WFC: women's and men's fantasy

[sartorias]

The Crystal Ceiling: Is there still a distinction between "women’s" and "men’s" fantasy and horror?I found it interesting, and disappointing, that the panel was all women: Kate Elliott, Charlaine Harris, Nancy Kilpatrick, Jane Kindred, and Malinda Lo.I don’t know how many men volunteered, who picked the panelists, whether it was a man or a woman,

Comments

[la_marquise_de_]

This was a panel I really wanted to get to, and couldn't due to another commitment. But I had had the same reaction as you to the line up -- 4 wonderful female writers, neatly, apparently, boxed into a ghetto, because this is Girl Stuff. It sounds like it went well and some very important issues were raised, but there remains that suspicion that someone, somewhere along the line, had their blinkers on in how they set it up.
Juliet McKenna has been doing a similar thing with review statistics on her livejournal, looking at the fantasy field. Fascinating, disturbing stuff.

[sartorias]

Juliet McKenna would have been a valuable addition to the panel, though you know. Another female.

[badgerbag]

I'm amazed that because 4 women are on a panel you describe it as a "ghetto". The panel's participants discussed how when women do something it's viewed as less important and your statement seems to just perpetuate that!

[la_marquise_de_]

Don't you find that staffing a panel on male-female difference entirely with women suggests that someone somewhere in the programming process made a -- possibly unconscious -- assumption that such a difference was an issue for women only? That looks like marginalisation and ghettoisation to me. Certainly, female space is important, but this was not described as as female issue in the write-up. The panel consisted of excellent women writers who had important things to say -- but there was an official male vacuum. And as long as things like this are viewed as fit only for women to discuss, society as a whole -- which, however much we deplore it (and I do deplore it) is still patriarchal -- is far less likely to consider them as things that everyone, male and female, should confront, consider and deal with.

[badgerbag]

No, I think that it is so rare to have a panel at all in this context with only women speaking that it is unnecessary to try and add legitimacy by adding male voices in for "balance". When there is so much imbalance the other way everywhere else, why not go complain elsewhere that there are too many all-male panels?

[la_marquise_de_]

Well, I do. And in my experience, all female panels on issues that are perceived as being 'only of female interest' are the norm. Which allows those in power to marginalise them. But maybe it's different in the US. This is a debate we've been having for a long time over here in UK fandom.