# Perceptions of equity in sff



## Jo Zebedee (Dec 4, 2016)

Something on my mind to explore and thought I'd go here first in the relatively non-incendiary arena of the Chrons. Beware I am hoping to write a blog on this, so if you don't want to be quoted, just let me know in the post or by Pm.

So... Deep breath.

Do you believe sff is equitable* in terms of

Its access to publication
The work you read
The reviews you leave
The reviews you read
Any other relevant parameter.

For those who think it is - why is that? Is it because sff represents its readership/writing community/ the market today/ something else entirely?

For those who think not - why is this? Is is because of exclusion/demographs/ the market/ something else entirely.

As well as the poll, responses are welcome - Anything and all that's relevant (but no flaming. This is not a flaming post.)

For the record, putting me on the spot, I think bar a handful of women (most of whom have lower review numbers but NOT average ranking) have published from the Chrons but few of demographs other than white, male and straight. Am I wrong in that perception? If I'm not wrong, why is that?

*equitable across a range or parameters, including race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, religion etc etc


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## J-Sun (Dec 4, 2016)

*I don't care. *It's all equitable to me because I don't know a writer's race. I don't know a writer's orientation. I don't know a writer's disabilities. I don't know a writer's religion. I don't even know a writer's gender except from the name and that can be gender-ambiguous or a pseudonym. Just write. Just read.


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## Jo Zebedee (Dec 4, 2016)

J-Sun said:


> *I don't care. *It's all equitable to me because I don't know a writer's race. I don't know a writer's orientation. I don't know a writer's disabilities. I don't know a writer's religion. I don't even know a writer's gender except from the name and that can be gender-ambiguous or a pseudonym. Just write. Just read.


But is your choice of reading skewed by demographs? Ie if few demographs other than a prominent one get published/ reviewed/ are visible is your reading still affected by the genre's bias? So that, without having any bias yourself, your reading is still led by the innate ones within the genre? If that's the case, is just writing - knowing that, when writing, you have less chance of your work being read/reviewed/visible - enough? And is just happily reading what is visible?

I guess I'm really asking is it really all equitable just because an imbalance (if it exists - but most of the research seems to suggest it does) is not visible to the consumer?


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## J-Sun (Dec 5, 2016)

Jo Zebedee said:


> But is your choice of reading skewed by demographs? Ie if few demographs other than a prominent one get published/ reviewed/ are visible is your reading still affected by the genre's bias?



This is a question with only one answer. If there are more authors whose names begin with S than there are those whose names begin with X then, as long as I don't have an explicit agenda to be inequitable and read more authors whose names begin with X, then I'm going to happen to read more 'S' authors.

But one of the things that's great about authors and literature is that it is one of the places demographics don't have to come into play. Unfortunately, mass media, especially modern social networking, and politics are ruining this. It should be about the story and not about the author. It should at least be about the authors personality and linguistic skills rather than about race/gender/creed/etc.

And equitable statistics are not necessarily equitable. Using gender as a placeholder for all methods of division, there will never be an equitable 49% of men giving birth. People don't clamor for more women to be hired in the waste removal industry. If 51% of the population is female and 20% of those try to write and 2% of those write SF and 0.5% write hard SF and 49% are men and 15% try to write and 30% of those write SF and 10% of those write hard SF and I edit a hard SF magazine, what should I do in non-literary terms to make things "equitable"? What rigid quota should my tables of content follow? Or should I just try to put together the best magazine I can?

So I just think people get way too involved in such things. Just everybody try to write and read and publish and review the best they can and leave it at that.


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## Jo Zebedee (Dec 5, 2016)

Oooh, advanced quoting. Wish me luck!



> This is a question with only one answer. If there are more authors whose names begin with S than there are those whose names begin with X then, as long as I don't have an explicit agenda to be inequitable and read more authors whose names begin with X, then I'm going to happen to read more 'S' authors.


But that indicates there ARE more authors beginning with S. What if there were as many X but the market disbarred them for whatever reasons?



> But one of the things that's great about authors and literature is that it is one of the places demographics don't have to come into play. Unfortunately, mass media, especially modern social networking, and politics are ruining this. It should be about the story and not about the author. It should at least be about the authors personality and linguistic skills rather than about race/gender/creed/etc.



I absolutely agree - it should be about the authors ability to write a story. But if it isn't - is that a problem for you? Because, sadly, in sff literature demographics seem to come very strongly into play - with the vast amount of available books by a clear demograph (male and white). Are they the only people writing sff? If so, why? We could, perhaps, see a gender imbalance (although it seems as more and more studies emerge that's by opportunity not differences in our make-up) but a race imbalance? Why? Do different race's brains work differently and make one race more likely to write sff than another? Or is it to do with culture? Or opportunity? Not that it matters - but if you're arguing that demographs don't come into play, I have to wonder what does come into play? Or do people who succeed from other demographs have use pen-names to equal the playing field (and, if so, should they have to?)



> People don't clamor for more women to be hired in the waste removal industry



Source for this? Because I work with a fair number of organisations who do clamour for exactly this sort of parity. Female mechanics, engineers, mathematicians - and, yes, bin ladies if they so wish to be one.




> If 51% of the population is female and 20% of those try to write and 2% of those write SF and 0.5% write hard SF and 49% are men and 15% try to write and 30% of those write SF and 10% of those write hard SF and I edit a hard SF magazine, what should I do in non-literary terms to make things "equitable"? What rigid quota should my tables of content follow? Or should I just try to put together the best magazine I can?



I absolutely agree this is the case currently and I'm not - and never have - tried to argue for men losing opportunities or women being falsely promoted. What I'm asking is whether we perpetuate this imbalance by giving one demograph prominence over another? I'm not saying women should equal men in genres where more men write and read it (but remember sff as a whole has a 50/50 readership) - and hard sf might well be a good case in point - but I am questioning if we give equal access through our review base etc etc.


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## chopper (Dec 5, 2016)

a similar discussion is going on over at Fantasy faction following my own (slightly acerbic) blog post on people recommending the same books/authors over & over again, mostly oblivious to tone. i can point to individual blogs & recommends lists that skew 100% male authors (and the author of those posts has said to me "gender doesn't matter to me," for the record), though i'd prefer not to direct ire/anger at individual sites. i don't ask for quotas, just for thought. how can a list of, say, 10 books you're most looking forward to in 2017 be all men? "oh, they're my favourite authors. "What about Ms X's upcoming debut, are you not looking forward to that?" "No, because I've never read anything by her."

rinse, repeat.

it can be fair. my publishers are female. a lot of the authors i admire are female. do i make an effort to read roughly as many books by women as by men? yes, because why shouldn't i if i know a lot of female authors?

as a white male, i can't comment too much more on diversity and representation other than to say that if i read more widely, hopefully i will be able to write more widely. why would anybody want to write themselves into a rut?


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## J-Sun (Dec 5, 2016)

Jo Zebedee said:


> Oooh, advanced quoting. Wish me luck!



No luck needed - you got it. 



> I absolutely agree - it should be about the authors ability to write a story. But if it isn't - is that a problem for you?



If people are writing quality stuff of a sort I want to read and I'm being prevented from reading it, yes, that would certainly be a problem.



> Because, sadly, in sff literature demographics seem to come very strongly into play - with the vast amount of available books by a clear demograph (male and white). Are they the only people writing sff? If so, why? We could, perhaps, see a gender imbalance (although it seems as more and more studies emerge that's by opportunity not differences in our make-up) but a race imbalance? Why? Do different race's brains work differently and make one race more likely to write sff than another? Or is it to do with culture? Or opportunity? Not that it matters - but if you're arguing that demographs don't come into play, I have to wonder what does come into play? Or do people who succeed from other demographs have use pen-names to equal the playing field (and, if so, should they have to?)



I don't really see the white male demographic being a "vast amount" of SFF. It is possible that this is so in the case of the best-selling novels but, if that's the case, there might be little incentive to change it because they're selling well in the dominant market category. In terms of short fiction, and even more so in awards, I see an overwhelming number of names indicating women and people of non-Anglo-Saxon Protestant heritage and, since such a point is made of it in voluntary author blurbs, a huge number (relative to the general population) of unorthodox gender or sexuality. I don't have hard and fast statistics (and you haven't given any either and I doubt there really are many of a precise and reliable nature) but it certainly seems that way to me. It's quite possible that white males still make up a large bloc relative to, say, Indian lesbians, but minorities as a whole certainly seem like a majority. Further, what general population are we measuring against? The US? The UK? The Anglosphere? The world? Because the demographics differ for each. If we aren't reading 9 out of 10 books by Chinese people (or whatever) are we being biased? And would there be anything wrong with that bias? If it is people's brains or culture or X or Y, is it the responsibility of the SF community - and just the readers, the editors, the writers, some combination? - to change it?



> Source for this? Because I work with a fair number of organisations who do clamour for exactly this sort of parity. Female mechanics, engineers, mathematicians - and, yes, bin ladies if they so wish to be one.



Interesting. No, no source. I just don't hear as many people clamoring as strongly to be represented proportionally among sanitation workers as politicians and writers, though. Just anecdotal.



> I absolutely agree this is the case currently and I'm not - and never have - tried to argue for men losing opportunities or women being falsely promoted. What I'm asking is whether we perpetuate this imbalance by giving one demograph prominence over another? I'm not saying women should equal men in genres where more men write and read it (but remember sff as a whole has a 50/50 readership) - and hard sf might well be a good case in point - but I am questioning if we give equal access through our review base etc etc.



I'd need a source there, too. 50/50? Again, this is another area where I disagree with the orthodox "fairness" - there is a historical revisionism that often comes with it. (Not implying that you're advocating any such thing - my comments are general.) Whatever the fairness or reasons, it is a fact that the overwhelming number of readers and probably even more so of the writers and even more so of the major writers were white males. This embeds a historical imbalance of representation. But it is not "justice" to falsify history and dethrone or defile "the classics" (though people do a service when they unearth genuinely high-quality overlooked works) or when they create anthologies, histories, or criticism which warp the representation of the past and what SF meant at various times. That said, it wouldn't surprise me now if SFF retained a slighter but still majority of male readers or if it had actually switched to being predominantly female. 50/50 would surprise me, though it's certainly possible.

In terms of "review base" I'm not sure what you mean. You mean the work reviewers do bringing works to public notice? All I can say is that, for _Tangent_, for instance, we review practically everything. There is a bias towards pro-rate markets (naturally) but that's it. I suspect most reviewers review either in an agenda to redress perceived imbalances or do so in a statistically indifferent way.


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## J Riff (Dec 5, 2016)

Well at least we are past the 'give yourself an ambiguous pen-name so they won't know you are female' phase.


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## Kissmequick (Dec 5, 2016)

J Riff said:


> Well at least we are past the 'give yourself an ambiguous pen-name so they won't know you are female' phase.


Not really ...see my books under a male pen name. Because men don't read fantasy by women.

ETA SOME men don't, consciously, But many don;t _sub_-conciously ( and many women also -- it's ingrained -- women write icky romance suff, I write things where people get maimed by hot knives. So....)

If you want data try Mark Lawrences's blog where he asked if people would be less lkely to buy his books if he was Mary Lawrence.


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## J Riff (Dec 5, 2016)

There ya go. I remember discovering that, say, Kate Wilhelm could write an action/adventure book that suited young males, just as well as any guy.


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## Kissmequick (Dec 5, 2016)

J Riff said:


> There ya go. I remember discovering that, say, Kate Wilhelm could write an action/adventure book that suited young males, just as well as any guy.


I was kind of chuffed when people though I must e a guy(because I wrote one so well). Well, apart from that whole "Obviously Mr Knight hates women" one....


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## Luiglin (Dec 5, 2016)

I don't think I've ever consciously thought about an author in this sort of way. What hooks me to get a book is the story. In some ways the author is superfluous, unless I've read their stuff before.

What is weird is that one of my fave series is the Saga of the Exiles by Julian May. When I first read these I just assumed the author was a woman, despite the first name being generally male. I don't know what gave me this impression but I do remember in pre-internet times having a luke warm arguement with mates who were all convinced that the author was male.

Maybe I'm not a good representative of the general SF readership male population 

Edit: to step in the hallowed boots of Monty Brewster I vote for none of the above.


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## Teresa Edgerton (Dec 5, 2016)

J-Sun said:


> I don't even know a writer's gender except from the name and that can be gender-ambiguous or a pseudonym.



But why do you think so many women writers choose gender-ambiguous names or choose male pseudonyms?  How many men choose gender ambiguous names or female pseudonyms (outside the romance field)?

I know a lot of readers who say that when they see a name that is only initials  they automatically assume it's a woman, because a man, having nothing to hide, would use his whole name. (And yes:  JRR Tolkien, C S Lewis, E R Eddison. etc. But they were writing in a different era, when there were so very few women writing in the field that no one would have assumed that Tolkien, Lewis, or Eddison were anything other than male.)


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## The Big Peat (Dec 5, 2016)

My impression is that the publishing and bookselling industry still works a little on the belief that if you want to sell most SFF, you'd want a man's name on the cover and that if you've got a woman, you'd want to talk up the romance or market it towards kids. I get the impression this is more of a subconscious thing but, judging from what people say, its there. The result is women are encouraged to head to certain sub-genres (albeit highly popular ones) and men are pushed more often as the next big seller in most of SFF. 

From there its trickle down. So no, I get the feeling SFF is not equitable, although I'm holding off on my vote in case someone manages to convince me otherwise.

Also, some links that I collected in the argument Chopper mentioned

[GUEST POST] Tansy Rayner Roberts on Fantasy, Female Writers & The Politics of Influence

http://sennydreadful.co.uk/women-in-fantasy-thoughts-on-disrupting-the-circle/

Waterstones & Gender Equality. The good, the bad & the business case for doing better.

Waterstones? Yes, I’m still watching…

Juliet E. McKenna

being a woman and writing dark fiction--it's complicated (#SFWApro)

Mark Lawrence: What's in a name?

SF and Fantasy in the New Millennium: Women Publishing Short Fiction

nerds of a feather, flock together: Membership in the SFWA by Gender

Will be interesting to see what more industry-savvy members here make of the situation.

p.s. One note - I don't mind there not being a 50-50 split of men and women in our newsletters/recommendations/everything when there's not a 50-50 split of authors. Fairness is everyone has an equal chance of being there, not 50-50 regardless of what goes in. The problem is working out just how many female authors are publishing...


