“I don’t see gender.” Or colour. Or difference.
When you hear that, you know it’s the claim and the rallying-cry of someone who’s never had to see difference; never had difference unavoidably brought home to them. Never stood outside the charmed circle of the assumed default.
It’s a claim that came up again last week, when two authors gave separate versions of their favourite or recommended science fiction novels that were entirely white and entirely male. (Natalie Luhrs at Pretty Terrible has a response that’s well worth reading.)
Contrast these examples with the recent Strange Horizons column by Renay, and the spate of articles—like Tansy Rayner Roberts’ GOH speech from Continuum 11, republished at SF Signal—talking about how:
“this odd sort of conversation… keeps circling the internet, and it usually starts with a question. Where are all the women, in epic fantasy? Where are the female authors? Why is it all so dominated by men?”
This conversation is founded on false assumptions. Women are here. Women have been here for a long damn time.
But it’s really easy to see how we keep getting led to ask that same damn question, where are all the women? Because there’s this process by which women are written out of the literary canon, slowly and subliminally. My anecdotal evidence suggests that women will recommend both men and women, while men are far more likely to recommend a preponderance of other men. Over time, it seems, there’s no way to avoid this imbalance building up. Over time, women are written out: their significance downplayed, their influence on their peers and successors overlooked. The odds than any single list will comprise white male writers alone, as mathematician and writer S.L. Huang points out, is actually quite slim: and yet again and again we come across lists with no women, or only a token woman; with hardly even a nod towards wider forms of diversity.
I don’t judge these authors for their preferences—well, perhaps I judge them a little: they might only be the latest examples of an ongoing problem, but I find their lack of imagination disturbing. But they haven’t examined their preferences and looked at their public statements, and related them to an ongoing inequity. They’ve never had to, because they live within a discriminatory system that upholds their preferences—even their selves—as normative, unexceptional, default.
But by failing to examine their preferences, they’re contributing to that system. They’re reinforcing the structures that cast non-white or non-cisgendered-men as non-normative. By refusing to see difference—and by that refusal, just happening to produce lists populated entirely by white, largely straight, cisgendered men—they are, in fact, actively contributing to a narrative wherein certain identities are just not important. Not important enough to see, not important enough to acknowledge, and certainly not important enough to be held up as any kind of exemplar.
Examining what we like, what we admire, and why we like it, is the work of a lifetime. But if we don’t, we end up reinforcing structural inequities as though they were the natural way of the world—and there’s nothing natural about rendering invisible people who’ve been here all along.
(I don’t know what SF I’d recommend adolescents read, except it’d probably include Alaya Dawn Johnson and Karen Healey, Lois McMaster Bujold and Scott Westerfeld, Tanya Huff and Walter Jon Williams, Malinda Lo and Karen Lord, David Drake—though not Drake’s early stuff.)
(And any list of favourite SF novels is liable to change from day to day.)
But I think people who’re asked for a list of favourites, or a list of recommendations? I think they have a responsibility to think about their answers. And what that answer says about what, about who, they think is important.
I think they have a responsibility to do better.
Liz Bourke is a cranky person who reads books. Her blog. Her Twitter.
They have a responsibility to do better…by defining what they like by who produces it? I’m sorry but that’s ridiculous to me. If someone asks me for my favorite anything (clothes, books, movies), I think about what immediately comes to mind (most lasting impression), what I like about it, when in my life I came upon it, etc. What I do NOT think about is who made it. Because, well, who cares? My personal preferences do not depend upon having a social agenda. I like what I like. There are some great female authors out there that I really enjoy and their books would be on my “Best Of…” lists. But not because the authors are female.
That would be almost like I’m insulting them, in my opinion. When asked “What is your favorite [something]?”, I should immediately think of things that I enjoy more than anything else. If their work does not trigger anything that causes me to rank it highly, but I include them because of their gender (or race, sexuality, etc.), then that’s garbage. I’m still treating them differently because of their gender. And not in a good way, honestly. It’s patronizing. It’s false.
No one ever has a responsibility to lie about who they are. And all “favorite” lists are just a tiny glimpse into a person’s mindset. A glimpse, by the way, that no one is entitled to have, much less to judge. It is a gift. You ask me for information about myself, which I may then choose to give or withhold. You are not entitled to it.
Despite the Orwellian idea that is currently in vogue that everyone should think the same way, the proper way, the right way, I firmly believe that no person has a right to demand that someone else’s thoughts, likes, dislikes, and motivations must agree with their own or else be deemed somehow lesser. Society can police how we act, not how we think.
Trying to change a mindset is a dangerous thing. Handle with care.
If a book is good, it’s good. If it’s bad, it’s bad. Do I need to re-evaluate my opinion of a book I do not like if it includes non-cisgender-men or was written by a female? If I do not like al dente pasta, do I need to re-evaluate my tastes because it was cooked by a non-cisgender-man or woman?
The call to have a responsibility to do better, to think about our answers for book recommendations, sounds more of a call to conform rather than enjoy who you are and what you like to read.
Here’s a quick question: Ignoring the gender of the author, who wrote the best Star Wars movie? I doubt that the answer will vary based upon whether you’re asking men or women. And the answer is a woman.
And any author recommendations for SF books written during the last couple of decades that doesn’t include Lois McMaster Bujold prominently is a waste of a list (or something really specialized). On the other hand, a person creating a “recommended reading” list should be trying to come up with more than the usual suspects. If I look at a recommended list of books and I’ve already read them all, the list is a waste of time.
Finally, while both men and women do write SF, there is a difference in distribution among the various sub-genres. For some reason — probably the success of earlier writers — women dominate urban fantasy and post apocalyptic young adult novels. Men dominate other sub genres. (This isn’t to say that there are no men in the female dominated sub genres or women in the male dominated sub genres.) So part of the problem may be that the person creating the list of authors is primarily focusing on the sub genre they read and enjoy. For example, now that my daughters have moved on to college, I am exposed to far less of the post apocalyptic young adult novels. While I enjoyed reading them with my daughters, it’s a sub genre that I don’t generally search out, so I won’t even know about the substantial number of good female authors being published. This may be true of others, too.
Your heads, the point has gone over them.
Then reccomend some books instead of complaining that others aren’t. The best follow up you could have to finish this article is The Ten Best Women in Fantasy Today. Don’t call others to act. Lead the charge by your example.
I think with recommendations, it’s something to keep in mind, because we do tend to have a lot of little biases that add up to a detrimental effect. So throwing in a bias in the other direction (I’m going to try to recommend more authors who are women or minorities) is a good thing. Likewise, when you’re looking for books to read, and you tend to read mostly white male authors, it’s good to deliberately look outside of that to help even out biases you don’t know you have (and my philosophy is, there’s really only two belief systems you can hold if there’s a huge disparity in numbers somewhere based on something like sex: either women are just not as good at it, or there are subtle biases at play. If you believe the latter, as I do, leveling the playing field a little is a good thing because it combats unfairness already there. If you believe the former, well, that’s on you.)
