On gender-bias in publishing
Today, in a day largely remarkable for my shocking level of domestic apathy, three significant things happened.
The first thing - I broke a tooth. I was chomping through a handful of cashews, when there was a bad-sounding crunch, and something was suddenly rolling around in my mouth that had no business being there. A piece of my left back molar had broken off, and most of the existing filling in that tooth was now taking up residence under my tongue. Ergh. I can’t get into the dentist until tomorrow, and the tooth hurts - not a dagger-like jab of pain, but a gentle, steady throb that is starting to get on my nerves.
Okay, the second thing. I read a recent review of Scarlet Stiletto: the Second Cut, which was featured as The Age ‘Pick of the Week’ in its Lifestyle section. The reviewer is a noted book and theatre reviewer, and he mentioned my name personally in the review, as having authored something worth reading. It totally tickled me pink, that I just got mentioned in a review, in a newspaper, yay, even in a website. Wow. It was a good moment to read that, after losing my tooth earlier that same morning.
The third thing was this: I commented to a blog-post by Tara Moss, where she talked about how female authors are still largely under-represented in awards lists, book lists, and within the publishing industry in general. It took me nearly an hour to read all the responses to that post, there were oodles. Some of the responses were heated, and some were rude, and some were lucid and well-reasoned. It made an interesting flame-war, and I felt an obligation to respond, primarily because most of the discussion took off after a noted book and theatre reviewer took umbrage over what he considered to be ‘privileged whingeing’ and ‘bandwagoneering’ by Moss.
And who was this noted book and theatre reviewer, you might ask? Why, none other than the same individual who had given me such a fine write-up in The Age.
Life, eh?
Yes, I did have a pause. I did wonder whether it was wise to bite the hand that was feeding me, so to speak. But I couldn’t stand the idea of not commenting, for a number of reasons. You see, the thing is, this discussion has been taking place all over the interwebs of late. I linked my comments to a post I’d read just last week, on how the NY Times has accused the YA industry of being ‘too girly’. The old ‘girl books vs boy books’ thing - it’s a conversation that has been going on for as long as I’ve been a reader, since Mary Ann Evans became George Eliot, and before that even.
It’s frustrating, because…haven’t we gotten past this yet? I explained, in my comment, that I told my four sons how I was reading an article about girl books vs boy books, and they were like ‘huh?’. To them, there are no girl books and no boy books. There are just cool books. But the divisions that exist in publishing now will probably still exist, and still exert a straitjacketing influence, by the time my sons reach adulthood.
My bullshit-meter went off when the reviewer who started the ‘flame-on!’ began by saying that there were more significant issues to talk about. That rehashing this old territory was just being bourgeois or something, and that there are so many other less trivial issues to spend time on. Which, coming from a literature/theatre reviewer, was kind of hilarious. I’m not even going to comment further on that.
Then he went on to say that gender bias never informed his own work, that he never thought about it.
Well, why the hell not? As one commenter pointed out, why don’t we think about it? We should be thinking about it, all the time. We should have that awareness embedded in us. Not in a PC-self-editing way, but in a way that allows us to be truly inclusive.
One commenter noted that forcing a 50/50 gender division in the industry was artificial and dangerous. Why would we want to be nannied that way? I could see the point about nannying, but I was reminded of the old research about societal change: it’s either slow, depending on a gradual grass-roots alteration in people’s consciousness, or it’s fast, and sponsored by government mandate. It happened with smoking - you can’t smoke anywhere now without feeling guilty. We’ve had a wholesale mental change in the space of one generation, mostly in response to legislation.
Sometimes I think that government-led interference in gender division within literary culture would be bad. Then I think…haven’t we waited long enough? And didn’t it help when gender discrimination was ruled out as an option in areas like political representation and workplace reform? Maybe that’s just my own impatience talking. Or maybe it’s just really unfair, and it needs to change now. I would like to see that happen. It seems strange that in my lifetime I’ve seen massive social change in regards to things like smoking, and the knowledge culture created by the internets, but that some basic gender discrimination issues are still languishing.
On another level, I like how people are slowly coming to their own deeply-felt awareness. The level playing field starts in our own minds. If it doesn’t start there, then…what?
Because this argument extends further than ‘girl books vs boy books’. Even putting aside the issue of how gender bias restricts the trans-gendered or gender-confused individuals among us, this argument extends into ‘white books vs non-white books’, and ‘abled books vs disabled books’ and ‘gay books vs straight books’ and so on. I mentioned that I linked my comments to the highly relevant Mary Sue post on this exact issue, and Aja Romano makes all these points much more snappily than me, with links to stats and references which will surprise and shock you.