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## J-Sun (Dec 5, 2016)

Squeezing in this post during the halftime of my 100% male and 88% non-white (one guy's Samoan or something) football game which is equitable of absolutely nothing but great football. 



Teresa Edgerton said:


> But why do you think so many women writers choose gender-ambiguous names or choose male pseudonyms? How many men choose gender ambiguous names or female pseudonyms (outside the romance field)?



I have absolutely no idea why they *do* (and think precious few in fact do) and I already tried to address the historical thing. Even then, it didn't stop Margaret St. Clair or Zenna Henderson or Judith Merril or Kate Wilhelm or Ursula K. Le Guin (other than the one time she published as U.K. Le Guin in _Playboy_) and so on. And it really was up to them. John Campbell asked Izak Asminav to change his name because it sounded weird but Isaac Asimov would have none of it, so Campbell shrugged and published him and he went on to some measure of success.

Anyway - my point was not that they do or don't or or did or didn't or should or shouldn't. My point was that they (both male and female) _could_ so that anyone making judgments on whether to read something based on the gender of the author's name would be foolish. You can't be reliably biased in this way even if you wanted to be.


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## Teresa Edgerton (Dec 5, 2016)

However Alice Sheldon became James T. Tiptree Jr. because she felt she had to use a name that "matched" those of her male colleagues. Alice Mary Norton wrote variously as Andrew North, Allen Weston, and (most notably) Andre Norton because those names were more likely to appeal to boys.  She even eventually legally changed her name to Andre Alice Norton.  There is some question why C. L. Moore chose a gender ambiguous name.  More recently, Carolyn Janice Cherry's publisher not only asked her to use initials but also to add an h to her last name to make that sound more masculine.  And even Joanne Rowling was asked to use initials instead of her first name because it would appeal more to her presumed readers.  There was a slight problem:  she had no middle name, so she had to invent a middle initial.  Of course nobody has a problem with the fact that she is a woman now, but would the books have gotten off to such a big start had she used the name Joanne?  Who knows, because by the time the secret was out everyone was already talking about how wonderful the books are.

If publishers, whose business it was to pay attention to these things, thought (and in some cases thought fairly recently) that a male or gender-neutral name was going to attract more readers, a female name scare off some of them, I think they probably were in a better position to make their judgements than you or I.


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## Parson (Dec 5, 2016)

@Jo Zebedee .... As usual I can speak only a reader. But I have zero known to me prejudice toward either male or female writers. Judging by my last year's books women wrote about 70-80% of them. I care nothing about what sex, race, or proclivity the author is, but I do care somewhat about who the main character (MC in these parts) is. However, in past 10 years of so, I have literally rejoiced to see a male lead because they so seldom show up in the books that I read. 

@Teresa Edgerton is right about those authors, but as nearly as I can psych it out they all started writing decades ago when I expect what you are aiming at was more the truth than it is now. (There may be some truth in it, but my impression is that would only be among the "troglodytes.")


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## Dennis E. Taylor (Dec 5, 2016)

Kissmequick said:


> Not really ...see my books under a male pen name. Because men don't read fantasy by women.



Barbara Hambly. One of my favorite fantasy authors. Her _Those Who Hunt the Night_ is possibly the best vampire story ever, IMO.


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## The Big Peat (Dec 5, 2016)

Now it might just be coincidence but the two biggest female authors in fantasy today still have gender ambiguous pen names - JK Rowling and Robin Hobb. Certainly the tradition is not completely dead; the reason for it mightn't be dead either. Magnus Flyte is a pair of women and only published in 2012.

And there's men with female pen names in Romance too. It cuts both ways.


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## J-Sun (Dec 5, 2016)

Teresa Edgerton said:


> However Alice Sheldon became James T. Tiptree Jr. because she felt she had to use a name that "matched" those of her male colleagues. Alice Mary Norton wrote variously as Andrew North, Allen Weston, and (most notably) Andre Norton because those names were more likely to appeal to boys.  She even eventually legally changed her name to Andre Alice Norton.  There is some question why C. L. Moore chose a gender ambiguous name.  More recently, Carolyn Janice Cherry's publisher not only asked her to use initials but also to add an h to her last name to make that sound more masculine.  And even Joanne Rowling was asked to use initials instead of her first name because it would appeal more to her presumed readers.  There was a slight problem:  she had no middle name, so she had to invent a middle initial.  Of course nobody has a problem with the fact that she is a woman now, but would the books have gotten off to such a big start had she used the name Joanne?  Who knows, because by the time the secret was out everyone was already talking about how wonderful the books are.
> 
> If publishers, whose business it was to pay attention to these things, thought (and in some cases thought fairly recently) that a male or gender-neutral name was going to attract more readers, a female name scare off some of them, I think they probably were in a better position to make their judgements than you or I.



I have to confess to being a little unclear about what your point is. No one is unaware that many women have used pseudonyms both in the past (more so) and in the present. No one is unaware that women have also had great success using female names. If anyone thought Joanne Rowling wouldn't be as successful as Tanith Lee or, say, Jane Yolen, then that would be their individual issue. As far as publishers, a great many of them these days seem to be women, as are award juries and so on, to the point that some are worried that it is boys who have been excluded to the point that the NYTimes apparently said as much as five years ago, "Boys don't have enough positive male role models for literacy. Because the majority of adults involved in kids' reading are women..." (I have no registration with them so don't know what the rest of it says). And Rowling was published by a YA publisher in at least some contexts. You're right in any logical sense that publishers would be in a better position to know but whether they use their advantage in knowledge to make any wiser judgments is an open question. I point back to Campbell - a savvy editor if ever there was one - who thought Asimov might benefit from a more Anglo-Saxon name. If most publishers are women and most readers are women (or girls) and so on, and any female writer is having a problem, then that's a very peculiar thing.

My main point, with regard to names, as I said, is that any writer can be anything they want to be. Change your name, invent your religion, make up your orientation, hide all your checkboxes or stress how many you check - it's all open for negotiation and is irrelevant to the words on the page. A secondary point, since you stress the issue, is that if NO woman had ever been a success or if there were only a token woman as a "Look, see? No prejudice," sort of example in a field, then I'd agree something was strongly amiss and should be addressed. But when you see Tanith Lee and C. J. Cherryh (whose 'h' was added, if I recall Cherry's own comments correctly (and they're echoed elsewhere), for distinctiveness rather than gender) both start publishing under DAW in both SF and F and go on to great success and they are two of a large number of other women, it's a woman's choice to change her name or other people's misguided opinions but not a sign of any "glass ceiling" (or "wall"). If _multiple_ women have succeeded in an endeavor as women then *any* woman can (given the adequate amount of talent and luck that other successes had) and they have only themselves to blame (and not their gender or others' gender) if they don't.


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## Jo Zebedee (Dec 5, 2016)

Apologies, crashed and burned. Some of the links you wanted are in this, blog, J-sun:

Women: Missing Voices In Science Fiction

Edit - on JK Rowling, she chose a male pseudonym for the Cormoran Strike novels much more recently than dropping the Joanne on her fantasy. I wonder why she still didn't choose Roberta Galbraith rather than Robert.


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## thaddeus6th (Dec 5, 2016)

I said I didn't know, which (at the time of writing) is the only one, of six, votes not to be cast for No.

We need to know the proportions of each demographic attempting to write SFF and, within that, the quality. It might be that women from the Far East and men from Yorkshire are the best fantasy writers by a mile, and might disproportionately have more success. And it's worth noting other genres (most obviously romantic fiction) are female-dominated, but this tend not to be a cause for criticism, which I agree with (excepting that it's baffling for people to condemn SFF for something very similar).

A great advantage of writing/reading is not knowing, and therefore naturally being colourblind. I didn't know whether Robin Hobb was a chap or a lady until after I'd read the first Farseer trilogy.

As your recent blog made (sadly) clear, it's hard making any money as a writer. So when I see special deals or submission calls for people who have just about every demographic I don't, it doesn't feel like correcting bias to me. It feels like adding an extra hurdle (or, more accurately, removing an extra opportunity) simply because I'm white and male. 

[Wrote all the above before checking what anyone else said].

"as a white male, i can't comment too much more on diversity and representation other than to say that if i read more widely, hopefully i will be able to write more widely. why would anybody want to write themselves into a rut?"

The first four words depress me. White men have valid opinions too. Your view isn't worth any less because of the contents of your trousers or the colour of your skin. 

On pen names: I do think that's a fair point. I use one, but it's not gender-related or intended to obscure that in any way. But, again, the same thing happens in romantic fiction the other way.

A short but related blog I saw on Twitter is here: The “White People” In Books Debate  Quite a few comments below the line.


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## Jo Zebedee (Dec 5, 2016)

Three quick points - without quoting as I'm on mobile. 

Romance does get slated for its inequality and for the fact male writers of romance take female pen names. But! Unlike sff it does have a large skew in terms of readership towards one gender. And I think that's the salient point I was making in my blog I linked to - this is not railing against a male dominated genre supporting mostly male writers. That is a different argument altogether. This is about a genre with equality in terms of readership numbers (the one I linked to is the most cited piece about it, but the parity or near parity of genre readership is supported by most studies into it) but not in terms of who is being read. That's a very different picture than for romance. 

As to whether I support anthologies or publishers actively ruling out submissions from anyone - no, of course not. Nor am I in favour of all women shortlists etc. But, last year, Angry Robot made a statement that they actively welcomed submissions from those underrepresented and that was taken to mean they didn't want submissions from the better represented demographs - which wasn't at all what was said (and as a publisher they have a lot of straight white male authors - as well as plenty who aren't.)*

And as to whether blokes should comment here - of course they should. That's the whole point. It's a shared genre. All of us should have our voice. 


*In delightful Nothern Ireland we have a lot of jobs that will actively seek applications from one or other community (anything security related tends to be underrepresentive of RC, for instance). That does not disbar me from applying and it will not disbar me from being interviewed if I meet the shortlist, nor does it allow the employer to employ a lesser qualified, less able person than me, even if they're the sought-for demograph. A publisher requesting submissions from a wider base will, of course, increase the competition and indeed reduce the number of writers from the established demograph reaching the final cut - but it will not stop you competing and being judged fairly against others.


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## Brian G Turner (Dec 5, 2016)

> Women: Missing voices in science fiction



Mark Niemann-Ross openly states that the SFWA poll he ran is too simple and general to be reliable. The public polled almost certainly would have a looser definition of science fiction than publishers do, especially with regards to the boundaries between YA and adult SF.

I'd bounce you back to the link I gave you previously, where a publisher suggests adult SF readership is more likely 80:20.


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## Toby Frost (Dec 5, 2016)

I think the polling question is too vague for me to answer. I suspect there are several separate issues here that won't be covered by a blanket discussion of sexism. There are at least four questions worth asking if you are going to wade into this:

1) What people are writing and trying to get published
2) What is being published
3) What consumers of varying types want to read
4) Whether the results to 1-3 are what you would prefer them to be and, if not, whether it is appropriate to try to push them in that direction.

Some of these are about personal taste (I don't want to read romance because it leaves me cold, and I have nothing against anyone who doesn't want to read about robots instead) and others are about the industry, which is about making money and is a different kettle of fish to actual bias or bigotry. It is interesting that the question of sexism in SFF keeps coming up in an industry that is predominantly female in staffing terms. 

What I would say about (3) is that I don't believe in a false consciousness here: with the exception of hyped books and books that people think they ought to read (the Booker shortlist, say), adults buy fiction books that they are interested in reading. The question, I suspect, is how much they would object if Mark Lawrence was Mary Lawrence. I don't know the answer to that and I suspect that it varies immensely between subgenre and regional groups.


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## Jo Zebedee (Dec 5, 2016)

Toby Frost said:


> Some of these are about personal taste (I don't want to read romance because it leaves me cold, and I have nothing against anyone who doesn't want to read about robots instead) and others are about the industry, which is about making money and is a different kettle of fish to actual bias or bigotry. It is interesting that the question of sexism in SFF keeps coming up in an industry that is predominantly female in staffing terms.



I found this interesting and concerning. Is there a hint that we expect romance to be inherent in female sff author's books? I ask because a recent reviewer of Inish Carraig had been concerned about picking it up due to a concern that it might contain romance (which it doesn't.) Even in Abendau - where the central relationship portrayed over 250,000 words is that of a man and wife - has one sex scene in it, which fades to black, and about four romance scenes in it (which are usually against a backdrop of political or military shenanigans. But I bet there are still a few people out there who suspect it's heavy on the ol' kissing.) 

@Brian G Turner - the 80/20 isn't borne out any more than the SFWA is. 

Going back to the 1970s we can see that there was a clear bias: 

Albert I. Berger Science-Fiction Fans in Socio-Economic Perspective: Factors in the Social Consciousness of a Genre

But that bias is less clear now (possibly due to the decline of male readership in general) - and, remember, the above stats were taken from convention attendees which tend to be skewed towards males (for various reasons including when conventions tend to be held - over holiday weekends when there is no childcare - and a culture that women perceived as allowing harrassment - now taken seriously, thankfully). 

But here we see that 31% of men claim to read science fiction against 28% of women, again statistically evened out by the greater number of female readers which supports the SFWA findings. 

Chapter 7: Science and Technology: Public Attitudes and Public Understanding: Science Fiction and Pseudoscience


I also found this article of interest: 

Friday essay: science fiction's women problem

Which states that if there is a readership divide (and I think it's incredibly hard to know for sure, most studies are far from clear and often don't provide the breakdown of m/f and genre specificity that we need) it may be that books that have strong female characters to identify with and bring women readers into the genre are few and far between. If that's the case (and I struggle to think of many I read as a teen and know when I first came up with Abendau I didn't even conceive of the possibility of a female lead character - it simply didn't occur to me that I could be done) then is there a self-perpetuating circle of exclusion?


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## Stephen Palmer (Dec 5, 2016)

"No."


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## chopper (Dec 5, 2016)

thaddeus6th said:


> "as a white male, i can't comment too much more on diversity and representation other than to say that if i read more widely, hopefully i will be able to write more widely. why would anybody want to write themselves into a rut?"
> 
> The first four words depress me. White men have valid opinions too. Your view isn't worth any less because of the contents of your trousers or the colour of your skin.