But for favorites? Favorites are favorites, they’re an emotional gut reaction. As I said, I’m making a concerted effort this year to but and read more diverse authors. In fact, of my last 6 purchases, 5 were women authors and the one who wasn’t is Japanese. Of my last 5 books read (not counting a short fiction collection which seemed to have a fairly equal division), 3 were women. And yet, so far, if you were asking me to list my favorite SF books, they’d all be white men (if you subdivided it by subgenre a little more, we’d get a bit more diversity). This is not a deliberate choice, they just happen to write the kind of books that I classify as favorites. Part of this is still the biases involved in institutional sexism (for example, women authors are more likely to be pushed towards writing the sort of things I just don’t like) and part of it is just statistical grandfathering (I read a hell of a lot more white male authors even with my efforts to the contrary). But my favorites are favorites and I can’t help that, I can’t choose to like something more because I should. The only thing I can do is attempt to change the future by looking for more diverse books in the future and giving them a chance to become favorites. I’ve read some authors I really enjoy and look out for in the future (Linda Nagata, Mira Grant), some fantastic stand-alone books (Shelter, by Susan Palwick), and a number of authors who write really compellingly but tend to tread on some of my SF pet peeves and so land just shy of being favorites (Kameron Hurley’s Bel Dame series for example, I’m really enjoying, and I plan to read the third book… but I’d enjoy it a lot more without what seems an awful lot like “magic” shapeshifters being part of the world)… none, so far, have made it into my absolute favorites list. But I’ll keep trying.
While I’m here writing this anyway, I do want to ask about something involving the column itself. This is a column that is devoted to championing female authors and female characters helping people who are looking to stray from the dominant group to do so. And I applaud that… but, it’s really not all that clear that’s what it is. For the longest time, I had no idea, until I clicked on the tag itself. Often I see this column invite people to make lists of, say, their favorite comfort rereads, and although all the of books in the main article are women authors, in the comments, people sometimes just treat it as a more general question, and wind up listing mostly male authors. I really think a large number of the readers of this column don’t actually know what it is designed for. Maybe a short paragraph of introduction at the start of every column as a “mission statement” would help? Or is the whole thing done like that deliberately as a way of not scaring off people who wouldn’t read a “woman-centered SF” column? I don’t know. I just wondered, and since I already wrote a couple paragraphs I figured I might as well throw this one on rather than ask the question out of the blue.
I understand the demand for more diversity in books. What I can’t understand is what writer’s gender and race has to do with my enjoyment of his or her books? As if we’re staring at an author’s photo instead of reading his words. Half the time, when I read a book, especially of a new to me author, I don’t even remember whether the author is male or female. It doesn’t matter to me even in romance. And even with my favourite authors, I rarely have a clue about their skin color.
So to imagine that a majority of white males are, for some reason, always checking what is the gender and skin color of the person who wrote the next book they are going to read… Sorry, that’s too ridiculous.
@7 So to imagine that a majority of white males are, for some reason, always checking what is the gender and skin color of the person who wrote the next book they are going to read
No one is imagining that. That’s the problem. Inherent bias means white men are only reading white men. What Liz is asking white men to do is to START checking for the gender and skin color of the authors they read, and when they realize how many of them are white men, do something about it.
Or when someone asks a white man for recs, for that man to take a conscious effort to recommend something OTHER than white men.
So to imagine that a majority of white males are, for some reason, always checking what is the gender and skin color of the person who wrote the next book they are going to read… Sorry, that’s too ridiculous.
Actually, many are. They just don’t realize it. There’s a reason that many female SF author use initials instead of names.
I worked in a bookstore for 10 years, and the SF/F was my specialty. I recall on time dealing with a (white, male) customer who told me straight up that he wanted recommendations but no women authors because “he didn’t like their style of writing”. When I asked him for favorites so I could figure out what he was looking for, he told me he loved C.J. Cherryh. As you know, Bob, C. J. Cherryh is female.
So, at least he was honest about his bias. He just didn’t know that he’d been fooled into thinking a female author was good.
I think the refrain of “I like what I like, so there” misses the point that there’s other stuff one could like but heuristics of book selection are causing you to miss it. Most of the new authors I read these days are recommend, implicitly or explicitly, by authors I already read. Which turns out to be their friends in a lot of cases. Thus authors I like are at least partially sorted by the people they know.
There are potentially other authors I would be like but don’t survive that screening so it’s much less likely that I’ll take a chance on their book. And if I hadn’t picked up a book by Sarah Monette based on the cover, I could be reading mostly David Weber and friends. You’ll note that a list of favourites derived from people Monette writes with and people Weber writes with would be absurdly different. My list would consider both groups, fyi.
@7 The problem isn’t the readers, exactly. It’s publishers making assumptions about which authors and books are saleable and reviewers making assumptions about which book to read. That influences which books readers choose or can choose to read, which feeds forward into the assumptions of readers and publishers. If reviewers fail to consider how bias or market effects or blind chance influence their list of “favourite” books, then they contribute to trends that keep good books off the shelves.
I’m in general agreement, but… in an article about diversity, your recommended list is entirely Anglo-American…
Diversity takes many form, but in the current conversation it’s often reduced to being only about gender, sexual orientation and race. When diversity gets pigeonholed into neat categories, it pretty much ceases to be diversity.
If somebody asks me for my favorites, I am certainly going to give my gut feel and mention the things I really enjoy and have resonated with me. Many of those ARE male authors (Tolkien, Jordan, Sanderson, Kay). But I’ve also had some good influences that turned me on to a lot of (potentially) overlooked female writers like Sharon Shinn, Juliet Marrilier, and of course JK Rowling (who had to use initials…which probably says something). And that’s not counting other female authors I’ve read/enjoyed but don’t necessarily make it to my ‘favorites’ list. So while the split isn’t 50/50, I’m thankful to have had the exposure. And if somebody asks me for recommendations (which is different than asking me what may favorites are), I will make a point to include female authors since they can’t become favorites unless people know they are out there. And I don’t know how much of that falls on the individual readers, or maybe the publishers themselves (since it seems like SF written by women is many times marketed as women specific).
@3 – if you are referring to Empire Strikes Back, most of Leigh Brackett’s work was thrown out/rewritten as far as I understand it. I think they kept her as a writing credit out of respect for her after she passed. Who’s to say what she could have done if she hadn’t though.
People have different opinions, of course, and that’s as it should be. However, there is a difference between people missing the point and people disagreeing with said point. So sentiments like #4 are just not of use. It’s playing to the crowd only. If you want to influence me to change my mind, feel free to try. But don’t try to denigrate my opinion by saying I don’t “get” what you’re saying. My comprehension level is fine. I simply don’t agree.
When I was young, I didn’t examine my reading preferences. And in those days, it skewed heavily white male, with the occasional C J Cherryh or Julian May. It took a look time for me to realize that my unconscious bias and pattern-following was keeping me from reading authors that I’d love–if only I’d look beyond my narrow horizons.
I did, and still am trying to do so. And my reading is richer for it. Nutty Nuggets are fine and tasty for my reading, but so are Breakfast Bars and Opulent Omelettes and Savory Sausages and Delicious Doro Wat.
@@@@@ 5 Aminar
Interesting that you ask for recommendations on ‘The Ten Best Women in Fantasy Today’ (my emphasis) when the article is specifically talking about Science Fiction. Women are allowed to play at Fantasy, they are not expected to write serious Science Fiction, despite the fact that they have been doing so for decades, winning prizes for decades, yet somehow being forgotten when their peers are remembered.
This is probably not a good thing, but I never even pay attention to the author’s name. If you asked me to name 10 authors I have enjoyed in the last year I probably couldn’t do it. I could list 20+ books titles that I’ve enjoyed, but I don’t often stop to read the author’s name, let alone research what gender or race they are.
I pick my books based off Tor recommendations / excerpts, or whatever I see on amazon with a flashy cover or interesting description. The author is just about the last thing I look at. The biggest impact that author name has on me is how it is ordered alphabetically in my kindle. As an example, off the top of my head, I enjoyed the Wool series a lot. I know the last name begins with H, because I always see it in my kindle list. Past that, I am drawing a blank.
