Diversity in ToCs
Here's a really awesome post in Tempest Bradford's blog about the issue of diversity in science fictional anthologies.
To wit: when anthologies like this hit the Internets and we look at the TOC it’s very easy to notice that there are no women. It is therefore very easy to comment on and get angry about this fact.It is also easy for editors to come along and address only this exclusion, usually by saying “I didn’t pay attention to the bylines” and “women don’t write the kind of stories I was looking for” or “I don’t want to include them just as tokens”. Because at that point editors can pass it off as taste, and not even one based on gender, but on types of fiction.
But.
When one notices that these anthologies also don’t include any writers of color, either male or female, that complicates the issue, doesn’t it?
...
The same mindset is at work in both cases. It’s not “women/POC don’t write the kind of stories I was looking for,” it’s: I only like/read/understand/connect to/care for stories about white, male concerns.
That is a problem. Because SF, be it mammoth or mindblowing or sciencey, is not just about white, male concerns.
Which I think kinda nails it on the head really really succinctly. Because the bit in the whole "taste" debate that I have been mulling over and trying to digest is the idea that writing about people, being character focused or indeed concentrating on telling a story about life, is somehow not science fiction, is considered to be some different kind of story/genre in which no "plot" is needed or is not as "valid" in some way. When really, when someone says to me that they don't like stories that women write because they're not plot- or idea-driven and are more about (female) characters, aren't they really saying, "I'm not interested in reading about people" or more so ... "I'm not interested in reading about people who are not me"? Which I spose, in a history of a genre where only the people who were very much like white males, actually got published, up until now, they kind of got around it by assuming that science fiction was the kind of material that white men wrote rather than the material white men wrote only being one part of science fiction.
What always strikes me as odd is science fiction is about ideas, it's about crossing new frontiers, exploring the great beyond, finding the Other and seeing what it might be like, meeting new species and trying to communicate, taking technology to the next conclusion. Playing around. Experimenting. Trying new things. Being different. Being unique. Opening our minds.
And yet ... and yet and yet and yet ... the rest of us are still not allowed to play. Not really. And because we don't conform :)
The post by Bradford came after the announcement of the TOC for the Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF. In which there is no female nor person of colour within it. Scroll down to Paul Di Filippo's comment, partially quoted below:
Every single commenter here seems to me to be committing a logical fallacy of tremendous dimension, one so big it distorts entire worldviews:
DEMANDING THAT EVERY SINGLE INSTANCE OF EVERYTHING COMPOSITE SHOULD BE ABSOLUTELY STATISTICALLY REPRESENTATIVE OF THE COMPOSITION OF THE ENTIRE COSMOS
I think we can argue the above angle, when like we get at least one instance of representation occurring.
To wit: when anthologies like this hit the Internets and we look at the TOC it’s very easy to notice that there are no women. It is therefore very easy to comment on and get angry about this fact.It is also easy for editors to come along and address only this exclusion, usually by saying “I didn’t pay attention to the bylines” and “women don’t write the kind of stories I was looking for” or “I don’t want to include them just as tokens”. Because at that point editors can pass it off as taste, and not even one based on gender, but on types of fiction.
But.
When one notices that these anthologies also don’t include any writers of color, either male or female, that complicates the issue, doesn’t it?
...
The same mindset is at work in both cases. It’s not “women/POC don’t write the kind of stories I was looking for,” it’s: I only like/read/understand/connect to/care for stories about white, male concerns.
That is a problem. Because SF, be it mammoth or mindblowing or sciencey, is not just about white, male concerns.
Which I think kinda nails it on the head really really succinctly. Because the bit in the whole "taste" debate that I have been mulling over and trying to digest is the idea that writing about people, being character focused or indeed concentrating on telling a story about life, is somehow not science fiction, is considered to be some different kind of story/genre in which no "plot" is needed or is not as "valid" in some way. When really, when someone says to me that they don't like stories that women write because they're not plot- or idea-driven and are more about (female) characters, aren't they really saying, "I'm not interested in reading about people" or more so ... "I'm not interested in reading about people who are not me"? Which I spose, in a history of a genre where only the people who were very much like white males, actually got published, up until now, they kind of got around it by assuming that science fiction was the kind of material that white men wrote rather than the material white men wrote only being one part of science fiction.
What always strikes me as odd is science fiction is about ideas, it's about crossing new frontiers, exploring the great beyond, finding the Other and seeing what it might be like, meeting new species and trying to communicate, taking technology to the next conclusion. Playing around. Experimenting. Trying new things. Being different. Being unique. Opening our minds.
And yet ... and yet and yet and yet ... the rest of us are still not allowed to play. Not really. And because we don't conform :)
The post by Bradford came after the announcement of the TOC for the Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF. In which there is no female nor person of colour within it. Scroll down to Paul Di Filippo's comment, partially quoted below:
Every single commenter here seems to me to be committing a logical fallacy of tremendous dimension, one so big it distorts entire worldviews:
DEMANDING THAT EVERY SINGLE INSTANCE OF EVERYTHING COMPOSITE SHOULD BE ABSOLUTELY STATISTICALLY REPRESENTATIVE OF THE COMPOSITION OF THE ENTIRE COSMOS
I think we can argue the above angle, when like we get at least one instance of representation occurring.