True, white men have valid opinions. But we're hardly lesser-heard voices to begin with.


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## Dan Jones (Dec 5, 2016)

chopper said:


> it can be fair. my publishers are female. a lot of the authors i admire are female.



Figures show that the publishing industry was one of the few anomalies with respect to sex, inasmuch as it is much more heavily populated by females (the article focuses on US publishers, but there may be some correlation in the UK - as for other countries, I don't know). My publishers are also women, and very impressive too. They have outside business interests, are active feminists, and are thoroughly lovely and cool to deal with. And, like all but the most niche of publishers, their agenda is to spot, develop and publish books that a) they love and b) they think will sell. A quick look through their author lists confirms that majority of their writers are men (though as mentioned above race is impossible to tell without checking bios and stuff, and honestly I'm not inclined to do so, because it's a bit weird and _Krystalnacht_ to start checking up on people's race). So even those who are ardent in their advocacy of equitable industry and opportunity must compromise with pragmatism.

I have to honestly think SFF is, on the whole, equitable with respect to theme, and opportunity. Look at the panels at WorldCon. Some of the greatest SFF writers of all are female, and emerging numbers of writers are people of colour (including our own Ralph Kern). For me, the answer is not to divide or implement quotas (which, as I've shown, wouldn't fly in a business environment anyway), but to encourage everyone from a young age to pick up a book and read, and pick up a pen and write.

However (caveat alert!), SFF is a funny genre, because its vast footprint easily spans the spectrum from trashy to highbrow / literary in a way other genres do not. Twilight to Fahrenheit 451. Warhammer 40K (*_ducks_*) to Ursula K Le Guin, and all the other points in between. So it's almost impossible to pin down for the purposes of defining its equitability; is trashy space opera more a level playing field than, medieval fantasy? Is literary SF as equal as Hard SF, or high fantasy? Who can really say?


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## Toby Frost (Dec 5, 2016)

Toby Frost said:


> I don't want to read romance because it leaves me cold



In saying that, I meant romance as a genre, rather than romance in SFF. I would not expect an SF novel by a woman to be heavy on romance. Given the way publishing skewed in the late 80s and early 90s, I would probably have expected it back then to include more unicorns and less disembowelment - if anything, to be more New Age - but that’s probably an aspect of that particular time. These days, it could be pretty much anything. If you really pushed me on it, I’d look at the cover. If it was a woman and urban fantasy, I probably would assume that there would be more sex/romance than an urban fantasy by a man. But then I’m not much into urban fantasy as it is. If it was YA – well, I probably wouldn’t be reading it anyhow. I don’t think it’s anything much to worry about re your own work.


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## Dan Jones (Dec 5, 2016)

Toby Frost said:


> more unicorns and less disembowelment



Boo!


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## Toby Frost (Dec 5, 2016)

DG Jones said:


> but to encourage everyone from a young age to pick up a book and read, and pick up a pen and write.



That would be a very good thing. Perhaps that's the best way of answering the question of "What do you want to read about?" My 12-year-old self would not have much cared about the number of women in a novel, but would have been appalled at a rollicking space adventure being ruined by romantic nonsense.



DG Jones said:


> Warhammer 40K (*_ducks_*) to Ursula K Le Guin



I would give serious money to read a LeGuin 40K novel, where all the Space Marines changed sex halfway through.


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## chopper (Dec 5, 2016)

You should totally pitch that to Black Library. It'd be a game-changer.


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## Stephen Palmer (Dec 5, 2016)

"The Left Hand Of The Battleaxe."


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## J-Sun (Dec 5, 2016)

Jo Zebedee said:


> Apologies, crashed and burned. Some of the links you wanted are in this, blog, J-sun:
> 
> Women: Missing Voices In Science Fiction



Thanks for that. I read your blog, its two links, and thaddeus6th's link (but not the comments). While substantiation is good, this is getting too linky for me.  I'm afraid I agree with Brian regarding the not-completely-convincing nature of the guy's numbers. I'm not saying the numbers are necessarily wrong but just not convincingly demonstrated.

As far as the reviewer article, that's extremely irritating, really. I fail to see anything scandalous and unacceptable about a supposed 55% male/female publication ratio and a 60-66% review ratio. Is 55% imbalanced? Barely. Is 60-66% imbalanced relative to that? Barely more than barely. Ho hum. Yet the same guy goes on to cite, e.g., _Lightspeed_'s essentially reverse-discrimination numbers approvingly - much more out of whack but the "right" way. It even says the number of books published by POC is scandalously low but there are still 200 books a year and says that's "enough to fully occupy all but one of the magazines we surveyed for a whole year." Now, I know it can't possibly be suggesting it but there's the implication that maybe that is how they should be occupied.

Anyway - just wanted to say that, while I didn't agree with the links, I appreciate your providing them.

As far as your own blog post, it sounded reasonable to me but I was confused by one part. You said, "I'm not out to ask for equal representation of women in science fiction" but then say, "Unpalatable as it may seem, 50% of our readers are being represented by a tiny percentage of our writers" which seems contradictory. Also, maybe you didn't mean it specifically any more than I meant it specifically in quoting the NYTimes but I'd take issue with the idea that readers are "represented" by authors in several ways. First, it reduces both readers and writers to whatever criteria is being represented. Again, taking gender, describing a person as "a great woman writer" isn't far removed from "a great writer for a woman" (in both senses of "for"). I wouldn't think actual feminists who wrote would ever like to be called "feminist" writers as it reduces them to the thing they are arguing only partially defines them. It actually affirms "sexist" thinking for both men and woman (or for all three of men and women and whatever isn't either or is both or whatever). Second, even if people were to be "represented," men often write female characters and women often write male - which are they representing then? Third (related to the first two), why should men think they can only be "represented" by men and women by women? Surely all sorts of people can be inspired by all sorts of people and if they can't, isn't that possibly a problem in itself? Fourth, as I often get to in discussions like this and SF: Martians and robots are waaay overrepresented in SF. I don't know of any Martians or robots who read SF so why should they be represented at all?  (I'm about to drift off even further as I'm reminded of a Leigh Brackett (that guy, Brackett!) story so I'll step away now.)

Anyway - sure, if everybody wants to get as many people as possible involved in SF (not excluding straight white guys) then I'm all for it. And if analyzing the possible existence and nature of any barriers, whether self-imposed or otherwise, helps achieve this, then I'm also all for it. But if we're taking a census and saying that all endeavors should reflect that general census in specific microcosms or that only like can attract or inspire or represent like then, nah, count me out.


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## AnyaKimlin (Dec 5, 2016)

I actually think the conservative nature of publishing is still being an overly conservative gatekeeper. And one I think will destroy them.

Only 6 years ago I put up a piece on a forum. My character, Socrates, a gay man. He found distressed, naked child. He wrapped his coat round the child, picked him up and took him home. I put it up on a fairly well known, at the time, writing site. Two editors, with impressive CVs contacted me to suggest the straight man he was with should pick up the child instead to make my piece more saleable.

Whilst I think readers are changing rapidly I think publishing is trying to but then gets scared.  I intend to publish my fantasy with an incredibly femine name.  My real one could be easily masculinised by using a pet name. I think most readers can handle it.


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## Toby Frost (Dec 5, 2016)

Can I ask what you would consider "equitable" to mean? At what point, in your view, is there no longer a problem?

[PS _The Left Hand of Orkness_]


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## Jo Zebedee (Dec 5, 2016)

Toby Frost said:


> Can I ask what you would consider "equitable" to mean? At what point, in your view, is there no longer a problem?
> 
> [PS _The Left Hand of Orkness_]



That's an interesting question. I said in my blog post - and meant it - that I didn't feel there needed to be 50-50 sf written by women (and my blog was about sf specifically). Fewer women write sf. We know that - from Brian's stats and from any publisher asked about sf submissions. So it's not that. I

think for me it would be feeling that, as woman in the genre, I had as many opportunities, to feel that being a woman no longer counted against me or that I am excluded from some of -again sf in particular - networking (and, if you watch a lot of sf networking it is the same authors promoting each other, calling out for each other and they are mostly men. Like by a huge majority). I don't want to have to go and find women to make a sf network of my own - I want to feel I'm part of the community, not a different part or one of the ladies, or whatever*. (And not see posts about Rae as a lamppost when no one made the same posts about Luke who was, frankly, just as animate. Or see casual sexism in comments about tv series and films.)

So I suppose equity for me is in terms of not feeling like my gender is a barrier to being read because women writing sf is seen as normal. I'd also like to see more female writers because I think - genuinely - there are some who are put off by the mountain ahead and only by creating acceptability and role models will we extend our community. So, for me, it's about equity of acceptance rather than any degree of publishing numbers or anything else.

* but I also think it's really important to say that I think things are shifting. We get more female voices on panels now at conventions. There are fewer women - I think, it's always hard to know - feeling the need to take a male pen name. I'd just like to see that continuing to grow.


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## Abernovo (Dec 5, 2016)

Parson said:


> @Jo Zebedee .... As usual I can speak only a reader. But I have zero known to me prejudice toward either male or female writers. Judging by my last year's books women wrote about 70-80% of them. I care nothing about what sex, race, or proclivity the author is, but I do care somewhat about who the main character (MC in these parts) is. However, in past 10 years of so, I have literally rejoiced to see a male lead because they so seldom show up in the books that I read.
> 
> @Teresa Edgerton is right about those authors, but as nearly as I can psych it out they all started writing decades ago when I expect what you are aiming at was more the truth than it is now. (There may be some truth in it, but my impression is that would only be among the "troglodytes.")


Once again, our friendly neighbourhood Parson proves himself to be much more enlightened than he would ever give himself credit for. Perhaps there is a niche market for inclusion of enlightened, moral, male MCs.

For myself, I have to say no.
Jo, you know a lot of my views and where I come at them from. I cannot give percentages, but I know there are a lot of people out there reading sff who do not fall into the 'industry standard' straight, white, cisgender male category. Now, there is a market for just that niche (I joke! I know it's more than a niche - more of an alcove...), but everybody wants to see themselves represented in fiction, to see someone like them written as valuable. They might be PoC, women, the QUILTBAG+ community, or someone from an ignored, poor rural hamlet, where the barter system still has it uses.

As much as there have been changes, I'd like to see more open acceptance (less responding to the puppy compound dregs, and more proactive inclusivity). That would, I believe, lead to less women feeling they had to take a masculine pen name; PoC writers not being relegated to the 'Diversity in SFF' panels because, "well, you'd know about this stuff", and rather included in panel X simply because they write that genre; and QUILTBAG+ writers not having to always deal with niche publishers, because mainstream publishing imprints run shy of 'issues'.

I have to say that many involved in the English language publishing industry do seem to come from very privileged backgrounds, and senior execs are often still rich white men, based in London and New York. I cannot remember which report I saw on this very subject, but it was an observation made by publishers themsselves, admitting that things were changing, but there was still much to be done.

At the end of the day, people are just people. I'd like to see their stories. And I do care about the MC's background, because I want stories from all over, showing me a side of life or an idea, I might never have imagined, but also showing those similarities where we connect.


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## The Big Peat (Dec 5, 2016)

There are two types of equity here I think.

The first is women being as likely to write SFF as men.

The second is women being as likely to succeed at writing SFF as men.

I, personally, do not bother too much with the former. It feels too much out of our control. You can't and shouldn't force people to like things they don't like or vice versa and a huge amount of what people like is influenced by societal impulses on a gigantic scale. There are probably some things that could make the genre more open and approachable on a micro level (at least judging from Jo's and Teresa's posts in the Blogging thread) but that by and large only influences people who are already big fans. How many big fans - the type who want to write in it - can be attracted to the genre is a different question (and see the front of my paragraph for my thoughts there).

That said - I do like the idea of there being as many women writing SFF as men. Assuming the number of men trying to write SFF remained the same, that means more authors overall and more quality available. I like that.

The latter though does bother me a bit. It feels more actively unfair and I do think is somewhat in the control of the people involved in the genre. Again, you can't and shouldn't force people to like things they don't like, but I think more could be done to give people wider choice and I think people would generally react favourably. Measuring what equity should look like here is very difficult though, not least because the percentage of women being published in each sub-genre year by year is unknown.

I say sub-genre because DG Jones makes a good point that this is a very broad umbrella and things are different in different places. If you measure the genre as one, particularly if you include Paranormal Romance in the genre, you get a very different picture to just Sci-Fi or just Grimdark or just Fantasy of Manners etc.etc.

I think its fair to add that a problem with publishers being overly conservative about what will sell and looking for things that fit their moulds and for X to sell to Y is a bigger problem than just gender. Women may get the brunt of it but there's a lot of different places where someone can fall foul. Weird novels that straddle genres also get it in the neck too for instance. I say this not to try and derail the conversation from the issue of equity but to point out that uprooting the tree probably involves digging in other fields as well.


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## Brian G Turner (Dec 5, 2016)

Jo Zebedee said:


> think for me it would be feeling that, as woman in the genre, I had as many opportunities, to feel that being a woman no longer counted against me or that I am excluded from some of -again sf in particular - networking



I totally feel for you, and I've worried about what sort of casual prejudice - or, at least, apathy - you might face from male readers.

Thinking hard about it today, my current thinking is that it might be better to rebrand yourself as a strong YA author, rather than a science fiction writer.

The main reason being that you focus more on character than setting, which is something I see more in YA, such as Suzanne Collin's _Hunger Games_ and Sabaa Tahir's _Ember in Ashes_.

Additionally, you write in different settings - Abendau, Inish, Waters in the Wild, and other pieces you've put up in crits. Calling yourself a YA author would allow you to remain flexible with these. But if you defined yourself as a science fiction only writer, you would be in danger of losing a chunk of your audience with each different project, and have to also call yourself a fantasy author some of the time.

There's also a narrow mindset of science fiction readers who reject anything that's not hard SF. More to the point, they are a significant chunk of that readership - as you've no doubt seen on discussions here.

So describing yourself to others as following in the footsteps of JK Rowling, Suzanne Collins, and - well, maybe not Stephanie Meyer  - I would suggest would do you far more favours professionally, not least in developing a following.