“But I think people who’re asked for a list of favourites, or a list of recommendations? I think they have a responsibility to think about their answers”
So before I tell people what “My” favourites are, I have to check with Liz to know what I can say?
Something about that doesn’t make sense.
@8 and 9
If white men don’t check gender and race of their authors but still end up reading only white men, the only logical explanation that comes to my mind is that it’s because their chosen genre is mostly populated by white men. Isn’t it? In this I completely agree with @10 – this is a problem that should be primarily addressed to publishers.
I’ve also seen a couple of guys who didn’t want to read, say, military SF written by women. As well as some women who refused to read romances written by men. But those are few, not a majority.
What’s happening here is an example of unchecked privilege turning into circular reasoning. Cigender, heterosexual able-bodied white men are at the top of the totem pole. They are the most able to leverage their social position to get publishing contracts, get their work out there, seen as legitimate, etc.
When members outside that social position publish, their work is usually ghettoized (women’s fiction, Black fiction, queer fiction). When these folks try to publish science fiction, it may cross boundaries, and then it’s “too-whatever” to be mainstream–because whiteness/maleness/straightness/cisness/able-bodied-ness is considered normal, and thereby, invisible.
So these dudes, who are legitimately talented, rise to the top, write their books, and shout out to authors they like (who write in ways and about experiences that resonate with them). Those other authors are *gasp* other white dudes. The cycle continues. Diverse writers keep struggling at the margins. And these otherwise generally liberal nice guys start clutching their pearls when they are called out on privilege they don’t even realize they have.
Because if Ernest Cline shouted out Nnedi Okorafor a lot more people would read Nnedi Okorafor. If he shouted out an unknown writer of color, that could make that person’s career. That would break the cycle.
@alain Ducharme, generally diversity has to do with the inclusion of voices excluded due to marginalization along axes of power. Thus these categories (plus class).
“If white men don’t check gender and race of their authors but still end up reading only white men, the only logical explanation that comes to my mind is that it’s because their chosen genre is mostly populated by white men. Isn’t it?”
No, actually, that isn’t the most logical explanation. The most logical, scientific, statistical explanation is that unexamined biases mean that gender and race are still influencing their choices, even if they don’t realize it.
Logic says that – unless you are arguing that white men are just better writers? – the only reason for this kind of imbalance is bias at some level. Science has proven time and again how unexamined bias influences our thoughts and actions – who gets chosen for jobs, what kinds of stories we think are important. Statistics says that there should be at least someone who is not white or male on those lists, even when there are few writers who aren’t white and male.
Also, we have stats on who is published and who isn’t and it isn’t nearly as bad as those list would indicate it is. So it’s not just that, statistically, there should be someone, it’s that, statistically, there should be several someones.
Also, regarding the argument that the identity of the author should have no bearing on how we judge books, including literature: The idea that this is a useful goal is news to me, as a librarian. My inability to be an expert in everything means that I routinely judge the quality of books in part based on the author’s experience and expertise. While this more often comes into play with non-fiction books with regard to professional expertise, it can and does at times include both identity and fiction. People’s lived experiences matter, especially if I’m going to be suggesting other read the book, or using tax dollars to purchase it.
If you’re going to hold us to this standard, maybe we should also be attacking male basketball players that are fans of Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, or Lebron James instead of making a more progressive choice and choosing someone from the WNBA.
At most, this is a symptom of a disease in Science Fiction, which is historically dominated by men. Of the women Sci Fi authors that Luhrs lists, Ursula K Leguin is the only one I’ve even heard of.
Ernest Cline and Andy Weir were asked to recommend their favorite authors. Liz seems to be claiming that they have a moral responsibility to lie to their fans in order to advance a social agenda. Luhrs seems to guess at some kind of conspiracy among white male authors to keep the game in their hands by scratching each others’ backs but also failed to notice (or chose to ignore) that both authors have the same editor, Julian Pavia of Crown, and have Sci-Fi bestsellers coming out within a year of each other. But I digress.
I don’t know if Liz is in the habit of choosing what she enjoys most based on the gender and race of its creator, but that makes as much sense as claiming that food tastes better based on the gender, orientation, or race of the chef.
Sifting through this article’s condescending and self-important tone, there is inherent truth that a lack of women in Sci Fi is a problem, but lying to advance an agenda should never be expected or asked of authors, and she should be ashamed for vilifying writers for honestly answering a question.
There are a lot of people in these threads saying, effectively, “You shouldn’t ask people to lie about / change their preferences based on the characteristics of the author.”
But to be clear, the necessary intervention doesn’t lie at the point of choosing favorites. By then, it’s already too late. The necessary intervention lies at the point of choosing what to consume.
As readers, we are selectively marketed works by white men, and taught that works by underrepresented authors– especially ones that deal with social issues– are in some way “niche” or “issue” fiction. Or that they simply won’t be good. There is a reason that many classic female SF authors went by male- or neutral-sounding pseudonyms. They were simply more likely to be read at all that way.
This is the reason why rec lists end up full of white male authors. What’s the alternative? That white men are just writing better quality works? That white men are the only ones writing? Yeah, I don’t think so.
The responsibility we have as readers is to help even the scales– to feed ourselves a balanced diet of books, in spite of everything stacked against us. That takes work. It will not happen automatically, or without introspection. It will require you using your limited resources (time and money) purposefully. It will occasionally require google searching for “best female/PoC/LGBT sci fi authors” and choosing your next book from one of those lists. If it feels like you’re being forced to prioritize author characteristics over content, remember: someone else is doing exactly that in the opposite direction. A whole lot of someones, in fact– a whole society. Whether consciously or unconsciously, it doesn’t matter. The effect is the same.
The part where you look back over the books you’ve read and realize that your favorite authors are suddenly more diverse? That comes after.
“I don’t see gender.’ Or colour. Or difference.
When you hear that, you know it’s the claim and the rallying-cry of someone who’s never had to see difference; never had difference unavoidably brought home to them. Never stood outside the charmed circle of the assumed default.
When you start your argument with an absolute statement such as this, you have already lost. You may have many good points to present, but you have already tainted every single statement that follows, because NO, you DON’T know that this is the claim of someone who’s never had to see difference.
@25 Wouldn’t that be nice? Given how over-represented straight white guys are, it’s pretty unlikely to be the case. Unless you want to argue that straight white guys are naturally better writers than everyone else.
Like every other business, success in writing is a combination of factors. Yes, the quality of the product is important, but so is luck, cost, assumptions held by gatekeepers, and the position of Jupiter in relation to Sagittarius.
If nothing else, publishers can use markers of priviledge (intentionally or not) as a simple way to cut down the size of the slush pile. Then it doesn’t matter how good the content is, because it’s a lot harder to get anyone to read it.
Well put Ansel, well put!
does it really matter what a author’s gender and race is, shouldn’t we care more about if they could write decently?
The thing for me is really: I’m pretty sure that white men aren’t better at writing than everyone else. Which means there probably are books being written by people of color and women that are AS GOOD or BETTER than what I’m reading. Which means if I’m thinking about a “best of list” and I come up with white men, then I’ve been reading not the best that’s out there. I’m both under qualified to make recommendations (i. Which case I like asking Twitter!) and I get to discover better books out there!
Win-Win
@27
@25 Wouldn’t that be nice? Given how over-represented straight white guys are, it’s pretty unlikely to be the case. Unless you want to argue that straight white guys are naturally better writers than everyone else.
I think that argument is a loser, but is the natural argument the only one you can come up with?
If I take a random example like the overrepresentation of Dominican males in American baseball would the only argument be that they were naturally more gifted at hitting a bat with a ball?
