted. Please argue against the points they are actually making.
Edit: For examples, look at the various other replies that responded to the post without absurd speculation.
SJW is a commonly used term that is well understood to be a dogwhistle and strawman, as I stated.
There are other commonly used and well understood terms in the English language that similarly are never used directly in the context of productive intellectual discourse (you might be familiar with the one for black people).
I just perfomed reasonable inference, not absurd speculation.
Le Guin was never forgotten, she was always one of the greats, long before affirmative action came.
You are right about those more recent books though. I bought "The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet" and "A Closed and Common Orbit" and was thoroughly disappointed.
Here is somebody, who has clearly great ideas - and is incapable of running with them, like Le Guin did. All problems, all conflict, all interestingness - is carved from the book like a diamond grinded down into a pearl. It always returns to what i would term "emotional pornography", a hugfest - very similar to what firefly became later on.
I expect more from my scifi, a lot more, i rather have bad writting- which these books did not have at all.
They just dont go anywhere, like Le Guin did. So, while the parent is overgeneralizing, i think he is right here. The Nebula was undeserved in my opinion. If it must be for a woman, give it to Le Guin post mortem.
The specific claim that "she was pretty much forgotten outside of sci-fi readers for a long time" seems suspicious, considering she won a National Book Award in '73, was a finalist for a Pulizer in '97, and was declared a Library of Congress Living Legend in 2000. When was this period of forgetfulness?