I know you have Carter's POV in Inish, but IMO that shouldn't disallow it from being YA, any more than _Game of Thrones _must be YA because more than half the initial cast are under 18.

The fact that you're getting a revamp on the covers I think shows you're aware of all this on some level.

So my question is, how would you feel about it? Would you be happy if I said you were a flexible YA author who can do both science fiction and fantasy settings? Or would you rather I say you're sometimes a science fiction author and sometimes not?

2c.


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## Jo Zebedee (Dec 5, 2016)

@Brian G Turner  - the trouble with that plan is that I don't write YA. Sure, Inish is on the edge of it but it is the only one. Abendau is adult (despite having some sections in a YA pov) and so is Waters (or my YA agent would have had a notion about how to sell it - since it ended up with several offers on the table). There's no point in me branding myself something I'm not - but perhaps a foray into fantasy will feel different. Certainly, from the Irish market there is a lot of interest in Waters already - before I've even started to promote it - and the cover is very, very good.

But as well as the small matter of me being a bad fit (I have marketed Inish to the YA market but it is the adult market who purchase it) the very fact we're asking if it would be more viable for me to be a YA writer rather than sf because of a character focus (which many women have) in my books says everything about how equitable the market is. 

But i don't think writing both sf and fantasy is a problem - many authors do so successfully.


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## Abernovo (Dec 5, 2016)

Hmm, with respect, Brian, isn't that taking the view that exclusion is acceptable? If you don't fit the mould set by the 'establishment' you should set your sights on a different goal?

I'm pretty sure it's not how you view the world, but this comes to close to pandering to the set who thinks their ideas should be set in stone, and some writers - and readers - don't really belong. Or at best, should just keep their mouths shut.

It starts with 'it's not hard sf/it's not realistically Mediaeval fantasy' (even though I don't remember dragons in the Middle Ages), and ends where? Is your writing good enough for the Puritans? If so, are they really people you'd want to ally yourself with? Even tangentially?


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## Glitch (Dec 5, 2016)

In regards to the question of "Its access to publication" I can only answer for the magazine. There's no bias towards the authors race/gender in selecting shorts.

Currently published on the magazine the quick figures are - authors for male/female are 68/32, stories published by male/female (excluding the series) are 57/43. Although there are more male authors on the magazine. Female authors have more stories per author published.


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## Brian G Turner (Dec 5, 2016)

Abernovo said:


> Hmm, with respect, Brian, isn't that taking the view that exclusion is acceptable? If you don't fit the mould set by the 'establishment' you should set your sights on a different goal?



I was simply wondering if Jo was trying to push a square peg through a round hole, simply because publishers have their own ideas of what constitutes genre definitions - and that they don't always equate with what readers might think. And vice versa.


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## Jo Zebedee (Dec 5, 2016)

Brian G Turner said:


> I was simply wondering if Jo was trying to push a square peg through a round hole, simply because publishers have their own ideas of what constitutes genre definitions - and that they don't always equate with what readers might think. And vice versa.


I think though considering I've been agented and had multiple offers on all my books (not to say decent sales and great reviews) I'd reckon the industry - and most readers who've had a look - find my peg is probably in the right place. I'm one of the lucky ladies - I have publisher support (which aided me in getting funding this year with great support in my application), I've had tons of support in the industry including in the convention community and the military sf community and numerous forums.

So why am I bringing it up then, says everyone? Because it's not just about me as a pretty established, profitable, writer - it's about the genre and why there aren't more of me.


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## Dan Jones (Dec 5, 2016)

@Jo Zebedee I've got some responses on this but I'm at the pub with  Glonka Dave and will be half cut so till respond properly later x


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## Jo Zebedee (Dec 5, 2016)

DG Jones said:


> @Jo Zebedee I've got some responses on this but I'm at the pub with  Glonka Dave and will be half cut so till respond properly later x


Looks forward to that immensely. Don't sober up first!


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## Gary Compton (Dec 5, 2016)

Well, what can I say. If as a publisher I have to have all women in the stable, that won't be a problem for me. Don't want to be controversial cos I am a blokee myself but I find women authors more focused and more driven. Now I don't know if that's because of what Jo has said but it's true.

No disrespect to men authors at TBP but take a leaf out of Jo's book - _that's the way to do it _(Do I sound like a parrot there). Generally, men tend to sit back and wait for it to happen (now that's not all so don't get your knickers in a twist cos it might not be you  ). 

So good luck to the ladies. We at TBP have a women Sci-fi platform coming soon so watch out for it!


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## MWagner (Dec 5, 2016)

Something that's forgotten in all the discussion about lack of equity in representation of writers is the makeup of readers. Women account for 65 to 80 per cent of the fiction market (depending on who you ask). The largest fiction genre by publications per year is romance, whose audience is 90 per cent female. Other major genres like mystery and literary fiction have mostly female readership. SF may be one of the only remaining genres that remains mostly male in readership. 

To me, this is the most troubling disparity in fiction. I was at a book store recently, and the second largest section was Teen (aka YA). The section was huge, and by my estimate 90 per cent of the books in it were aimed at young women. In the age at which most boys give up reading entirely, the market caters almost exclusively girls. Reading novels for pleasure has become a largely gendered activity, which may escape our notice ensconced in one of the only remaining genres men still read.


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## Toby Frost (Dec 5, 2016)

Jo Zebedee said:


> That's an interesting question.



Your answer is a good one, I think, but also unfortunately I reckon it might take a long time for things to be as you'd like. To put it bluntly, you might be waiting for one generation to die off, while hoping that another generation isn't overrun with sickos of the Vox Day variety (I doubt it will be). I have no idea how excluded you would be in SF circles: I'm not really part of the fan scene and don't greatly want to be. I don't know how SF networking works, as my own experiences with conventions and the like left me thinking that it wasn't really for me, and that real SF appreciation (as opposed to fandom of TV, pop culture etc) was hard to get into anyhow if you hadn't been in it for 20 years already.



Jo Zebedee said:


> So why am I bringing it up then, says everyone?



I slightly resent the implication that we don't want you to bring it up. You're welcome to, although I don't think what you're asking is one question: it's several different ones, all of which are about women in SFF (assuming that we're not talking 'equitable' in some wider sense). And on that note, I think I am going to leave the discussion for now. The topic is simply too big, I think, for one thread. I hope your experience improves.


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## Jo Zebedee (Dec 5, 2016)

Toby Frost said:


> I slightly resent the implication that we don't want you to bring it up. You're welcome to, although I don't think what you're asking is one question: it's several different ones, all of which are about women in SFF (assuming that we're not talking 'equitable' in some wider sense). And on that note, I think I am going to leave the discussion for now. The topic is simply too big, I think, for one thread. I hope your experience improves.



Well, actually, I started the thread about equity in general, not just women - but that seems to be where it went. And I certainly didn't want to make anyone feel resentful - I simply meant that I maybe sounded like I'm whinging when I am actually having a blast and am a very happy little author (and also trying, perhaps heavy handedly, to move the thread's focus from me).  

I think @MWagner brings up a really interesting point. I'm focusing in sff, but the wider reading world is a very different market place - and, particularly male YA is a poor market place for readers.


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## MWagner (Dec 5, 2016)

The fact authorship skews male while readership skews heavily female poses some interesting questions:


Is there something about writing or the publishing industry that makes it more difficult or unlikely for women to achieve publication?
Women don't seem to have much problem reading books written by men. Can we say the same for men about books written by women?
How does genre play into this? There seems to be genres where female authors do best (YA, Urban Fantasy, Romance, Historical Fiction of the non-military bent), genres where it doesn't seem to matter (Mystery, Traditional Fantasy), and genres that skew male (SF, Grimdark Fantasy, Military Fiction). What challenges do authors face writing in a genre that skews away from their gender?


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## Theophania Elliott (Dec 5, 2016)

Jo Zebedee said:


> it's about the genre and why there aren't the more of me.



I think it will be interesting to see what happens in the next 5-10 years. One of the good things about indie publishing is that anybody can do it who wants to. It's no longer viable to say "I can't get my book published because I'm female/of X ethnic origin/of Y sexuality" - if you want to publish, go indie. It's not the last resort of the desperate the way it was fifteen years ago.

So if, in 10 years' time, there is still a majority of any particular gender/sexuality/race above and beyond the relevant societal proportion, this is probably evidence that at least some of the "bias" is in who is writing, not who is being published. After all, different people want different things out of life. Not all cultures prize the same pursuits (just ask a teacher about which parents want their little darlings to be doctors).

I think an excellent way to help end discrimination in all directions would be to encourage the organizations that currently exclude indie authors - the prize committees, the author organizations, the conventions - to reconsider their policy. If you are only selecting your members from a group that has already been winnowed out by a gatekeeper, then your membership will reflect the gatekeeper's choices. And if you suspect that the gatekeeper may be being less than even-handed, then _why are you still letting them pick your members? 
_
The indie route is the only route to publication that has no barriers _to publication_ for anyone. Of course, like any other author, you then have to get an audience to read your stuff - but every author has that problem, and it's up to every author to find their audience. For authors with an unusual angle, that may be an advantage rather than the reverse: after all, the world is full of books, and being unusual helps a book to stand out from the crowd. Somewhere, there will be people looking for books about that very thing...


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## Toby Frost (Dec 5, 2016)

So much for leaving the thread.



Jo Zebedee said:


> I simply meant that I maybe sounded like I'm whinging when I am actually having a blast and am a very happy little author



Don't worry about that. In a way, you're in a similar situation to me, I suspect: very pleased with the success that you've had, but looking to build and grow as a writer. That's difficult, but I do hesitate sometimes to say so. It can feel a bit like saying that you'd like a helicopter to go with your Rolls Royce.



MWagner said:


> Women don't seem to have much problem reading books written by men. Can we say the same for men about books written by women?



One thing that strikes me about the YA issue is that a lot of it seems very teenage-girl-centric, even supposed action stories like The Hunger Games. Sooner or later, it will become teen romance, with the inevitable good boy/bad boy conflict, the overwrought emotions and all of that. It just seems to be the case that women like romance (in books) much more than men, whether or not it's well written.

I get the feeling that, while women and girls are happy to read a wide range of stuff, men are more easily put off, and some things are an absolute "no". So while a book about a Ripley/Furiosa/Brienne type character kicking ass (and quite possibly getting the other sort of action) would generally be fine, if it turned into a romance (especially a teen romance) a lot of male readers would drop it at once. There are a few emotions that seem connected to romance that men don't seem to have anywhere near as much as women (generally): in particular, caring much about who ends up with who (it's amazing how much talk in fandom seems to be about imagining which popular characters would date each other) and - I actually find this hard to explain, it's so alien - the sense of being thrilled by your own weakness compared to the male lead's strength, which I suppose is another way of saying being swept off your feet.


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## MWagner (Dec 5, 2016)

Toby Frost said:


> One thing that strikes me about the YA issue is that a lot of it seems very teenage-girl-centric, even supposed action stories like The Hunger Games. Sooner or later, it will become teen romance, with the inevitable good boy/bad boy conflict, the overwrought emotions and all of that. It just seems to be the case that women like romance (in books) much more than men, whether or not it's well written.
> 
> I get the feeling that, while women and girls are happy to read a wide range of stuff, men are more easily put off, and some things are an absolute "no". So while a book about a Ripley/Furiosa/Brienne type character kicking ass (and quite possibly getting the other sort of action) would generally be fine, if it turned into a romance (especially a teen romance) a lot of male readers would drop it at once. There are a few emotions that seem connected to romance that men don't seem to have anywhere near as much as women (generally): in particular, caring much about who ends up with who (it's amazing how much talk in fandom seems to be about imagining which popular characters would date each other)



Agreed on all points. I don't think young men care all that much about the gender of the protagonist and other characters. But they do find romance off-putting. To the point where they don't really want any of it in their stories. I don't have any greater authority on that than my own preferences as a young man, those of my friends, and now my young son. It's also the best explanation I've seen for why young men dislike the YA fare that's so popular  today.  Conversely, my guess is a writer who expects to find popular success among an audience of young women without any romance in the story would be paddling up-stream against a strong current.



Toby Frost said:


> I actually find this hard to explain, it's so alien - the sense of being thrilled by your own weakness compared to the male lead's strength, which I suppose is another way of saying being swept off your feet.



The romantic trope I find absolutely baffling is 'redeeming the bad boy.' That it's more appealing to turn a bad boy nice than to choose a nice boy. It's in everything from Jane Austen and Emily Bronte to Buffy and Twilight. I'm missing some essential dramatic element to all those stories. Some key character motivation. I've queried my wife about this again and again, and she can't really express the appeal. It must be something primal and potent, beyond the ken of most men.


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## Parson (Dec 5, 2016)

MWagner said:


> The romantic trope I find absolutely baffling is 'redeeming the bad boy.' That it's more appealing to turn a bad boy nice than to choose a nice boy. It's in everything from Jane Austen and Emily Bronte to Buffy and Twilight. I'm missing some essential dramatic element to all those stories. Some key character motivation. I've queried my wife about this again and again, and she can't really express the appeal. It must be something primal and potent, beyond the ken of most men.



Well said. Could it be that its much more exciting and fulfilling to flirt with danger and tame it, then to make a rational original choice?


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## HareBrain (Dec 5, 2016)

MWagner said:


> The romantic trope I find absolutely baffling is 'redeeming the bad boy.' That it's more appealing to turn a bad boy nice than to choose a nice boy. It's in everything from Jane Austen and Emily Bronte to Buffy and Twilight. I'm missing some essential dramatic element to all those stories. Some key character motivation. I've queried my wife about this again and again, and she can't really express the appeal. It must be something primal and potent, beyond the ken of most men.



Isn't it a variant on defeating the monster and winning the treasure, but focused on emotional interaction rather than hitting it with a sword?


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## Jo Zebedee (Dec 5, 2016)

But - again - isn't there room for both? Dune does it well. I like my derring do action and I don't like my romance heavy handed - but I do like to know the characters.


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## MWagner (Dec 5, 2016)

HareBrain said:


> Isn't it a variant on defeating the monster and winning the treasure, but focused on emotional interaction rather than hitting it with a sword?