@29 Arguably, that’s what people are pushing for diversity are doing. The “industry” is the one who’s overly concerned with an author’s gender or race. If it wasn’t, there wouldn’t be such disporportionate outcomes.
@31 You could read the rest of my post for other potential reasons.
Any argument based on “natural gifts” would require evidence on the source of those gifts to be convincing. I do not believe any such evidence would be forthcoming in regards to writing.
This illustrates my feelings about this article as a whole. In one sentence, there is both something I completely support and something I entirely disagree with.
Socio-cultural inequities are real. There is definitely an imbalance in terms of which authors get good/big marketing campaigns for their books. And if someone asks me for a recommendation, I’ll think about it. I have to, if he’s asking me for a recommendation, he doesn’t need me to tell him about the book that just made it on the bestseller list. I’ll dig through my recent reads and look for something (good) that he wouldn’t have heard from and would probably not read otherwise.
If I’m asked for my favorite book? Now that’s an entirely different matter. My favorite book is my favorite book. I don’t think about it, it has no agenda. Right now, and for the past couple of years, it’s been a book by a white man, but I won’t apologize for it, because it’s not a representation of all that I’ve read in the past two years. It just happens the one that I’ve enjoyed the most (and reread three time).
The point was made in a couple other comments. You don’t want to change your answer to “what are your favorite books?” but you do want to have found those favorite books out of a diverse and rich pool of possibilities.
@32
you made it seems as though over-representation can only be arrived at due to influence gatekeepers or “natural gifts”
I think the question is do you think the over-representation of dominican baseball players is due to either of these factors or any of the factors you name?
I don’t, I think there is to some extent an amount of self selection. Tons of poor non-white non-american kids are working hard at playing baseball and that’s how they get good.
If I were to think of the pure forms of fantasy (ones with out a point of view other than what the participants bring) I’d think of warhammer and Dungeons and Dragons. When I looked around at those conventions, I mostly saw white males. Isn’t it possible that more white males are writing good fantasy because more white males are writing any fantasy at all?
For those who have the idea that only or mostly white males are writing epic fantasy, this burgeoning and still growing list at Reddit puts paid to that notion:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/3e1bix/who_are_some_female_authors_that_are_writing_big/
These authors aren’t getting the benefits of being white males and are suffering for it in terms of visibility. I see far more push for white male authors in reviews, in publicity, in terms of what people talk about. This is the unconscious bias at work.
I don’t know anything about how baseball players are recruited.
Self-selection is possible, but I’d need hard data to be convinced. Also, D&D and Warhammer is a pretty narrow subset of fantasy, so it probably can’t be generalized to a wider population of potential writers.
Also, a self-selection process could also be influence by probematic trends in the industry. Refer to: Women in Computer Science, reasons for leaving.
It’s a shame that in nearly every conversations about examining preconceptions and biases, the comments are flooded to overflowing with people coming up with desperate-seeming reasons why their preconceptions and biases are correct and therefore shouldn’t be challenged. Worse, they then deflect and claim that questioning the status quo is bias and even bigotry. It is really hard to take, and doubly so from people who are fans of genres that should be bucking the status quo rather than reinforcing it.
“If I’m asked for my favorite book? Now that’s an entirely different matter.”
But that depends on what your job/role is and how much power you wield, yes? As a librarian, I get asked that question in interviews, and it matters to me what kinds of books I’m highlighting. I don’t lie, but there’s a difference between talking only about my favorite books from when I was a child, 20 years ago, (which, by the way, is how a lot of these lists of “Essential Scifi for Teens” and “Classic Books Every Child Should Read” tend to go) and talking about a more balanced mixture of the books I’ve read and loved – new and old, books where I strongly resemble the main character, and ones where I don’t, etc.
It also depends on what the question actually is. In at least one case, the men Liz and Natalie are talking about were not asked about favorites, they were asked about recommendations. And that’s a very different question.
“Isn’t it possible that more white males are writing good fantasy because more white males are writing any fantasy at all?”
As has been said several times already, the actual statistics do not show that to be true, with regards to gender and science fiction. Even more so when it comes to fantasy. Certainly not to the point that all white male lists are statistically likely – in the absence of bias on the part of the person making the list.
“At most, this is a symptom of a disease in Science Fiction, which is historically dominated by men. Of the women Sci Fi authors that Luhrs lists, Ursula K Leguin is the only one I’ve even heard of. “
Dominated how though? In terms of actual numbers? Not to the extent that booklists like these would lead us to believe. Dominated in terms of the accepted narrative being that science fiction is written by men, regardless of the truth? Yes. But well, that’s what we are pointing out, that the accepted narrative is false, and that the accepted narrative exists in part because people treat these lists as some sort of proof of anything other than the bias of the people making them.
I’m like #16. In this age of internet, ebooks and tablets, what grabs my attention mostly in a book or story is mostly its title, genre and the little blurb that tells the story. Sometimes the cover can catch my attention when I’m browsing through Amazon, but mostly it does not.
I wonder how this process of filtering your favourite list through social justice would be affected by how … fluid gender seems to be nowadays. If you asked most people to make a list of great RPG adventures, Caverns of Thracia or Dark Tower would most surely be there, especially among old-style RPG players. Look, the third post in this old RPGforum thread (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?581698-Best-published-fantasy-adventures-modules-or-campaigns) has Lich Lords, Dark Tower, Tegal Manor and Nine Doctrines of Darkness part 2. Some people when the list was made (July-2011) would criticize the fact that all the authors were white males. But can we criticize it now? In December 2011, Paul Jaquays, author of Dark Tower, changed names to Jenell Jaquays and announced that she identified as a trans woman and a lesbian. So, is the list still sexist?
I don’t think people have a responsibility to tweak their list of favorites to match some sort of diversity checklist. That’s ridiculous. For one thing, if they do that, then it’s not their favorites list anymore. It’s what their list becomes once they have passed it through the filter you required them to use so you can more fully identify with it. You’re asking them to ignore what they actually love and replace it with something else, for your benefit. Well, guess what? Their list isn’t about you. It’s about them.
Yes, in an ideal world everyone would have a favorites list that was a statistically accurate representation of diversity. But they don’t, for the same reason that we don’t all read across all possible genres. We have preferences. Some of them are conscious (I love aliens and spaceships!) and some of them are not. We are formed by our experiences, and we readily identify and connect with people who we share similar backgrounds and experiences. Men have a lot of shared experience, as do women, ditto for races. So it’s not at all surprising when we give our list of favorite authors and they look like us. Furthermore, just because a white guy’s favorites are white men doesn’t mean that’s all he reads — he just connected most strongly with the books written by those authors. It’s not like he goes walking through the bookstore and refuses to pick up anything with a female author or a picture of a black guy on the dust jacket.
Women do this too. I think your anecdotal evidence that men do this but women don’t is completely wrong. My wife, for example, would list Rowling as her favorite. She also loves the Hunger Games (female author and protagonist). I like both of those series, but they wouldn’t be on my favorites list over Patrick Rothfuss and Scott Lynch. She likes those male authors too, but not above the female authors. Her female friends are similar in their tastes. Why those preferences? I don’t know, but she doesn’t choose hers any more than I choose mine. We probably do connect more with the authors we love in part because of the shared gender, and the common experiences that come with it.
I don’t believe anyone has a civic responsibility to choose their leisure reading material based on a diversity checklist, or that they should have to edit their favorites list in an indirect, abstract, and highly unlikely attempt to influence the entire publishing industry to be more diverse. It’s interesting psychologically that our favorites tend to reflect our own identity, but it’s nothing anyone should be publically pilloried for. Let people like what they like.