The thing that gets me is, why is this discussion still necessary? And why are the arguments of those on the other side still so reductive? I want my sons to grow up without a conscious thought towards ‘oh, this book is by/about a girl, so it won’t be my thing’. I don’t want them to be locked into some narrow definition of what constitutes a ‘boy’ book, and what they ‘should’ be reading. Why would we want to limit our kids like that?
Would legislation on gender-bias within the publishing industry be any more straitjacketing than the current overwhelming social bias that teaches children that women have nothing valuable to write about (except if they’re writing for other women), and that what they do write is somehow inherently inferior? Doesn’t the corporate structure of industry exert its own ‘nannying’ influence? And is the subtext of the ‘nannying’ argument that women don’t write enough ‘good stuff’ to warrant a 50/50 split?
As a parent, I want my sons - hey, everyone’s kids - to feel like they have more than one option on the table. I want that kind of intellectual freedom for them. And as a writer, I want to be able to write with the same freedom - male characters, female characters, gender-neutral characters (see Karen Healey’s Guardian of the Dead for a great example of an asexual character). I don’t want to be limited by a publisher saying, ‘oh, this is about women’s stuff, let’s market it that way’, or ‘why don’t you publish under your initials, so that more men buy the book?’
So, play with me here, ‘noted book and theatre reviewer’. I have to understand that, on one hand, you approve of my writing because you gave me such a nice write-up in The Age. But on the other hand, you slag off a woman who calmly points out that women are still wildly under-represented in awards, books lists, reviews, industry executive positions, and publishing in general. You obviously have your own little gender-bias issue going on, subconsciously or not. Does that mean that my writing falls into a general category of ‘good’, or just ‘good, even though it was written by a chick’? Can’t you see how this could create confusion, and even cast doubt on the validity of your work? I mean, it’s great to have your approval, but what is it worth?
The topic of gender-bias in publishing is still important, and certainly still relevant - whether gender-bias is a bourgeois issue or not, it’s something that won’t just go away. One commenter on Tara’s blog suggested that the women who replied angrily to the reviewer’s comments should just ‘Let it go!’. But I’m sorry, I can’t let it go. It affects me on too many levels - personally, professionally, politically. It niggles and throbs, like a…well, like a broken tooth. It’s part of me, and it’s somehow out of whack, but I just can’t seem to fix it…
This post is for my sons. I sincerely hope that they don’t need to compose frustrated replies to comments in blogs about this issue when they reach maturity. For more hilarity on the issue of gender-bias in publishing, read Max Barry’s enlightened post about dogs and Smurfs.
The first thing - I broke a tooth. I was chomping through a handful of cashews, when there was a bad-sounding crunch, and something was suddenly rolling around in my mouth that had no business being there. A piece of my left back molar had broken off, and most of the existing filling in that tooth was now taking up residence under my tongue. Ergh. I can’t get into the dentist until tomorrow, and the tooth hurts - not a dagger-like jab of pain, but a gentle, steady throb that is starting to get on my nerves.
Okay, the second thing. I read a recent review of Scarlet Stiletto: the Second Cut, which was featured as The Age ‘Pick of the Week’ in its Lifestyle section. The reviewer is a noted book and theatre reviewer, and he mentioned my name personally in the review, as having authored something worth reading. It totally tickled me pink, that I just got mentioned in a review, in a newspaper, yay, even in a website. Wow. It was a good moment to read that, after losing my tooth earlier that same morning.
The third thing was this: I commented to a blog-post by Tara Moss, where she talked about how female authors are still largely under-represented in awards lists, book lists, and within the publishing industry in general. It took me nearly an hour to read all the responses to that post, there were oodles. Some of the responses were heated, and some were rude, and some were lucid and well-reasoned. It made an interesting flame-war, and I felt an obligation to respond, primarily because most of the discussion took off after a noted book and theatre reviewer took umbrage over what he considered to be ‘privileged whingeing’ and ‘bandwagoneering’ by Moss.
And who was this noted book and theatre reviewer, you might ask? Why, none other than the same individual who had given me such a fine write-up in The Age.
Life, eh?
Yes, I did have a pause. I did wonder whether it was wise to bite the hand that was feeding me, so to speak. But I couldn’t stand the idea of not commenting, for a number of reasons. You see, the thing is, this discussion has been taking place all over the interwebs of late. I linked my comments to a post I’d read just last week, on how the NY Times has accused the YA industry of being ‘too girly’. The old ‘girl books vs boy books’ thing - it’s a conversation that has been going on for as long as I’ve been a reader, since Mary Ann Evans became George Eliot, and before that even.
It’s frustrating, because…haven’t we gotten past this yet? I explained, in my comment, that I told my four sons how I was reading an article about girl books vs boy books, and they were like ‘huh?’. To them, there are no girl books and no boy books. There are just cool books. But the divisions that exist in publishing now will probably still exist, and still exert a straitjacketing influence, by the time my sons reach adulthood.