Holy crap. That makes perfect sense! I'm gonna have to go back and watch Wuthering Heights again.


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## The Big Peat (Dec 6, 2016)

*shakes fist at Harebrain* Curse you for ninja-ing me. What more potent an example of a woman's charm, character, desirability and so on can there be than to genuinely change the way someone lives and acts? I mean, that stuff is near-impossible in the real world. And there's a lot of stuff telling women that nothing they are or do is as admirable as their ability to be charming, character, desirable, etc.etc. A lot of stuff otherwise of course, probably a great deal more these days, but its still there.

I'm sure there's a lot more to the love of romance but it sure looks part of it to me.

Here's the thing though. Some dudes do love the romance. Some dudettes love the overthrow of an evil overlord by violent fantastical methods*. If they wanna write it, should they have to pretend to be the other gender just to get some financial love from the fans? Okay, they don't have to... but you don't have to dope to win the yellow jersey either. Sure does help though!

Pretending to be a round peg shouldn't get people places. For anyone.

And, hand to heart, I'm not sure indie publishing is gonna change that, at least at the top. It feels like there's a long way from good indie niche to being an Abercrombie. Some make it but most of the big names were anointed from the first book.


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## The Big Peat (Dec 6, 2016)

Ah! I forgot to follow up on the tangent with the asterisk and the edit time has passed. So sorry for the double post but -

Arguably, overthrow of an evil overlord by violent fantastical methods = most of conventional fantasy. From there you can split it into two; resistance of the outsider evil overlord and rebellion against the non-outsider evil overlord. I am simplifying a *lot* here but its mostly there.

The former trends towards being conservative; the latter progressive. There's an ideological split right at the heart of the genre. A small one really, but its a seed for people to use for their own ideological struggles as with the puppies.

Or at least that's my theory. Not much to do with the thread but fun to consider.


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## Theophania Elliott (Dec 6, 2016)

MWagner said:


> That it's more appealing to turn a bad boy nice than to choose a nice boy.



I always thought it was about power: the woman takes the man and remakes him according to her own will, regardless of his will or consent. By the end of the book, to outward appearances, he might be the "dominant" one, but actually, she's calling the shots. I've never been able to see the appeal, either: that kind of manipulation is just nasty. Plus, I don't believe it: nobody is going to change that much once they get to be the age to be a romantic hero.

Interesting parallel with BDSM, actually - the submissive is the one who is in ultimate control because they can call things off whenever they like. Except, in BDSM it's consensual and both sides get something out of it.


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## Toby Frost (Dec 6, 2016)

Theophania Elliott said:


> Plus, I don't believe it: nobody is going to change that much once they get to be the age to be a romantic hero.



Okay, the thread is pretty derailed as it is, but on this I'd say: there's an analogy with pornography here. The thrills that pornography provides aren't about telling a realistic story and don't need to be: being a washing-machine repairman in real life doesn't mean that you will have endless sex with bored housewives (I'm guessing). Similarly, people virtually never hate each other at first sight in real life and end up lovers, and a man who is sullen and angry is almost certainly going to stay that way no matter what. But in pornography, realism doesn't matter so long as that thrill is delivered. I would say the same thing about the less realistic end of romance and grimdark: the thrills matter more than logic or believeability. And at that point, I won't be interested. It's preaching to the converted, so to speak, and I'm not looking for those thrills.


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## Hex (Dec 6, 2016)

I think it's also about conflict -- really nice boys (as in boys who would be nice in real life) don't mess about and so you know where you are with them and there's no conflict because it's all so straightforward. You can provide conflict through love triangles, but that's tiresome and overdone in YA.

I haven't encountered that many really good romances where both characters thoroughly nice (though there are some -- Cinda Williams Chima writes really good fantasy with a strong romance element where both characters are very sympathetic but kept apart by their situations), but on the other hand, _Wuthering Heights _has always confused me because Heathcliff is so awful. If you use the situation, it's more about that (=fantasy or whatever with romance sub-plot) and less about the fundamental relationship between the characters (=romance).

Jane Austen's heroes tended to be more likeable -- men who are a bit silly about something (Darcy is a bit arrogant, Wentworth is resentful and angry) but who are clearly good people who want to do the honourable thing.

The issue with romance is that it's the process of coming together that is the story -- once the protagonists have got together, it's not very interesting any more so you need to hold off on that for as long as possible, which means someone has to be being a bit unreasonable and usually it's the man because men tend to get away with being more unreasonable and still being attractive and sympathetic fictional characters.

And the dislike-turning-to-attraction thing does happen. @HareBrain has a fancy name for it (or possibly a fancy and coherent explanation).


(also, arguably, turning a bad boy nice only works for as long as you can deal with it -- it's a constant edge of danger without safety. Snagging a good guy isn't as dramatic really, because any really good guy can see the fundamental attractiveness of a heroine)


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## HareBrain (Dec 6, 2016)

Hex said:


> And the dislike-turning-to-attraction thing does happen. @HareBrain has a fancy name for it (or possibly a fancy and coherent explanation).



This provoked a big brow-beetled "what, me?" but it turns out you're right!

Introducing a love interest.


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## Dan Jones (Dec 9, 2016)

Hey Jo, I know I said I'd respond a few days ago. Sadly, I have sobered up, not that I think I'd have been any more inflammatory when inebriated, though I might have peppered the post with more pictures of Eddie Murphy.



Jo Zebedee said:


> That's an interesting question. I said in my blog post - and meant it - that I didn't *feel* there needed to be 50-50 sf written by women (and my blog was about sf specifically). Fewer women write sf. We know that - from Brian's stats and from any publisher asked about sf submissions. So it's not that. I
> 
> think for me it would be *feeling* that, as woman in the genre, I had as many opportunities, to *feel* that being a woman no longer counted against me or that I am excluded from some of -again sf in particular - networking (and, if you watch a lot of sf networking it is the same authors promoting each other, calling out for each other and they are mostly men. Like by a huge majority). I don't want to have to go and find women to make a sf network of my own - I want to *feel* I'm part of the community, not a different part or one of the ladies, or whatever*. (And not see posts about Rae as a lamppost when no one made the same posts about Luke who was, frankly, just as animate. Or see casual sexism in comments about tv series and films.)
> 
> ...



What struck me about this post, and perfectly encapsulates the unknowable, movable, shifting centre ground, or happy medium, is that in this post you've used the word "feel' or "feeling" six times. That demonstrates to me that, even with the statistics tossed up by Brian, it's essentially a subjective experience as to whether an individual person feels part of a particular community. What's sauce for the goose isn't necessarily sauce for the gander here. Another person who has the same amount of experience, voice, and success as you've had, might feel completely different, might feel completely embraced, equal, loved even, or whatever feelings they would use to measure these things.

And when you're striving to attain a subjective experience, it's impossible for that to be engineered by external forces. Or can something as profound as a feeling, and a sense of self, be based upon statistical parity?

For what it's worth, I think you're a hugely valuable, valued and successful member of this community and I daresay other communities, too. I wouldn't have the temerity of speak on your behalf, natch, but it's just my perception.

Oh, go on then...


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## Jo Zebedee (Dec 9, 2016)

Gives @DG Jones a big hug on the way out the door.  (That would have been much more entertaining when drunk. It could have been a big squishy post. )


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## Dan Jones (Dec 9, 2016)

I doubt that - it would more likely to have been riddled with spelling errors, strange autocorrects and bizarre grammar! I'll take the hug though


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## Ursa major (Dec 9, 2016)

I can see how, in Romance, where the romance is the main, consuming, point of the story (I assume; I don't read Romance), one has to do something to up the ante/conflict and so make the "proper" resolution initially look less likely and thus more satisfying when it arrives, but one would have thought that if romance is not the main point of a story (as in SFF), but is still a very important aspect, there's less need for the turn the "bad" guy into the right life partner (or whatever) trope.

In a sort of derail -- well, switching genre and medium -- one of my favourite films is _Hobson's Choice_ (the 1954** version with Charles Laughton and John Mills, but with Brenda De Banzie playing the main character and driving force of the film). At the risk of giving spoilers -- the film is barely over 60 years old -- the love interest (John Mills) is anything but a bad boy, but his transformation by the MC is perhaps just as satisfying, _almost_ to the point when he's made independent enough to stand up to De Banzie's character. Not being a fantasy (with, say, dragons and/or dark evil overlords to slay, although there is something that is slayed***), does not mean that the stakes have had to be raised beyond reality on the romance front, and yet the whole thing is satisfying, and on many levels.


Now I freely admit that the film (and the 1915 play on which it was based) plays into something I really like in a story -- that someone with intelligence or skill (perhaps not recognised in the way**** it should be by those around that person) can use their nous to make fundamental changes in the way events might otherwise have done -- but even so, I found the romantic aspects of the film satisfying, and that really isn't my thing at all, in general (books or films). Even so, it shows that even without the "girl makes bad boy good" trope, the romance can pack a punch, particularly where other stakes are high (as they often are in much SSF).


** - I'm nothing if not bang up to date.

*** - As it happens. quite a few things are slayed, as De Banzie's character faces challenges and difficulties from society, family and even from those she is also helping (and who know this but take her for granted).

**** -  Another example would be Hardy Krüger's character in the romance-free film, _The Flight of the Phoenix_.


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## Jo Zebedee (Dec 22, 2016)

An interesting post here by Mark Lawrence. Once again that near equity of readership turns up (in this case 55/45%) but is not represented in what people are reading. (Whilst this is fantasy as opposed to sf it is grimdark - another genre absolutely dominated by male writers. I can name a couple of female grimdark writers -mainly because I'm in a grimdark * fb group - but many males.)

* being a female who - horror! - - also writes dark stuff...

My readers' "Best of" list revisited. • /r/Fantasy


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## Theophania Elliott (Dec 22, 2016)

I read mostly urban fantasy, and I'd really like to find actual urban fantasy with an adult (not young adult) female protagonist who isn't either a ditz or a bitch (and thus annoying), and which isn't really paranormal romance. Particularly when the 'romance' relies so heavily on instalove and love triangles. 

Kelley Armstrong did it well, the majority of the time, but she's moved into writing (equally good) thrillers. I find myself gravitating towards male writers because they _write what I want to read_. Harry Dresden might be a bit of an ass at times, but at least he doesn't spend half his time dithering over which of two hot men (or women) he finds the most sexy. Even when he's actually getting some bedroom action, it's decidedly peripheral to actual _plot _things happening.  

I don't know whether that's a result of what is getting written, or what is getting published, but it's depressing. And, to be honest, with the rise of indie publishing, the "poor women being kept out by the gatekeepers" argument is wearing a bit thin. That probably worked really well ten years ago, but not any more. In today's bright new world, if you've got a story, you can publish it. I await detailed genre-specific figures, but Data Guy's latest data is that 71% of the adult fiction market in the US is digital, and 30% of the total adult fiction market (not just 30% of the 71%) is indie. 

So where are these women who are writing non-romantic, non-young adult fantasy?

Because if it's not being written, it's not a surprise that fantasy readers of both genders who don't want romance or young adult are reading male authors.

I'd welcome a list of female authors of fantasy that is:
* Not a romance (although I don't object to the MC actually finding somebody attractive, and even doing something about it), but I want actual _plot_. Hell, I'd even go for a romance that was actually a romance, rather than just sex.
* Not young adult.
* Features an MC of either gender who is not continually getting themselves into trouble through their own lack of self-control (of power, personal life, hormones, etc).

I've come across Annie Bellet's twenty-sided sorceress books, which I will probably get around to trying, although the explicit geek-culture thing rather puts me off because it's completely not my scene.


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## The Big Peat (Dec 22, 2016)

Theophania Elliott said:


> And, to be honest, with the rise of indie publishing, the "poor women being kept out by the gatekeepers" argument is wearing a bit thin.



When it comes to being read widely rather than merely putting your work out there, the gatekeeper at the doors of publishing are not the only gatekeepers (and they're still pretty important for getting read widely). There are also the gatekeepers deciding who to advertise as hard as possible and who to just give a go. I don't think the argument that women are being kept out by the gatekeepers here is wearing thin.


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## Jo Zebedee (Dec 22, 2016)

My own for a start -  there are people in them, some in relationships, most too busy dodging bullets or aliens to get it on. Bujold we mentioned in another thread. For darker fantasy Anna Spark Smith gets a lot of call outs. 

A few more off the top of my head: 

Jodi Taylor, high on my tbr list - time travel I believe
Gillian Flynn crosses into fantasy from time to time - nicely rounded characters, not romance led
Jessie Burton - The Miniturarist has a fascinating female character and an interesting, and challenging, central relationship. 
Teresa Edgerton - great female characters. 
Jo Walton's Among Others is a great modern fantasy with limited romance (it might crossover to YA but I read it happily as an adult book)

The gatekeeper argument is an interesting one and more problematic. But if females aren't being read widely enough (and I'd admit to, at best, a 50% breakdown - but I don't aim to read exclusively anything, including gender) we should maybe be asking why not. Is it visibility - because Amazon selects who is visible based on algorithms taken from what sells (if they select more males? If so is it because they sell more or there are more - we'd never know). Or is it that we're more used to how men structure books and it's in our comfort zone? Or do men just write better books... (but then why is the sort of bias in sff not seen in all genres?) 

I don't have the answers but I suspect some might be uncomfortable in terms of what we've been exposed to as genre readers and, therefore, what feels right within it.


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## MWagner (Dec 22, 2016)

Theophania Elliott said:


> I don't know whether that's a result of what is getting written, or what is getting published, but it's depressing. And, to be honest, with the rise of indie publishing, the "poor women being kept out by the gatekeepers" argument is wearing a bit thin.



I'm not sure the gatekeepers argument is valid even in traditional publishing. 

Publishing industry is overwhelmingly white and female, US study finds​
Survey of workforce at 34 book publishers and eight review journals in US reveals 79% of staff are white and 78% female – with UK numbers still unmonitored​


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## Toby Frost (Dec 22, 2016)

Theophania Elliott said:


> * Not a romance (although I don't object to the MC actually finding somebody attractive, and even doing something about it), but I want actual _plot_. Hell, I'd even go for a romance that was actually a romance, rather than just sex.
> * Not young adult.
> * Features an MC of either gender who is not continually getting themselves into trouble through their own lack of self-control (of power, personal life, hormones, etc).