It’s an interesting question.
On the one hand – it is always worth expanding your horizons, by picking up something new or challenging every so often.
On the other hand – without actively researching the writer, it can be hard to pick their race or gender. Ben Aaronovitch for example, write urban fantasy with a black english male protagonist. And writes him well, to the extent that I recognise the characteristics of several of my friends in his life.
So should I support the work, to help normalise non-white protagonists – or criticise it, for being written by a middle aged white guy?
I think part of the problem is that female genre authors have long been looked down upon by publishers … in the US.
In Australasia, they have been the majority for a long time, and I could easily name more female authors than male off the top of my head.
Which means the problem, like so many others, is an internal US problem that is bleeding into the rest of the world as the US keeps trying to be the gatekeeper of the English written market. The advantage of fiction is that it doesn’t have to be – and with the rise of the Internet as a medium of physical distribution, we are seeing a lot more foreign authors of different races and genders get their rightful respect. Tor alone has promoted African, Chinese, Indian and Polish authors in the last few years, and translation costs are coming down.
“I wonder how this process of filtering your favourite list through social justice would be affected by how … fluid gender seems to be nowadays.”
I’m not entirely certain what this is asking, but as a data point, I recently ordered a book for my library’s YA collection which has since been moved to the adult collection because the identity of the main character – an intersex teen – made certain people very nervous. So I question how supportive mainstream institutions – including publishing – are of gender fluidity.
I don’t “filter [my] favourite list through social justice” – at least not in the sense that I have some checklist that authors must meet in order to make it to my list, or in the sense that I pick lesser quality books to mention in order to fill some quota.
I consider the needs of the people the list is for when I make such lists.
(And you all may not be librarians, but one assumes, if you are making such lists, you are making them for some type of audience, yes?)
I consider the fact that while I love both Mo Willems and Suzy Lee’s picture books, Mo Willems is already well known while Suzy Lee is not, and so making a point to mention her will not only help an author who could use more exposure, it will more importantly better help the people reading the list by helping them find an excellent author they are unlikely to hear of otherwise.
I consider the fact that NOT mentioning books like None of the Above leads to the marginalization of certain identities. I take into account the fact that continued insistence that gender is NOT fluid by most of the people and institutions in power makes such stories harder to tell and harder for people to obtain. (As does this idea that it’s possible to not “see” gender or other identities.) Which in turns makes it harder for me to keep well written books like None of the Above on (the correct) library shelves.
(It’s also possible that we are talking past each other in terms of scale here as well. If you were to ask me to make a list of my favorite books, it would be way too long to tweet. I’d be filtering it in order to tweet it, regardless. The question is always how I’m filtering it, not if I am.)
@36 I’d need hard data either way. I think at least the examples I showed, proved that there doesn’t have to be a top-down reason for over representation in sci-fi/ fantasy. I’m all for investigating but I’m less for people saying that up has to be down, or your favorites can’t be your favorites, due to some observations.
Too often now I find when people say “privilege” or “over(or under) representation” it’s a way to end a conversation and get a result by any means. Its what Liz tries here. I’m not excusing bad or even thoughtless acts, but lets not jump to conclusions either.
Sigh….no I do not have to go out and hunt for this to like simply because of who wrote them. Books should be judged solely on if the book is good or not. Who wrote it is immaterial. NOT seeing difference IS what we should strive for.
It never ceases to amaze how many people think that “people who talk about gender are the real sexists” is an effective riposte. And then there folks like Sean, who write five hundred words that respond to what they imagine they read, rather than what they actually did read.
Just want to note that actively seeking out writers whose backgrounds and circumstances differ from the default (or from one’s own circumstances) can be a deeply rewarding and enriching experience. I am particularly keen on reading works by writers from outside the traditional Anglosphere (i.e. US, UK, Canada and Australia), and have read some absolutely incredible stuff that I never would have found if I hadn’t been actively seeking it. (For those with similar interests, I recommend starting with the Apex Book of World SF series.)
You mention “favorite or recommended” at the beginning of your post. These seem to me to be two very different things (and the recommended half would seem to require some sort of balance to give a real picture of works in the field). If you ask for my favorites–the ones that affected me the most and I just LIKE the best–and, coincidentally, a friend asked me this yesterday–I answered C.J. Cherryh as top favorite overall sci fi author with Leguin’s “Left Hand of Darkness” as my all time fav individual novel. But if was making a recommended list to give them an overall entree into the genre I would list a lot of other things as well (which would include men: Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov, for example). Don’t you think part of the confusion in the responses is centered a round not distinguishing between what people happen to LIKE versus what they might RECOMMEND?
The question asked earlier in the thread was, in a nutshell: look at the books you’ve read. Are they as diverse as you’d like them to be, or are they homogenous? If they are homogenous, chances are, they are white men. I know it is certainly true of my reading habits, even as I make a conscious effort to diversify my readership. That’s part of the point, for me: to be exposed to new viewpoints, new ideas, new worlds; personally, it’s all tied up together under the “Fiction” ribbon for me. So that’s the simple challenge: do the math. Put intentions or speculation on motive & excuses aside & run the numbers in your head.
It saddens me to see that people just don’t get diversity. A lot of those people are those of privilege who live in a big universe with blinders on. They don’t get that as an African American man I want to see diversity in what I read and watch and that people who offer diversity have a better chance to reach me. In other words, diversity means access (and money). A show (or book) with a good mix in gender and ethnicity is more likely to reach a broader audience than a homogeneous show of just a few white guys. I have to admit I bought Max Gladstone’s Three Parts Dead because there was a black woman on the cover. Someone on Natalie Luhrs’s blog post listed a bunch of women SFF authors and I realized I’ve read and loved works by many of them. Diversity also means ideas. One of my favorite hard science fiction novels, Vast, is by Linda Nagata who I just found out influenced Alastair Reynolds which he says on his blog influenced him when he later wrote a couple of his hard science fiction novels. Anybody who supplies a “best of” list of books that has only white male writers is speaking primarily to someone who probably looks just like someone else on that list. A homogeneous list is for a homogeneous target audience. And to be blunt, if you look at global demographics, it’s a mighty small audience too.
@46 MaxL,
Well I didn’t imagine this:
“I don’t judge these authors for their preferences—well, perhaps I judge them a little: they might only be the latest examples of an ongoing problem, but I find their lack of imagination disturbing. But they haven’t examined their preferences and looked at their public statements, and related them to an ongoing inequity. They’ve never had to, because they live within a discriminatory system that upholds their preferences—even their selves—as normative, unexceptional, default.”
(So, passing judgement, assertion that it implies they lack imagination, pure conjecture that they have never examined their preferences, and an assertion that they should pass their public statements about their preferences through this filter)
She later equates having favorites who happen to be white men with 1) refusing to consider their preferences and 2) contributing to a system that says women and minorities are unimportant viewpoints. #1 doesn’t follow, and #2 is a pretty extreme response to someone who says “Here are my favorite books, y’all enjoy!” If I tell you my favorite food is pizza, am I contributing to a culture which discounts Asian food? No.
I also didn’t imagine her last two paragraghs where she flat out asserts that people have a responsibility to think about this stuff before answering the innocent question of What Are Your Favorite Books, and that they have a responsibility to do better. That, and her anecdotal statement that men do this but not women, are directly what I responded to.
I am a feminist and am not arguing that sexism doesn’t exist, in publishing or the world at large. It does. But this article struck me as ridiculous take on a real issue. If you disagree, fine. I’m not disrespecting your opinion by acting like you didn’t read the article, please show me the same courtesy.
