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

[ex_naomi_ja]

This is really fascinating to me - especially this:

C.H. mentioned an encounter with somebody at which she was told that she was lucky to have such good sales. She went away from that thinking, "Is it possible that I have good sales because I'm a good writer?"because I see it in other fields. My boss is a very successful genetics specialist, and one of the first women to receive certain accolades in her field. Apparently when she shows up at what she calls "old boys" events, she gets a lot of sideways glances because, in addition to being a woman, she's also Pakistani, and people simply don't expect her to be there

[sartorias]

I've heard discussions about that, but not from a marketing standpoint.

The received wisdom has been that boys (and men) won't read anything written by women or with women on the cover, but I wonder how true that is anymore? Boys might zoom straight to something aimed at the boy audience, but the more parents I talk to, the more I'm told that their boy is different from the stats--he reads anything that sounds fun, boy or girl writer or cover art, doesn't matter, unless the cover is way too pink and sparkly.

I'd love to hear some marketing person talk about UF marketing strategies. I know that many women's epic fantasies are gender neutral, or skewed male on the covers.

[ex_naomi_ja]

My absolute favourite fantasy books as a teenager were Maggie Furey's Artefacts of Power series. The main character was a redheaded woman. I don't think she appeared on any of the covers.

I don't know about the rest of the world, but in the UK, urban fantasy is most definitely marketed to women. I can't think of many series that don't feature women on the covers - although a lot of them are scantily-clad and posing provocatively, so I'm not sure where that comes into it... The covers that don't feature women feature naked male torsos. And the books that have male protagonists generally have some neutral cover - like the Dresden Files books, for which the UK covers feature no people at all.

I wish I knew more about the marketing side of things because I'd love to know the reasoning behind these decisions and if they actually work.

[sartorias]

Yeah, me too--and also, why the different cover choices for books between UK and USA.

[torrilin]

As far as the quilt thing... yes and no

[sartorias]

Thanks for that elucidation about fiber artists and art quilts. So the man in question might not have been singled out at all because of his gender, but because his fiber art was display, and not meant for use, as most quilts (theoretically, at least?) are.

[torrilin]

Once you're at the point where you're in a big show, it's pretty theoretical. But yes, a traditional quilt is meant to go on a bed, or otherwise serve as household textiles.

But then, we're talking about a craft where a lot of the time, modern crafters would tend to call a trapunto quilt not quilting... so I am not sure their judgement about the art vs craft divide is unbiased. At least in the US, the pieced "folk" quilt is seen as the height of quilting, and a lot of quilters are unaware that it is quite a modern phenomenon. And the quilting itself is often seen as a waste of time compared to the piecing.

I do not understand this in the slightest.

[sartorias]

I can understand the modernity--when else in time was there such a rich variety of fabrics from which to choose one's pieces? Whereas my great-grandmother's quilt, quietly rotting in my closet because it requires restoration that I cannot afford, was made up of bits from worn-out dresses and household linens, all too weak for washing, now.

[sartorias]

Heh! I didn't see that review--interesting!

[kateelliott]

[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.