And that's pretty much why I avoid urban fantasy and YA altogether. I'm probably missing some good books, but I'm also sure that I'd be missing a lot more books that just aren't for me.


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## Jo Zebedee (Dec 22, 2016)

MWagner said:


> I'm not sure the gatekeepers argument is valid even in traditional publishing.
> 
> Publishing industry is overwhelmingly white and female, US study finds​
> Survey of workforce at 34 book publishers and eight review journals in US reveals 79% of staff are white and 78% female – with UK numbers still unmonitored​


Yes - the staff are. But at what levels. Plus, this is only a valid argument if those women are buying and publishing women. A recent example was the woman who queried the same novel with the same letter under a female and male author's name - with startlingly different response and request rates. I'll see if I can dig it up. It's shocking.

https://jezebel.com/homme-de-plume-what-i-learned-sending-my-novel-out-und-1720637627


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## The Big Peat (Dec 22, 2016)

Jo Zebedee said:


> Yes - the staff are. But at what levels. Plus, this is only a valid argument if those women are buying and publishing women. A recent example was the woman who queried the same novel with the same letter under a female and male author's name - with startlingly different response and request rates. I'll see if I can dig it up. It's shocking.



In her own words


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## ratsy (Dec 22, 2016)

@DG Jones Have you read Francis/Julia Knight? Her Rojan Dizon series is great, and has that sharp witted Urban Fantasy feel to it, though more in a fantasy setting (very original setting, and I loved it)  The MC is male though. The next series features a brother and sister duo, and is great too, but a little more 3 musketeers meets steampunk/magic stuff. All great stuff IMO.


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## Parson (Dec 22, 2016)

Jo Zebedee said:


> Yes - the staff are. But at what levels. Plus, this is only a valid argument if those women are buying and publishing women. A recent example was the woman who queried the same novel with the same letter under a female and male author's name - with startlingly different response and request rates. I'll see if I can dig it up. It's shocking.
> 
> https://jezebel.com/homme-de-plume-what-i-learned-sending-my-novel-out-und-1720637627



Indeed great shocking stuff, but oh so frustrating. ---- I know a little about this on the age discrimination side. A pastor in my denomination had best be set to stay where he is located when he turns 50 because unless you are a "star" no one is really interested. On the female side even finding one church of any respectable size to look at a female lead pastor is very rare.


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## Jo Zebedee (Dec 22, 2016)

Parson said:


> Indeed great shocking stuff, but oh so frustrating. ---- I know a little about this on the age discrimination side. A pastor in my denomination had best be set to stay where he is located when he turns 50 because unless you are a "star" no one is really interested. On the female side even finding one church of any respectable size to look at a female lead pastor is very rare.


And, again, ageism is so easy to hide behind excuses like we don't get many applicants (because the applicants know what their chances are, and don't apply*), not suited to our current demography etc etc. And then, as you say, people get around it by getting established early and stop looking to move on and be promoted by merit (this despite the Christian church's arguably most visible roles almost always being held by people well up in experience - and men of course)

*at a recent meeting I asked if someone had to declare she was ASD on job applications. I was told no, but that she can't be discriminated against, so she should and seek the support needed.

I've been on many interview panels over the years. It's very easy to dock a point here and there and it never be looked into, let alone proven. I don't believe it wouldn't harm her chances - despite her being very, very suited to the careers she is interested in, being very caring and empathetic and patient - and will be advising her not to say anything on applications.)


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## Parson (Dec 22, 2016)

Jo Zebedee said:


> And then, as you say, people get around it by getting established early and stop looking to move on and be promoted by merit (this despite the Christian church's arguably most visible roles almost always being held by people well up in experience - and men of course)



But the "most visible" roles in Protestantism are in the denominational hierarchy and not local church leaders. The denominational hierarchy in my branch and some others I'm aware of actually do a pretty good job of balancing between sexes, races, and ages among those hired in the past 10 years or so. We actually have quotas on denominational task forces and the like. But the local church is a completely different animal. Ordinary Joe and Mary in the pew see the lead pastor as male with a young family, and the bigger and more significant the church the more this is true. 



Jo Zebedee said:


> *at a recent meeting I asked if someone had to declare she was ASD on job applications. I was told no, but that she can't be discriminated against, so she should and seek the support needed.



I had to look up what ASD was. (_autism spectrum disorder?)  _I would completely agree with you telling her not to put that on her resume. It might not actually "count" but it will "count." I've heard people say about similar kinds of situations: "But why take a chance?" On the age side: "But he has more of an upside. If you take __________ you know what you're getting, but if you take (younger candidate) there's a chance you might get a real winner."


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## Brian G Turner (Dec 22, 2016)

Jo Zebedee said:


> My own for a start



It's long been a concern of mine that you might lose sales for not trying to hide behind a gender-neutral or even male pseudonym. But I totally respect your choice to do so - women won't be normative in SFF unless more women challenge that tradition and write under their real names.


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## Jo Zebedee (Dec 22, 2016)

Brian G Turner said:


> It's long been a concern of mine that you might lose sales for not trying to hide behind a gender-neutral or even male pseudonym. But I totally respect your choice to do so - women won't be normative in SFF unless more women challenge that tradition and write under their real names.


I have no doubt it hasn't helped. On the other hand when someone calls you out as their fav female sf author (thank you @Cathbad ) as has happened a couple of times this year, one has to take hope that I'm making a difference. This was never about money - I have a job - but love of the genre. I hope, by openly being a woman in it, I make it richer - and encourage more women to enter it and enrich it further


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## Dan Jones (Dec 22, 2016)

ratsy said:


> @DG Jones Have you read Francis/Julia Knight? Her Rojan Dizon series is great, and has that sharp witted Urban Fantasy feel to it, though more in a fantasy setting (very original setting, and I loved it)  The MC is male though. The next series features a brother and sister duo, and is great too, but a little more 3 musketeers meets steampunk/magic stuff. All great stuff IMO.



The first thing I will have read of Julia Knight's will be whatever is offered in Journeys. I do have grand designs on writing a series of (unrelated) urban fantasy novellas, so I might take a look at this; thanks for the heads up.


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## ratsy (Dec 23, 2016)

@DG Jones it's a great story in Journeys. It grabbed me from the first paragraph, and instantly brought me into the setting.


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## hopewrites (Dec 23, 2016)

Late as usual.
I open my prejudices to you:
On the cover- are there dragon's?
Past the cover: 
Does the voice harmonize with the others in my head?

---
Yes I'm aware that social circles as well as social media will say one author is better than another for unrelated reasons.
I refused to read a series written by someone because the only recommendation it got was "well she's Mormon, so you have to read it." 

If you can't tell me why the story is worth reading, I'm not listening to your review.

If your reasons for finding the story not worth reading have nothing to do with what's written, I'm not listening to your review.


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## Danny McG (Dec 24, 2016)

I genuinely spotted this thread title and clicked on it thinking it was about the performing arts and entertainment union!   Thought maybe published authors were obliged to join... nothing relevant to contribute to your discussion , sorry


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## RX-79G (Jan 14, 2017)

I read the whole thread, then decided to Wikipedia some things. The following are quoted from their respective Wiki pages:

Octavia Butler:
_Butler's stories, therefore, are usually written from the perspective of a marginalized black woman whose difference from the dominant agents increases her potential for *reconfiguring the future of her society*._

Connie Willis:
_Willis is known for writing "romantic 'screwball' comedy in the manner of 1940s Hollywood movies. [She] is acclaimed as a science-fiction writer, with *much of her writing exploring the social sciences.*_

Anne McCaffrey:
_The Science Fiction Hall of Fame citation of Anne McCaffrey summarises her genre as "science fiction, though tinged with the tone and instruments of fantasy", and her reputation as "a writer of *romantic, heightened tales of adventure explicitly designed to appeal—and to make good sense to—a predominantly female adolescent audience*."_

C.J. Cherryh:
_Her protagonists often attempt to *uphold existing social institutions* and norms in the service of the greater good while the antagonists often attempt to exploit, subvert or radically alter the predominant social order for selfish gain._

Andre Norton:
_Norton started out writing juvenile historical fiction and adventure, and then moved into fantasy and finally science fiction. Again and again in her works, alienated outsiders undertake a journey through which they realize their full potential; *this emphasis on the rite of passage continued her association in many readers' minds with young adult fiction*, although she became a best seller to adults._

Doris Lessing:
_"I would so like it if reviewers and readers could see this series, Canopus in Argos: Archive, as a framework that enables me to tell (I hope) a beguiling tale or two; to put questions, both to myself and to others; to explore ideas and *sociological possibilities*."_

Ursala LeGuin:
_Le Guin exploits the creative flexibility of the science fiction and fantasy genres to undertake thorough *explorations of dimensions of both social and psychological identity and of broader cultural and social structures.*_


I submit this theory for consideration, without ever having given it much thought before: *The biggest female names in sci fi tend to write about sociological and gender issues. What if the general readership of SF aren't particularly interested in the use of SF to explore sociology, and because the big name female SF writers have staked that territory out, the SF readership has made a not unreasonable decision to avoid sociology SF by avoiding female authors?*

Full disclosure: I'm male, and prefer a typically a harder brand of sci fi than most of these authors write, but I do very much like Connie Willis and quite liked _Cyteen _when I was 17. However, my favorite Willis book is Bellweather, which is arguably not quite SF, and features a sociologist. I do not have the breadth of reading experience to make any sort of broad statement about female SF writers in general, so those of you who do could comment on how many other female authors also focus on social issues rather than issues of alien intelligence, multiple universe travel, starship engines, etc.


The other side of this is that many female authors have been billed as having "uniquely feminine viewpoints", as if it is not prejudicial to think that individual authors bring their personal perspective into their work. Novels are not computer chips, to be judged solely on their specification. Novels are purely qualitative, deriving their value from things that are hard to measure. Are female authors generally less interested in the mainline themes of SF, and if so, is it a bad thing that a less popular viewpoint _is_ less popular? In other words, is what we think of as the average SF novel somehow male in viewpoint, regardless of who enjoys reading it? This isn't a statement of value, but more along the lines of "is this shirt feminine or masculine?"

And if there is any validity to that notion, is it _unfair_ that women might have less perspective or interest in creating something that is somewhat masculine? Is it equally unfair that men might have less perspective on creating something like the _coming of age story_ that predominates YA, a genre dominated by women authors?

Again, before anyone's feminism alarm goes off, I'm not making any value judgments. I'm asking whether there is a built in gender perspective to some genres, and if it is _understandable_ that this perspective makes the genres more approachable by authors of those respective genders.


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## thaddeus6th (Jan 14, 2017)

Interesting suggestion, RX. It reminds me a bit of a short clip I saw about black kids being disadvantaged compared to white kids getting into elite universities. The statistics didn't, however, look at deprivation levels or whether schools were predominantly working or middle class. It might be that it's more of a class issue than a race issue, and if you address it from a racial perspective then you might even up the demographics in universities, but also consign white working class kids to the third class and stoke up racial tensions at the same time. 

Returning to the subject matter, I remember learning at university [may've mentioned this before, apologies, if so] that boys found it more difficult than girls to put themselves into the other gender's shoes, which is why so many cartoons are (or were, I don't watch many nowadays) male-oriented. That said, quirky results can come up. I believe more women than men watched Top Gear, and Totally Spies (not exactly Masculine Central) was very popular with boys.


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## ErikB (Jan 15, 2017)

I read stories based on what I like. And I hate to say it, but ever since I was young, my choice of books was often governed by the cover art.

I don't care about the gender, age, religion, sexual proclivity, race, ethnicity, or whether the author likes to dance naked in the woods wearing feathers and a rubber duck mask.

I have often bought new books after skimming the jacket to see what the book is about because I liked the cover artwork.

I discovered Barbra Hambly because I liked the cover to "The Walls of Air" (I was oblivious to the fact that it was book 2 of the Darwath Trilogy). I did later get book 1 & 3.

I discovered Jennifer Roberson because I liked the Boris Vallejo cover art on the book Shape Shifters (again a book in a series which I later bought all of, Chronicles of the Cheysuli).

I have made bad choices as well as good. I don't recommend selecting new authors by the book cover art, but I have found some good reading and skilled authors doing this.

Michael Moorcock, Anne McCaffrey, etc.

Illustrations by Michael Whelan, Boris Vallejo, Frank Frazetta, and other artists are sometimes my big drive to try out a book.

This is not to say that I do not seek out books by subject or author, because I do. But honestly I could give two rats butts less what or whom wrote it as long as I like it.

I like what I like. The source of what I like (as in who it is or what they look like or believe in etc) is simply not relevant to whether I buy a book or enjoy it. I don't usually seek out authors. I seek out entertainment.

And if an author has good artwork on the cover (I know many will raise an eyebrow at this) I am far more likely to browse your book than if you have a crappy cover.

In fact there are books that I enjoy but am not inclined to own because the cover art sucks. And if I own books with bad cover art you can be sure of two things, its either a darn good read/classic, or someone I hold dear gave me the book as a gift and I cannot throw it out because I value the person who gave it to me.

And I will throw in that while there is an old adage (very true by the way) that you should never judge a book by it's cover, it is equally true that readers are drawn to good cover art, and while I don't believe a lot of people would openly admit it, I know that there are plenty of folks that do select books on that very criteria.

Crazy but true...

So here's to equity. Good authors are good authors regardless. I don't know what public bias is anyway. In my country Donald Trump made it as a President. So I cannot predict the minds of humans any more. The world is quite nuts. And people are strange. Go figure...


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## Brian G Turner (Jan 15, 2017)

Well, I'm not sure if I'm being offensive or arrogant, but I've just Tweeted to JK Rowling asking her if she'd consider putting her real name on her covers, to help tackle perceptions on gender inequality: Brian G Turner on Twitter

I'll not hold my breath in expectation of a reply, though.


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## RX-79G (Jan 15, 2017)

Brian G Turner said:


> Well, I'm not sure if I'm being offensive or arrogant, but I've just Tweeted to JK Rowling asking her if she'd consider putting her real name on her covers, to help tackle perceptions on gender inequality: Brian G Turner on Twitter
> 
> I'll not hold my breath in expectation of a reply, though.