@44 If you find people use representation or privilege to shut down a conversation, it might be because you’ve come in late. That representation in media is distorted by bias and privilege is fairly settled. The investigation has been done, if you want to go looking for it. It not up to the author to re-affirm her premises every time she wants to re-visit a topic.
@45 That’s the point, it’s not happening. Books have been judged based on who wrote them since always. The very novels we’re squabbling over were once derided for being written by women. Decisions are being made on which books get published, reviewed, and recommended based, in part, on if they were written by a white man. People pushing for more representation are trying to break free of that paradigm.
How do they do that by suggesting the author factor into decisions about books? The same way you neutralize an acid. You don’t do it by adding water; you do it by adding a base.
@52 If you’re saying privilege and bias distorts the media I say of course. But what are the effects and how are they felt? I’m not anywhere near the top of the privilege points chart, but where do I fall relative to Liz Buorke?. I mean she has her own blog here on Tor.com a portal for her viewpoint. That’s privilege. She’s google-able and she is in someway a gatekeeper of ideas. Doesn’t she have a responsibility to look into as you said “hard data”?
How many non white male, hetero cysgender writers/writings are submitted to Tor for publishing? What is it by percentage of total submission? How many are published? It seems like this is information that she could easily source with her privileged connection to Tor.
I don’t want to shut the conversation down, I want it to grow. Maybe we all might discover something. The privilege conversation is usually just one sided, where one side claims to have all the answers, but won’t show their work to the other side. If you want change you have to be willing to do the hard word is all I’m saying, not just make demands.
Clearly, the unexamined book list is not worth recommending.
I’m interested to note the comments which remark on the idea that women are more succesful or accepted in fantasy than they are in sci-fi…
If you asked me for a list of my favourite authors, I’d say that in fantasy, most of them are men:
Brandon Sanderson, Patrick Rothfuss, Ben Aaronovitch, Trudi Canavan
But in Sci-Fi, most of them are women:
Lois McMaster Bujold, Ann Leckie, Yoon Ha Lee, M C A Hogarth, John Scalzi.
(I know Bujold does fantasy too, but honestly I didn’t like it as much as her sci-fi work…)
To address the actual topic of the article, however…
—
[…] they haven’t examined their preferences and looked at their public statements, and related them to an ongoing inequity.
Really? Have you asked them? Perhaps they did so and felt that they had no obligation to alter their statements based on what they found? I don’t care to say they would be right to feel that way, but for you to state categorically that they never examined their preferences seems presumptuous.
But I think people who’re asked for a list of favourites, or a list of recommendations? I think they have a responsibility to think about their answers. And what that answer says about what, about who, they think is important.
I think they have a responsibility to do better.
A responsibility to whom? Better by whose lights?
I cannot agree that when someone is asked for a list of their favourite books, or books that they would recommend, they have any responsibility at all beyond providing a list of books which either are their favourites, or which they would recommend.
Now, it may be that when asked, someone might take into consideration the identity of the asker, and choose to recommend books which they feel would widen their world view. Or it might be that they would choose to recommend books that would advance an agenda of their own, such as ones which might make the reader more environmentally aware, or more conscious of the tragedies of war.
Bluntly, I don’t think it’s your place, or anyone’s place, to try and claim that your agenda (which, to be clear, I do agree is a noble and worthy one) is somehow the responsibility of others.
Other people are answerable to their own consciences, not yours.
@23: “Of the women on the Luhrs list, Ursula Leguin is the only one I’ve ever heard of.”
Forgive me for using you as a specific example of an attitude that’s been expressed less specifically elsethread, but… some of the women on that list have been writing SF for decades. Some of them write the kinds of “hard” SF that men are said to prefer. Some of them are hugely famous. Some of them are best-sellers. Some of them are critically acclaimed. Some of them have won multiple Hugos… some of these categories overlap!
But still, when the topic is Favorite/Recommended SF Novels, these names are suddenly obscure or afterthoughts? Who’s buying all those books and voting for all those Hugos, anyway?
For the question of favourite/recommendation, I think that a list of favourite is personal and doesn’t have to follow an agenda, but it only tells you about the person’s tastes, which is not particularly interesting for a writer. Inspirations would be more relevant, and they too have to be honest. For recommendations on the other hand, if everyone always give the same, then it is pointless, so it’s better to spread the word about a little known writer, preferably one whose books are different from any others ones: such recommendations should normally be more diverse.
@AlainDucharme, B R Sanders:
The authors mentioned in this article and the links provided (I’m not including the comments because this is already long enough) are:
American: Ernest Cline, Carl Sagan, Robert Heinlein, Orson Scott Card, Ken Grimwood, Jack Vance, Alfred Bester, G.R.R. Martin, Andy Weir, Peter Clines, Hugh Howey, Patrick Rothfuss, Octavia Butler, Robin Hobb, Leigh Bardugo, Catherynne M. Valente, Ursula Le Guin, Erika Johansen, Kristin Cashore, Jacqueline Carey, Joan Vinge, C.J. Cherryh, Joanna Russ, Lois McMaster Bujold, Pat Cadigan, Elizabeth Bear, Connie Willis, M.J. Locke, Rosemary Kirstein, Kage Baker, Diane Duane, Elizabeth Moon, Jody Lynn Nye, Nisi Shawl, Ann Leckie, Karen Joy Fowler, James Tiptree, Jr., Ray Bradbury, Larry Niven, Frank Herbert, John Scalzi, Andra Norton, Patricia McKillip, Robin McKinley, Elizabeth Scarborough, Jennifer Roberson, Teresa Edgerton, Judith Tarr, Sheri S Tepper, Pamela Dean, Katherine Kurtz, Katherine Kerr, Melanie Rawn, Esther Friesner, Jane Yolen, Robert Jordan, Terry Brooks, David Eddings, C.L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Steven Gould, N.K. Jemisin, Tamora Pierce, Sarah Monette, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Scott Westerfeld, Walter Jon Williams, David Drake
British: Douglas Adams, Richard K. Morgan, Arthur C. Clarke, Diana Wynne Jones, Nicola Griffith, Terry Pratchett, Tanith Lee, Kari Sperring, Mary Norton
Canadian: Julie E. Czerneda, Margaret Atwood, Guy Gavriel Kay, Tanya Huff
Australia: Tansy Rayner Roberts, Beverley McDonald, Sara Douglass, Ambelin Kwaymullina
Russian: Isaac Asimov
Nigerian: Nnedi Okorafor
French: Aliette de Bodard
Chinese: Malinda Lo
Greek: Athena Andreadis
Filipino: Rochita Loenen-Ruiz
Jamaican: Nalo Hopkinson
New Zealander: Karen Healey
Barbadian: Karen Lord
(I couldn’t find E. Catherine Tobler’s, S.L. Huang’s and Carolyn Cushman’s nationalities)
Among these, only Loenen-Ruiz, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Beverley McDonald, Sara Douglass, Karen Healey, Karen Lord and Nalo Hopkinson are neither British nor American (to my knowledge). By the way, all the Australian authors were mentioned only by Roberts, who is Australian herself; they were among dozens of American authors: in my experience, this is generally the case: Americans and Britons talk about American and British books, other native English speakers talk about those books and the ones from their country, and the rest of the world talks about books by English speaking authors and books written in their language. Among the non-British/American, I’m not sure anyone writes primarily in anything but English. So basically, the only way Britons and Americans will learn about other cultures is if they have Britons/Americans of foreign origins to talk about it.
