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benpeek: Kristine Kathryn Rusch's piece from The Internet Review of Science Fiction.
It begins with a discussion of the current economic crisis, and suggests it's not as bad as 1929, and there were worse things in the aftermath of the end of slavery (I know not how accurate these are), and also moves to discuss women in sf, riffing off those recent anthologies with few or no women writers:
I have a vision of the Yorskshiremen sketch - "Aye, but you had it easy." I might concede a point that some of the things we object to now seem trivial in relation to battles over - I don't know - education, voting, property and reproductive rights, but visibility is still vital. The women men don't see. The all-male contents page, the Gollancz promos that fail to include women, the all-male short lists, it's all slippage.
Down in the comments she adds:
And:
However, this seems to be skewed by focusing in on romance fiction - and I'm not sure how much that should be celebrated anyway (he says, suppressing women's writing). I hesitate to use the word ghetto, but that's what the romance community feels like to me, but then it's not a fiction aimed at me, so that shouldn't be a surprise. Women are able to dominate in one area of fictional reflection of human life (ah - "she wrote it, but it wasn't important", ahem, but that's not exactly what I mean here), but clearly struggle to be allowed to opine elsewhere. Or if they say important things, need to fit it in with a romance plot.
Not to play down the historic struggles, which moved mountains, but when Buffy is as feminist as the mainstream culture gets, there's still a way to go, alas.
benpeek: Kristine Kathryn Rusch's piece from The Internet Review of Science Fiction.It begins with a discussion of the current economic crisis, and suggests it's not as bad as 1929, and there were worse things in the aftermath of the end of slavery (I know not how accurate these are), and also moves to discuss women in sf, riffing off those recent anthologies with few or no women writers:
"What amazed me was that [...] people believed this to be evidence of gender bias in SF publishing. And as I poured through the names of the complainants on the site and on linked blogs, I realized that all of these people were much younger than I am.
"These young writers stand on a platform built by the writers who came before them. That platform states that gender bias is a bad thing. And so these writers complained, were heard, and got an explanation and an apology, because the editors involved shared the belief that gender bias is a bad thing. The editors were embarrassed and promised never to do such a thing again.
"But what the writers don't seem to realize is what the real gender discrimination fight was like. I have an inkling, because I'm part of a crossover generation. I came in after the battles were won, but not every person was comfortable with the victory. I got a lot of hate mail that first month I edited The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction because I was the first woman to take the job.
I have a vision of the Yorskshiremen sketch - "Aye, but you had it easy." I might concede a point that some of the things we object to now seem trivial in relation to battles over - I don't know - education, voting, property and reproductive rights, but visibility is still vital. The women men don't see. The all-male contents page, the Gollancz promos that fail to include women, the all-male short lists, it's all slippage.
Down in the comments she adds:
"I see no discrimination against women in sf/f any more. None."
And:
"Women dominate publishing. We write the most books. Women dominate the editing positions. Women have an equal number of publishing positions to men. Women read most of the books published."
However, this seems to be skewed by focusing in on romance fiction - and I'm not sure how much that should be celebrated anyway (he says, suppressing women's writing). I hesitate to use the word ghetto, but that's what the romance community feels like to me, but then it's not a fiction aimed at me, so that shouldn't be a surprise. Women are able to dominate in one area of fictional reflection of human life (ah - "she wrote it, but it wasn't important", ahem, but that's not exactly what I mean here), but clearly struggle to be allowed to opine elsewhere. Or if they say important things, need to fit it in with a romance plot.
Not to play down the historic struggles, which moved mountains, but when Buffy is as feminist as the mainstream culture gets, there's still a way to go, alas.