Are you talking about JK Rowling titled work, like _Harry Potter_? Because the gender inequality for YA speculative fiction is already 68% female.


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## Brian G Turner (Jan 15, 2017)

RX-79G said:


> Are you talking about JK Rowling titled work, like _Harry Potter_? Because the gender inequality for YA speculative fiction is already 68% female.



Does that figure come from the number of authors, number of book sales, revenue, etc, or what? Come on, don't talk science in one thread and quote junk statistics at me. 

Also, _Harry Potter_ was originally sold as a Middle Grade series, not a YA one - I'm not sure publishers even used the latter term regularly until then anyway. 

And the point is that JK Rowling reportedly used a gender neutral pronoun because it was believed that boys would not read books written by a woman. That's exactly the point I've raised - that she no longer needs to do this, and in using her own name, will help other women authors.


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## RX-79G (Jan 15, 2017)

Brian G Turner said:


> Does that figure come from the number of authors, number of book sales, revenue, etc, or what? Come on, don't talk science in one thread and quote junk statistics at me. Also, _Harry Potter_ was originally sold as a Middle Grade series, not a YA one - I'm not sure publishers even used the latter term regularly until then anyway.
> 
> And the point is that JK Rowling reportedly used a gender neutral pronoun because it was believed that boys would not read books written by a woman. That's exactly the point I've raised - that she no longer needs to do this, and in using her own name, will help other women authors.


The number came from this TOR article, and I will leave it to your assessment of how "junky" it is:
SEXISM IN GENRE PUBLISHING: A PUBLISHER'S PERSPECTIVE

However, Rowling's decision to hide her first name may have been based on her own "junk science" perspective, and not on any sort of factual basis. 


The other side of this is that a gender neutral name also hides male authors from potential female readers, which can sometimes be advantageous as well. But the cows are already out of the barn with Rowling's identity - I'll bet a lot of people now think that "JK" sounds like a women's name due to her fame.


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## Brian G Turner (Jan 15, 2017)

Apologies, I meant to add a smiley face after the junk science bit, but I was in a rush to get in the bath and you replied before I could edit it. 

The bottom line is that JK Rowling is the most widely read writer in the English language, but a lot of her male readers would not ordinarily read a book written by a woman.


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## RX-79G (Jan 15, 2017)

Brian G Turner said:


> The bottom line is that JK Rowling is the most widely read writer in the English language, but a lot of her male readers would not ordinarily read a book written by a woman.


That might be true, but it may also be a reasonable assumption that many women readers might also choose to not read a fantasy book written by a woman as well. I don't think anyone truly understands what's going on between writing styles, publishing and readership to say definitively that a net inequity is due to unfair bias or not.


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## Jo Zebedee (Jan 15, 2017)

Brian G Turner said:


> Apologies, I meant to add a grinning smiley face after the junk science bit, and a couple more smileys, but I was in a rush to get in the bath.
> 
> The bottom line is that JK Rowling is the most widely read writer in the English language, but a lot of her male readers would not ordinarily read a book written by a woman.


Actually the most interesting question is one you posed in your tweets (do let us know if you hear back!) - under Rowling she did what a lot of female genre writers do and used initials. With Galbraith she actively took a male's penname. Now, we know she hoped to see if she could succeed with them without her renown (and she should have done - they are fabulous books and much, much superior to HP, imho: some of my fav reads of last year). Did taking a male name enhance their chances?


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## RX-79G (Jan 15, 2017)

Jo Zebedee said:


> Did taking a male name enhance their chances?


I can't find the numbers, but it would only help if there is a gender bias against female authors writing crime novels. It appears that female readership of crime novels is high, and maybe authorship as well. If that's true, using a male name to sell crime novels didn't enhance her chances (or could have even hurt them).


Which is all academic anyway - it isn't like she had to start at the bottom and find an agent and all that. The industry at least knew who they were publishing and would have given it a full effort.


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## ErikB (Jan 16, 2017)

Brian G Turner said:


> Apologies, I meant to add a grinning smiley face after the junk science bit, and a couple more smileys, but I was in a rush to get in the bath.
> 
> The bottom line is that JK Rowling is the most widely read writer in the English language, but a lot of her male readers would not ordinarily read a book written by a woman.



Not to be contradictory, but...
 the most widely read author in the English language is William Shakespeare followed by JRR Tolkien. Just a generalism of course. If you meant modern author I would defer to your knowledge.

The three most widely translated and read books (coincidentally) are 1. The Bible. 2. The collective works of William Shakespeare. 3. Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien.

Having read all three I prefer Tolkien over the others, but Shakespeare does spin some excellent tales! 

Oh and Rowling is very adept as well. Kudos to her. 

I don't know her motives in the gender split, but I will be curious to see if she replies to you and to hear what she has to say. That was an excellent query Brian!


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## thaddeus6th (Jan 16, 2017)

Jo, also worth noting her Galbraith sales were modest at best.

I think the real lesson here is that I should entitle my next book Lord of the Thrones, and change my name to George RR Tolkien.


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## hopewrites (Jan 29, 2017)

I would suspect that any gender bias based on names, (stupid imo) would stem from masculine names having harder sounds which subconsciously aid a perspective (along with cover art and title) that it would be a hard edged book -lots of daring do, cliffhangers, sharp turns of plot...

Whereas a nice soft feminine name evokes a feeling of chiffon, and whipped cream.

Not something people activity think about any more than they consider the visceral reactions they have to the cover art.


Upon further consideration I realize I do have a gender bias in one genre. If I see a hard edged masculine sort of name on the cover of a romance novel, I put it back and look for something else. I think this is a result of my personal experience with the romanticism of the masculinity I've encountered in my life. Without disbelieving that a masculine person is capable of Romantic gestures, it's something I hope to be true rather than know from personal experience to be true.
(My ex's idea of romance was to treat me like a hooker. One of the many many reasons he's my ex.)


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## Jo Zebedee (Jan 29, 2017)

thaddeus6th said:


> Jo, also worth noting her Galbraith sales were modest at best.
> 
> I think the real lesson here is that I should entitle my next book Lord of the Thrones, and change my name to George RR Tolkien.


Her sales were modest but the reviews very good and the book gaining some momentum in crime circles. We'll never know if that would have been enough to break the book, sadly. Having read them, though, I'd despair for any world where books like that don't succeed because they are bloody brilliant.


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## Parson (Jan 30, 2017)

@Jo Zebedee ... I'm a bit of a crime novel lover. .... What made them brilliant? And why do you think she used a man's name? Was it merely a dodge? or perhaps she thought a male name was better accepted in the world of detective novels?


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## Jo Zebedee (Jan 30, 2017)

Parson said:


> @Jo Zebedee ... I'm a bit of a crime novel lover. .... What made them brilliant? And why do you think she used a man's name? Was it merely a dodge? or perhaps she thought a male name was better accepted in the world of detective novels?


The first - great main character, Parson, with a nice dose of humour, and a good central mystery. 

As to the second - I'm not sure to be honest.


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## Brian G Turner (Jan 30, 2017)

Parson said:


> @Jo Zebedeeor perhaps she thought a male name was better accepted in the world of detective novels?



IMO it would probably have been to hide her identity - there are plenty of very successful women writing as women in the thriller genre.


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## RX-79G (Jan 30, 2017)

Brian G Turner said:


> IMO it would probably have been to hide her identity - there are plenty of very successful women writing as women in the thriller genre.


Just like women do really well in YA fantasy. I don't think either genre is inequitable to women authors that will illuminate the SFF general question.


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## SilentRoamer (Jan 30, 2017)

Parson said:


> @Jo Zebedee ... I'm a bit of a crime novel lover. .... What made them brilliant? And why do you think she used a man's name? Was it merely a dodge? or perhaps she thought a male name was better accepted in the world of detective novels?



I was sure I read somewhere that the reaosn JK wanted to write under a new pen name is she knew she would succeed writing as J.K. Rowling regardless of the quality of the novel.

Another pen name was her way of having a fresh crack at the market without riding on the coat tails and success of Harry Potter (without meaning to put Harry Potter down but a huge amound of the acclaim and international recognition undoubtedly comes through because of the films).

I think it's a fairly honest and noble reason.


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## HareBrain (Jan 30, 2017)

SilentRoamer said:


> I was sure I read somewhere that the reaosn JK wanted to write under a new pen name is she knew she would succeed writing as J.K. Rowling regardless of the quality of the novel.
> 
> Another pen name was her way of having a fresh crack at the market without riding on the coat tails and success of Harry Potter (without meaning to put Harry Potter down but a huge amound of the acclaim and international recognition undoubtedly comes through because of the films).
> 
> I think it's a fairly honest and noble reason.



That might be why she chose a pen-name. It doesn't shed any light on why it was male.

Given the success of female writers in crime fiction, I wonder if it was simply to make it less likely that anyone would guess (from writing style etc) who she was.


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## RX-79G (Jan 30, 2017)

Or maybe she just liked the name, and there was no calculated gender arithmetic at all?


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## Jo Zebedee (Jan 30, 2017)

HareBrain said:


> That might be why she chose a pen-name. It doesn't shed any light on why it was male.
> 
> Given the success of female writers in crime fiction, I wonder if it was simply to make it less likely that anyone would guess (from writing style etc) who she was.


This seems the closest. From Robert Galbraith'a website:

'I certainly wanted to take my writing persona as far away as possible from me, so a male pseudonym seemed a good idea. I am proud to say, though, that when i ‘unmasked’ myself to my editor David Shelley who had read and enjoyed _The Cuckoo’s Calling_ without realising I wrote it, one of the first things he said was ‘I never would have thought a woman wrote that.’ Apparently I had successfully channeled my inner bloke!'


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## Stephen Palmer (Jan 30, 2017)

I expect she wanted to escape JK Rowling.


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## Carolyn Hill (Feb 6, 2017)

I just thought of something.  When I joined this board, my username was Brown Rat -- not because of any consideration of gender but simply because I love rats -- and I don't know how many members knew or cared that I'm a woman.  Recently I changed my username to my real name, Carolyn Hill, which is clearly gender marked.  I wonder if that makes a difference in the way my posts are read?


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## Parson (Feb 6, 2017)

As someone with enough history here to have known you as both Brown Rat and Carolyn Hill I can say that for me there is no difference. But in fairness I must add that I knew early on you were of the female persuasion.


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## hopewrites (Feb 6, 2017)

I had a friend on another board who preferred to be thought of and treated as a female. Her posting style was androgynous enough that without her insistence I wouldn't have read her posts one way or the other. When it came out years later that her physical gender didn't match up with the gender she preferred to be thought of as, several people were shocked (mostly the males who felt all females should be hit on and felt there personal rules had betrayed them into hitting on someone of a gender not personally preferable as a sex partner...)

So it can happen.

---

My partner and I were watching an audio commentary the other night and he was confused by something the director commented on, turned to me and said "I don't get what she's saying. Is that sexist?"

To which I replied "yeah. But she doesn't know she is. Watch enough of the movies she written and or directed and you'll note that she's secretly sexist."

I'm positive if someone asked this director point blank "are you sexist?" Or "would you say you've done thus-and-so in your films to promote a sexist view against men?" She would be shocked and offended, vehemently deny the accusations and have a hard week reexamining her body of work to find how someone could think something so wide of the mark.


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## RX-79G (Feb 6, 2017)

Carolyn Hill said:


> I just thought of something.  When I joined this board, my username was Brown Rat -- not because of any consideration of gender but simply because I love rats -- and I don't know how many members knew or cared that I'm a woman.  Recently I changed my username to my real name, Carolyn Hill, which is clearly gender marked.  I wonder if that makes a difference in the way my posts are read?


Not having been here at that time, I would have been interested to see if your posts, despite the androgynous handle, were read as female anyway.


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## Old_Man_Steve2016 (Feb 10, 2017)

> Do you believe sff is equitable* in terms of
> 
> Its access to publication
> The work you read
> ...



I voted No, BUT... because there are many more factors in play today than there were in the past. 
For example, there are more places to publish than there were in the past. So a story with non-white/non-straight characters might not get into Asimov one day, but instead of vanishing, it could be published elsewhere. The problem is opacity- are the editors rejecting stories because they're biased against the writer? Or are they rejecting stories because they ran out of space for the month/publishing term? If the editor doesn't say, then how would a writer know?

These days there's less gatekeepers overall to block a person from publication.

It can be really annoying if you get 50 reviews and 48 of them are neo-nazi comments. Dunno if this actually happens anymore (do they even read?).


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## Foxbat (Feb 14, 2017)

Perhaps the Fantasy and Science Fiction genres need something like this to showcase women writers.
About | Women in Horror Month


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## Nick B (Feb 14, 2017)

Women dominate urban fantasy pretty heavily too apparently. Now, I'm never too sure about the sub-genres, but is urban fantasy mostly YA?


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## Jo Zebedee (Mar 16, 2017)

Interesting blog post by Juliet McKenna on the subject today (and a link to her further writings on the subject - she's very interesting and enlightening to read, I find)

Brief thoughts on women writers being erased from SFF – again


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## Jo Zebedee (Mar 16, 2017)

Nick B said:


> Women dominate urban fantasy pretty heavily too apparently. Now, I'm never too sure about the sub-genres, but is urban fantasy mostly YA?


Sorry, Nick, just saw this now. It's not all YA but there is a strong YA interest in Urban fantasy. But if you take the likes of the Dresden files, the Peter Grant series and a lot of Neil Gaiman's work they are adult urban fantasy. Hmm. And all written by men. 

Anyone know of any women urban fantasy writers who aren't YA?


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## Dan Jones (Mar 16, 2017)

Atwood?


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## Jo Zebedee (Mar 16, 2017)

Dan Jones said:


> Atwood?


Is she urban fantasy? I think she normally gets listed under sf?


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## Dan Jones (Mar 16, 2017)

I'd say she crosses over. _Hag-Seed _isn't SF, and has fantastical elements and is set in a city... sounds like enough ingredients to be filed under urban fantasy, but I'm not one for labels and overcategorisation, overly, so I could be wrong.


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## Toby Frost (Mar 16, 2017)

Jo Zebedee said:


> Anyone know of any women urban fantasy writers who aren't YA?