This list shows that when we’re talking about gender disparity, we do find lots of women (as I said, race would take longer to check. The list doesn’t seem to be representative of these countries racial demographics, but at least it’s not uniformly white). But they are overwhelmingly British / American: these nationalities are 5% of the world population, but 87% of the list. Should I use Huang’s formula to check the likelihood of it being a random effect? It has been said in the comments that some genres are more attractive to men or to women (or they are considered more legitimate as authors), so one possibility could be that there is almost no SFF outside of those two countries: let’s look at the best selling books in any genre: native English speakers are less than 5% of the world population, yet they represent 74% of the books that sold more than 10 millions copies (but since they are mostly at the top, these books represent a much higher proportion of the sales. Out of the 109 book series that sold more than 15 millions individual copies, 70% are in English, with the same reservation).
I don’t think that race, sexuality or being cis or trans has any role in our choices once in the bookshop, since you really have to search for this information find this out about an author (there might be a bias against women though, when they don’t use a masculine pen name or initials), it seems more likely that the problem is in who gets published and how the books are marketed and through which networks. But of course, the only way readers can make things change is to be more aware of those facts and actively look for books by people who aren’t white or male. On the other hand, it seems unlikely that books are not chosen by nationality: most bookstores have a separate aisle for foreign books, so it’s trivially easy to look for them – or to avoid them.
Of course, translation is an issue: I tend to favour books I can read in the original language, so in English and French. But considering the size of the foreign language section in French bookshops, it’s clear I’m an exception and it doesn’t bother most customers to be reading translations. And yet American and British books sell more than any other origins, despite the fact that they are all sold in a French version: does it mean that only English translators are capable of doing a decent job? I doubt it.
To be fair, this website is doing a lot to tackle this lack of diversity. There is a series on Australia and New Zealand authors, and more importantly, Tiamat’s Terrain (Cixin Liu’s Three Body Problem was also heavily advertised here last year, and it was a translation). It’s just unfortunate that this aspect of diversity is so often forgotten in these discussions.
Sorry, but no. I am not obliged to read and enjoy books based on sex, gender, country, planet of origin, or any of that. If a book is good, and I enjoyed it, end of story. If I didn’t enjoy a book, end of story. Do you honestly and sincerely believe that the origin of the author *actually* matters? No. At the end of the day the quality of the book is what allows it to sink or swim. The writer’s gender or race has zero to do with it. Hell, I don’t even know the race of half the authors I read and I likely won’t: because it doesn’t matter. If you want to box-tick skin-colours and judge people based on the books they read, that’s your business: but don’t try and police people and bully them into reading what they don’t want to read. Political correctness has now moved to people employing it when enjoying a book.
I’m all for diversity. I have dark skin myself. But do you honestly think that what truly matters is if the author is male, female, an alien, Asian, white, black, middle-eastern, from Mars, etc? And people need to take these into consideration when buying a reading a new book? No. Absolutely not. And even suggesting such as does nothing but encourage animosity, difference and passive-agressiveness like we see here.
“No one is imagining that. That’s the problem. Inherent bias means white men are only reading white men. “
A bizarre over-generalization and stereotype. First, since most of us have no idea of the skin tone of our authors, we just read what we like. This is truly colorblind – we don’t have any idea. There is no room for bias when we would really have to go our of our way to figure it out.
As far as gender – I think those women who have very large male readerships would have an issue with this. CJ Cherryh, Elizabeth Moon, Ann Maccafrey, Katherine Kurtz. Jemisin’s success has nothing to do with skin color or gender – just a great writer. Does JK Rowling’s success have anything to do with gender? And she’s the most profitable fantasy writer of our time – maybe EVER.
Suzanne Clark – not a great female fantasy writer, just a great writer. Same with the late, great MZB.
Right now, the most profitable subgenres of SF/Fantasy of the past 20 years are heavily populated by female writers.
I refuse to seek out writers based on gender or skin tone. Why should I? Quality and profitability are clearly favoring female writers.
—-
As for the earlier suggestion that some male readers don’t want to read female authors of mil scifi – if they don’t want to read Elizabeth Moon, they deserve no to.
At the risk of injecting actual information into the conversation, let me introduce some anecdotal evidence. Many folk in the present gallery are probably not aware that from 1984 through 1996, I wrote a book review column for Dragon magazine, the periodical for players of the various D&D role-playing games, that ran 3,000 to 4,000 words every other month, featuring a mix of full-length and capsule reviews of a wide variety of genre fiction. I was given free rein to pick works to review, and I deliberately tried for diversity of subject matter — I included YA books, a sprinkling of horror and mystery along with the fantasy and SF, and made sure to cover tie-in fiction and anthologies. At that time, however, the only aspect of an author’s identity that I was using as a selection criteria was experience — I was specifically interested in including first novels, but I was not consciously choosing works for review based on an author’s gender, ethnicity, or sexual identity. (Indeed, it would have been impossible for me at that time to do more than guess at either of the latter two categories in all but a very few cases.)
I have now pulled — because they were in the box nearest-to-hand in the closet — all of my Dragon columns from 1991, and tallied the number of books reviewed according to authorial gender. In those six columns, here’s how the numbers sort themselves out:
Total reviews:
47 – male authors
37 – female authors
Full-length reviews (300-500 words):
26 – male authors
13 – female authors
Capsule reviews (50-100 words):
21 – male authors
24 – female authors
The tally counts anthologies as one work credited to the editor. There were three collaborative works reviewed, one by three male authors for which I assigned a single point, and two by male & female collaborators, for which I assigned one point to each gender.
What do I take away from these numbers now? On one hand, clearly I didn’t achieve anything like a perfect gender balance in terms of number of works reviewed, and a look at the numbers for individual columns shows some wild swings (11 to 4 in favor of works by men in January, 11 to 4 in favor of works by women in November). But on balance, I think the tally shows — at the least — that I was not deliberately overlooking works by women. In three of the six columns, works by women scored at least three of the full-length reviews, and in four of the six columns, capsule reviews of works by women equal or outnumber those of works by men. I should also note in this context that the capsule-review section of the column was introduced specifically to cover works by authors I had previously reviewed at full length.
So there’s a snapshot of what one (white, heterosexual) man was reviewing and recommending in 1991, in what was at the time a pretty widely read genre-aware forum. If memory serves, Dragon at its prime had a paid circulation in the 90K-100K range, which I was told equated to a readership of perhaps a quarter-million, skewing heavily toward teen and college-aged males.
Favorite and best are not the same thing. Many of my favorite books are not the best books and many of the best books are not my favorite. We need to be aware of the difference. Favorite is based on personal preference while best can be judged on specific criteria.
I’ve sold books for 20 years now and have noticed that, on the whole, boys read books about boys while girls will read books about anyone. It starts early and tends to continue. Personally I tend to read books by female authors, often not even picking up a title by a male author. I know that, so I will often take a second look at male authors because I know I’m not giving those titles a fair shake. If asked my favorites I’ll come up with a list of mostly female authors because that is what I like to read. However if asked for a best list, it will include a variety of authors some of whom I will never read again because I didn’t enjoy the book. If I only sold my favorite authors, I’d go out of business pretty quickly!
@58
When I attented the 2009 Worldcon in Montréal, discussion about diversity was everywhere. During the weekend there was an english Q&A session with GoH Élisabeth Vonarburg… which was attended by no more than 10 people, most of them locals.
Cue slow clap.
I recently launched a French-language sf&f electronic magazine (republique.sixbrumes.com) its goal is to make short stories from the last 30+ years available again. All the energy I’ve put into this project comes from me believing in diversity in genre fiction.