My bullshit-meter went off when the reviewer who started the ‘flame-on!’ began by saying that there were more significant issues to talk about. That rehashing this old territory was just being bourgeois or something, and that there are so many other less trivial issues to spend time on. Which, coming from a literature/theatre reviewer, was kind of hilarious. I’m not even going to comment further on that.
Then he went on to say that gender bias never informed his own work, that he never thought about it.
Well, why the hell not? As one commenter pointed out, why don’t we think about it? We should be thinking about it, all the time. We should have that awareness embedded in us. Not in a PC-self-editing way, but in a way that allows us to be truly inclusive.
One commenter noted that forcing a 50/50 gender division in the industry was artificial and dangerous. Why would we want to be nannied that way? I could see the point about nannying, but I was reminded of the old research about societal change: it’s either slow, depending on a gradual grass-roots alteration in people’s consciousness, or it’s fast, and sponsored by government mandate. It happened with smoking - you can’t smoke anywhere now without feeling guilty. We’ve had a wholesale mental change in the space of one generation, mostly in response to legislation.
Sometimes I think that government-led interference in gender division within literary culture would be bad. Then I think…haven’t we waited long enough? And didn’t it help when gender discrimination was ruled out as an option in areas like political representation and workplace reform? Maybe that’s just my own impatience talking. Or maybe it’s just really unfair, and it needs to change now. I would like to see that happen. It seems strange that in my lifetime I’ve seen massive social change in regards to things like smoking, and the knowledge culture created by the internets, but that some basic gender discrimination issues are still languishing.
On another level, I like how people are slowly coming to their own deeply-felt awareness. The level playing field starts in our own minds. If it doesn’t start there, then…what?
Because this argument extends further than ‘girl books vs boy books’. Even putting aside the issue of how gender bias restricts the trans-gendered or gender-confused individuals among us, this argument extends into ‘white books vs non-white books’, and ‘abled books vs disabled books’ and ‘gay books vs straight books’ and so on. I mentioned that I linked my comments to the highly relevant Mary Sue post on this exact issue, and Aja Romano makes all these points much more snappily than me, with links to stats and references which will surprise and shock you.
The thing that gets me is, why is this discussion still necessary? And why are the arguments of those on the other side still so reductive? I want my sons to grow up without a conscious thought towards ‘oh, this book is by/about a girl, so it won’t be my thing’. I don’t want them to be locked into some narrow definition of what constitutes a ‘boy’ book, and what they ‘should’ be reading. Why would we want to limit our kids like that?
Would legislation on gender-bias within the publishing industry be any more straitjacketing than the current overwhelming social bias that teaches children that women have nothing valuable to write about (except if they’re writing for other women), and that what they do write is somehow inherently inferior? Doesn’t the corporate structure of industry exert its own ‘nannying’ influence? And is the subtext of the ‘nannying’ argument that women don’t write enough ‘good stuff’ to warrant a 50/50 split?
As a parent, I want my sons - hey, everyone’s kids - to feel like they have more than one option on the table. I want that kind of intellectual freedom for them. And as a writer, I want to be able to write with the same freedom - male characters, female characters, gender-neutral characters (see Karen Healey’s Guardian of the Dead for a great example of an asexual character). I don’t want to be limited by a publisher saying, ‘oh, this is about women’s stuff, let’s market it that way’, or ‘why don’t you publish under your initials, so that more men buy the book?’
So, play with me here, ‘noted book and theatre reviewer’. I have to understand that, on one hand, you approve of my writing because you gave me such a nice write-up in The Age. But on the other hand, you slag off a woman who calmly points out that women are still wildly under-represented in awards, books lists, reviews, industry executive positions, and publishing in general. You obviously have your own little gender-bias issue going on, subconsciously or not. Does that mean that my writing falls into a general category of ‘good’, or just ‘good, even though it was written by a chick’? Can’t you see how this could create confusion, and even cast doubt on the validity of your work? I mean, it’s great to have your approval, but what is it worth?
The topic of gender-bias in publishing is still important, and certainly still relevant - whether gender-bias is a bourgeois issue or not, it’s something that won’t just go away. One commenter on Tara’s blog suggested that the women who replied angrily to the reviewer’s comments should just ‘Let it go!’. But I’m sorry, I can’t let it go. It affects me on too many levels - personally, professionally, politically. It niggles and throbs, like a…well, like a broken tooth. It’s part of me, and it’s somehow out of whack, but I just can’t seem to fix it…
This post is for my sons. I sincerely hope that they don’t need to compose frustrated replies to comments in blogs about this issue when they reach maturity. For more hilarity on the issue of gender-bias in publishing, read Max Barry’s enlightened post about dogs and Smurfs.