“Jemisin’s success has nothing to do with skin color or gender – just a great writer. Does JK Rowling’s success have anything to do with gender?”
Is anyone here arguing that marginalized people get ahead because they are marginalized? Because if so, I missed it.
@58
Good points there. I think the US publishers have a certain amount of dominance – the US market is still far and away the largest English speaking market for fiction. Britain has had a distinct voice for decades though, and the commonwealth nations have usually published through UK imprints initially.
To your nationality round up, I would add off the top of my head as authors I would recommend (all of whom are widely published in the commonwealth nations)
Canadian: Charles de Lint, Steven Erikson, Alyx Dellamonica, SM Stirling
Australian: Trudi Canavan, K J Bishop, Isobelle Carmody, Cecilia Dart-Thornton, Ian Irvine, Karen Miller and Garth Nix
New Zealand: Russell Kirkpatrick, Phillip Mann, Maurice Gee
Polish: Andrzej Sapkowski
Russian: Sergei Lukyanenko
British: Simon R Green, Hugh Cook, Louise Cooper, Mary Gentle, David Gemmell, Maggie Furey, Geraldine Harris, Tom Holt, Freda Warrington, Michael Scott Rohan, Susan Cooper, China Mieville, Peter F Hamilton, J V Jones
Irish: Eoin Colfer, Peter Morwood
@5: Clearly you’ve never read anything by Liz Bourke before, as she’s making a career of recommending books by marginalized authors or about marginalized characters.
I started following this column when I realized I wasn’t reading enough female authors, and I’ve been steered to all kinds of interesting reads in the two or three years since.
@11: “I’m in general agreement, but… in an article about diversity, your recommended list is entirely Anglo-American…”. Like, e.g. Malinda Lo… OK, that list was mostly Anglo (I totally draw the line at Anglo-American–Tanya Huff’s ours).
@17: “So before I tell people what “My” favourites are, I have to check with Liz to know what I can say?” I think that’s absolutely the opposite of what Liz said. She said you had to think about your response. Using somebody else’s list is just copping out.
@26: Yeah, I think we DO know that…
@43: “The question is always how I’m filtering it, not if I am.” So true.
@55: “I don’t think it’s your place… to try and claim that your agenda … is somehow the responsibility of others.” Again, I don’t think that’s what Liz did. It’s all of our responsibilities to think before recommending anything. Not just books. It’s our responsibility as people, to try to make the world a better place, but if you can honestly reflect on your book recommendations and still recommend only Anglo White males, I’m sorry for you, but that is your honest recommendation. But if Ernest Cline (who’s never going to be on my top lists…) did that, I don’t think his list would be the same.
I don’t see why it’s so controversial to say that bias in the environment ends up shaping one’s tastes. That’s why it’s a problem, no? It doesn’t mean that any particular thing you end up loving is bad or you shouldn’t love it. It means your world is tilted.
A couple of years ago I ran the math on how many female sf&f writers I’d read over the previous decade as opposed to men (I could do that because I’d kept a booklog for all that time). It turns out that what I thought was a mild underrepresentation actually was no more than ten percent female to ninety percent male writers, just by “reading what I like” and “not noticing gender”.
That shocked me so I resolved to do better and read more books by women through putting in quotas. By making it explicit I forced myself to seek out authors outside my comfort zone, having to try new to me authors rather than keep to the same authors I’ve always read.
In the process I ended up discovering writers like Tanya Huff (writing mil-sf that scratches the same itch as David Weber’s, but better), Elizabeth Moon (ibid), Kate Elliot (Medievaloid fantasy that’s actually properly medieval, not just 21st century people in renfaire costumes), Melissa Scott (cyberpunk that actually correctly anticipated 21st century online politics), rediscovered Anne McCaffrey, Andre Norton, C. J. Cherryh, etbloodycetera.
If you’re not curious at what you read, if you’re not systematic in trying out new things, you end up missing a lot of good stuff because you’re limiting your view of what science fiction and fantasy can be without noticing it.
I’m a 56 year old white male … my favorite authors are all white males. Nothing much I can do about that really … when I was growing up I read what my mom brought home from the library (and later when I went with her to the library and picked out stuff for myself … I looked for the same kind of stuff). That was mostly Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, Sturgeon, Pohl, Silverberg, etc etc. Were there women authors writing “hard” Science Fiction back then? Maybe but I can’t really name any … or I can NOW, but certainly couldn’t back then … oh wait wait .. how about Andre Norton?? Course I didn’t know she was a woman til much later. Which did not diminish my enjoyment of her work in any way.
Anyway I say that to say this … like anything, what we read (and love) in our formative years is what is likely to stick with us the rest of our lives. Does that mean we can’t educate ourselves and branch out? Absolutely not … and I can name dozens of female authors that I’ve read and enjoyed over the last 20-30 years … but are they my absolute favorites? Are they ever going to be?
No.
So please stop scolding me. I can’t (and shouldn’t have to) help what I read and loved in my formative years. I do what I can to find and read diverse authors … I like some and bounce hard off of others (much like I do with male authors). But I still mostly like things that are like the things I grew up liking …
If I were to suggest a reading list to some inquisitive student (which I’ve done on several occasions) I’d include Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Moon, Ursula LeGuin, Elizabeth Bear, Madeleine L’Engle, Mira Grant, etc along with Andy Weir and Ernest Cline.
It’s about all I can do …
My review today (link not provided because my comments here aren’t getting past moderation and I don’t want the moderator to have another excuse to nuke my comments) was the 108th book by a woman that I read and reviewed this year, 108 is an interesting number because it’s how many books by women tor.com reviewed in 2014. That means as of tomorrow (when I review Red by Linda Nagata), I will have reviewed more books by women than Tor, Romantic Times (spec fic only), SFX, Strange Horizons, Interzone, io9, F&SF, Vector, Analog, Asimov’s, NYRSF, Science Fiction Studies, Foundation, CSZ, and LARB did in 2014.
Locus reviewed 118 books by women in 2014 and I have to admit I won’t reach that number for at least another ten days. Maybe nine if I defer my review of an Austin Grossman for another couple of weeks.
And today I reviewed Linda Nagata’s excellent The Red: First Light, which means I have now read and reviewed more books by women in 2015 than all of the Tor reviewers did together in 2014.
Quick clarification: Since there seems to be some confusion here in the comments, please direct your attention to the language above the comment box notifying readers that comments are being reviewed by moderators before publication in order to keep the discussion civil and constructive in tone, in accordance with our Moderation Policy. This helpful moderation feature is relatively new (it became available with the recent site redesign), so please be aware that there will be a lag between comment submission and publication; we are reviewing comments as time allows, and we appreciate your patience in the meantime. As always, moderators are approving comments that pertain to the discussion at hand and engage with the author, other commenters, and moderators in a respectful way—rude, impatient, obnoxious, or otherwise uncivil comments will not be approved.
#77: A note about that clarification:
What’s confusing from the user’s side is that — if I correctly understand the above explanation — the new site code allows for post-specific moderation settings. (That is, a comment to — for example — the latest “Valdemar Reread” post appears automatically by default, but comments to this post are automatically put in the moderation queue.) But the language in the boilerplate text above the comment box doesn’t explain this properly. I’d suggest a small rewrite: the text should say “Comments on this entry must first be approved….” That will help users better understand what’s going on.
Also, when I posted a few days ago, I didn’t see any sort of message that “your comment has been received and is in the moderation queue”, so that I wasn’t immediately sure whether I’d posted successfully or if I needed to resubmit. Such a message would greatly reduce the likelihood of unintentional double-posting.