I thought the more explicit end of the genre - sex with vampires and werewolves, etc - was largely written by women: Anita Blake, Charlaine Harris and so on. Or does it cease to be urban fantasy once it's explicit?


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## Jo Zebedee (Mar 16, 2017)

Toby Frost said:


> I thought the more explicit end of the genre - sex with vampires and werewolves, etc - was largely written by women: Anita Blake, Charlaine Harris and so on. Or does it cease to be urban fantasy once it's explicit?


I think that moves towards paranormal romance? Honestly. We need a road map of genres.


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## Brian G Turner (Mar 16, 2017)

Jo Zebedee said:


> We need a road map of genres.



I'm going to write for the Brian genre, and let everyone else worry about the spec fic subcategories.


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## Toby Frost (Mar 16, 2017)

I'd always thought that paranormal romance was a subgenre of urban fantasy, but perhaps because I've always defined urban fantasy as "Buffy stuff" and "weird" that was largely in the real world. But I think Brian has the right idea!


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## MWagner (Mar 16, 2017)

I find it fascinating that even though 80 per cent of novels are sold to women, and women dominate almost all genres of fiction, including the most popular ones (Romance and YA), it's only in the handful of genres that are still mostly read and written by men that we see controversy around gender representation. Perhaps it will all die down when we reach the state that trends are all pointing to of a < 10 per cent male fiction market.


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## Toby Frost (Mar 16, 2017)

I simply think there are too many issues and aspects of this to decide whether SFF is "equitable, "anti-women" or some vague phrase like that. When you talk about "SFF", which is _huge_ even before you factor in comics, TV shows, etc, are you talking about:

* Numbers/power of women working in publishers/reviewers of SFF
* Numbers/power of women writing SFF
* Numbers of women reading SFF and its wider image among women
* Numbers/role of women characters in SFF

And that's not even starting to go into the different subgenres, which are little worlds to themselves (Romance and SF writers have their own jargon for what is in books that makes it hard to understand even for another writer). 

As with many highly emotive subjects, I suspect that this is much more complex than the standard good/bad approach suggests. I am not even sure that some of the above issues are especially closely related, let alone part of the same question.


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## Jo Zebedee (Mar 16, 2017)

MWagner said:


> I find it fascinating that even though 80 per cent of novels are sold to women, and women dominate almost all genres of fiction, including the most popular ones (Romance and YA), it's only in the handful of genres that are still mostly read and written by men that we see controversy around gender representation. Perhaps it will all die down when we reach the state that trends are all pointing to of a < 10 per cent male fiction market.



But we don't know that it is still mostly read by men - that's the whole point. In romance most readers ARE women, and the stats are there to prove it. If you delve into Juliet's blogs above, you'll see that she evidences (several times) that this isn't the proven fact in sff. In fact, there are studies (cited earlier in this thread) that take the readership to 50/50. So, your argument is invalid - because we're not talking about a male dominated genre (or if are, it's nowhere near the imbalance of romance). No matter how much people might want to cling to that argument.


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## Abernovo (Mar 16, 2017)

Jo Zebedee said:


> Anyone know of any women urban fantasy writers who aren't YA?


Richelle Mead writes UF. She also writes YA, but her Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance are very much separate.

Kat Richardson also writes UF - the _Greywalker_ series.


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## RX-79G (Mar 16, 2017)

Jo Zebedee said:


> But we don't know that it is still mostly read by men - that's the whole point. In romance most readers ARE women, and the stats are there to prove it. If you delve into Juliet's blogs above, you'll see that she evidences (several times) that this isn't the proven fact in sff. In fact, there are studies (cited earlier in this thread) that take the readership to 50/50. So, your argument is invalid - because we're not talking about a male dominated genre (or if are, it's nowhere near the imbalance of romance). No matter how much people might want to cling to that argument.


If it turns out that women dominate both the SF readership AND the publishing industry, who is at fault for the inequity? And if the inequity can be assigned, is the bias against the gender of the author, or the material, or something else?

The comments in the SF Signal article referenced in Juliet McKenna's blog post are interesting because they suggest that not only is there a bias against women writers, but also against published male authors of color who or who are gay. What is the process which causes a reader to discern the sexuality of an author when they are looking at the book jacket?


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## Parson (Mar 16, 2017)

RX-79G said:


> The comments in the SF Signal article referenced in Juliet McKenna's blog post are interesting because they suggest that not only is there a bias against women writers, but also against published male authors of color who or who are gay. What is the process which causes a reader to discern the sexuality of an author when they are looking at the book jacket?



Sales is not what the blog post was about. It was about recognition from the industry and among these people race, sexual orientation, etc. would be known.


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## Jo Zebedee (Mar 16, 2017)

Parson said:


> Sales is not what the blog post was about. It was about recognition from the industry and among these people race, sexual orientation, etc. would be known.


It's a small industry. Many big name authors are either my friend on facebook, or in shared groups, or known through the convention scene etc - and that's the same for anyone who dots around Social media these days. I might not know from a book cover that Robin Hobb is a woman, but give me a day or two on facebook and I'll know. Pat Cadigan - anyone into sff on SM who doesn't meet up with her, or someone who knows, her is in a minority. Etc etc.

And if this article (the article Juliet references) is from sfsignal, they know everyone. (And, actually, they're normally very good at promoting all authors and a sadly missed asset from the sfblogosphere). 

And yet, still, it is okay to bypass any author who isn't male and white. In a genre that celebrates the impossible, the fantastical and worlds were anything can be possible.


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## RX-79G (Mar 16, 2017)

Parson said:


> Sales is not what the blog post was about. It was about recognition from the industry and among these people race, sexual orientation, etc. would be known.


I'm not sure if you can separate sales/readership from recognition. Are you suggesting that people like the author of the SF Signal article are reading and enjoying a lot of women authors, and then pointedly and consciously ignores them when writing an article?


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## Hex (Mar 16, 2017)

I know my friend who writes YA is having a terrible time selling a science fiction YA that has only male main characters. Apparently it's unsaleable unless it's got "feisty" female mcs in it, because more girls read YA. That seems to me like a pretty short-sighted (and self-reinforcing) attitude, but it's definitely one he's encountered from the publishing industry.


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## Stephen Palmer (Mar 16, 2017)

I write in the book genre.


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## Abernovo (Mar 16, 2017)

Jo Zebedee said:


> Anyone know of any women urban fantasy writers who aren't YA?


Sat down and, post-post-work-caffeine, I remembered Tanya Huff. Kind of embarrassed to forget a writer of her calibre, even for a short while (it was, as mentioned, before I had a cuppa). 

Terri Windling is widely credited with being one of the pioneers of UF, and is credited by Charles de Lint as being an influence. But many UF lists link UF and YA which, as Hex suggests on a slightly different point, is pretty short-sighted.


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## The Big Peat (Mar 16, 2017)

Hex said:


> I know my friend who writes YA is having a terrible time selling a science fiction YA that has only male main characters. Apparently it's unsaleable unless it's got "feisty" female mcs in it, because more girls read YA. That seems to me like a pretty short-sighted (and self-reinforcing) attitude, but it's definitely one he's encountered from the publishing industry.



This I think gets to the meat of the matter.

In SFF publishing - or so I have been assured by a great many stories by those who should know - heavy preference is given to authors who fulfil agents and publishers' perceptions of what the fans want.

And agents and publishers have heavily gendered perceptions of what the fans want, down to the obvious gender of the name on the cover. If there is a lack of equity in treatment - which I believe there is - it probably logically starts there. The book market we receive is manipulated to accept their perceptions about what we want and their perceptions are we want X and Y in terms of gender.


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## RX-79G (Mar 16, 2017)

The Big Peat said:


> And agents and publishers have heavily gendered perceptions of what the fans want, down to the obvious gender of the name on the cover. If there is a lack of equity in treatment - which I believe there is - it probably logically starts there.


As is a problem with so many of the statements made on this and related topics, what is your factual basis for this assertion that agents and publishers are the source of (presumably) _inaccurate_ perceptions of market demand?


How are you factually aware that it isn't a supply side issue?
How are you factually aware that it isn't an accurate perception of market demand?


I'm not implying that the answer _is_ any one of those three. I just don't understand where the underlying information is coming from to select one and reject the others. It suggests that the female dominated publishing industry is both biased against women AND incompetent - which are assertions that ought to require a great deal of scrutiny before acceptance as the basis for logical discussion.


The problem is that there is a perception bias that says that any answer which makes the oppressed party complicit in their oppression *must* be invalid. And when you are operating under that kind of bias, the likelihood of successfully analyzing any of the data downstream of that bias is impossible.


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## Brian G Turner (Mar 16, 2017)

RX-79G said:


> It suggests that the female dominated publishing industry is both biased against women AND incompetent



Remember that while the editors may be female, it's not them who ultimately get a say in what gets picked up - that's the marketing and/or accounts department.

Additionally, it's widely believed that a wider male readership will historically tend to resist picking up books with women's names on them. That was the whole reason why Joanne Rowling had to become JK Rowling on her covers. While this bias may not be so strong among hard core genre readers, it can be perceived to being a barrier to being read more widely.

Hence we end up in a vicious circle - male bias is presumed to exist, so some books are tailored to feed into it, but in doing so help maintain either that bias or the perception of bias.


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## Jo Zebedee (Mar 16, 2017)

On a only slightly related but interesting note.

Amazon gave me £30 to spend on adverts. This appears no strings attached so I took it and am running a campaign for Inish Carraig.

For those who have not read it (apart from the fact you should buy 10, of course) Inish is a book with 2 male leads, a bleak apocalyptic scene and is a sf thriller full of coarse language. So, not a romance.

Of my clicks 90% were female. So I've now targeted them only and my click rate has gone up. Now it could be my tagline (the alien invasion is over. Humanity lost. Who would you fight to save?) or something else but 90% for a book not overtly female (but with a female author's name - out and proud!)

On the other note - we know there is a publishing bias to male sff writers from a range of sources (titles published, demographs, review stats, a few other goodies). What we don't know is why - is it the chicken or the egg? Is sff male dominated and if so is that because it's naturally more male or because it became so by excluding women?

Make no mistake - an agent's job is to sell books. If they think a male has more chance, that's who they'll sign. Ditto publishers. It's a business not an equitable endeavour.

So the question isn't are agents incompetent or anything else - it's about whether the market balance is actually right for the perceived readership. And whether that perceived readership is accurate. And whether that perceived readership is skewed by the market.

None of which is easily answered.


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## RX-79G (Mar 16, 2017)

Brian G Turner said:


> Remember that while the editors may be female, it's not them who ultimately get a say in what gets picked up - that's the marketing and/or accounts department.


And who are those people, what do they believe, and why do they believe that?



Brian G Turner said:


> Additionally, it's widely believed that a wider male readership will historically tend to resist picking up books with women's names on them. That was the whole reason why Joanne Rowling had to become JK Rowling on her covers.


Widely believed by whom? Joanne Rowling wasn't a publisher - does her belief have a basis in reality? Did her publisher hold this belief, and does it have a basis in reality? Does this belief actually exist among the decision makers in publishing, or is this belief a reflection of the attitudes of those analyzing the behavior of publishers?


Brian G Turner said:


> Hence we end up in a vicious circle - male bias is presumed to exist, so some books are tailored to feed into it, but in doing so help maintain either that bias or the perception of bias.


Again, how do you know that books in any important number are tailored this way, and why assume that this tailoring actually effects book sales either way? There has never been a double blind test that was run with a huge number of books published under male, female and androgynous names to actually test the idea that it matters.

That vicious circle might only exist in our minds, not in the actual and observable supply and demand of the fiction market. It may also be seen as a broken tautology that comes from the misunderstanding that every disparity _must_ arise from inequity. And once you are caught in that trap it becomes impossible to understand much of anything.

Or process anything with reason, compassion or justice.


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## Brian G Turner (Mar 16, 2017)

@RX-79G - I'm referring to the various articles I've read from within the industry, plus the various conversations I've had with authors, agents, and editors.

I can't give you a single source or article that is going to explain this all to you. I can only suggest that you bear it in mind in case you do read up on the subject.

The one thing I can promise you is that publishing companies have done far more research and have far more stats at hand to make their decisions with than any of us do.


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## Hex (Mar 16, 2017)

You're right @RX-79G  -- without a proper study it is impossible to know what caused inequities (or inequalities), but it's fun to hypothesise (so that when we run the study we have a proper set of research questions  ). I'd suggest -- off the top of my head -- that part of it might be that the industry in general feels it is under threat and is increasingly (?) conservative.

It seems to me likely -- indeed, in the links Jo had, actually the case -- that more men than women read science fiction (and fantasy). Unless I misunderstood the stats, which is entirely possible (though, as Brian says, the chances are that publishing professionals are basing their decisions on something, or one would like to think so, anyway)

Given that, I guess, conservative publishing professionals looking to sell books and knowing that women will read books written by men as well as books written by women, will take what would seem the safe option: to publish more books by men.


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## RX-79G (Mar 16, 2017)

I would like to know what the demographics of the supply side are. How many SF manuscripts are being submitted through all the various channels by each gender?

I would like to know if there is a perception by publishers of a difference in topic, theme or style between male and female authors.


Without any access to the headwaters of the publishing industry, it becomes very difficult to understand what or why things are happening downstream.




Hex said:


> You're right @RX-79G -- without a proper study it is impossible to know what caused inequities (or inequalities), but it's fun to hypothesise


You would think it would be fun, but it certainly hasn't been for me.


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## HareBrain (Mar 16, 2017)

As part of my day job, I did some work with a Big 6 publisher on their online surveys, and I got the impression that they didn't really know what data they wanted to acquire, and wouldn't have known how to acquire it if they did. I suspect that the research side of traditional publishing isn't very well organised or funded, so it wouldn't surprise me if publishing turned out to be governed by perception rather than proper analysis. It's also likely that the perceptions its governed by are those of the people at the top, whose grass-roots knowledge of who buys what is probably decades out of date.


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## Brian G Turner (Mar 16, 2017)

RX-79G said:


> How many SF manuscripts are being submitted through all the various channels by each gender?



I know a couple of publishers have published these stats - here's one from Tor UK:
SEXISM IN GENRE PUBLISHING: A PUBLISHER'S PERSPECTIVE

I'm tempted to think there's a rough correlation between the stats for submissions and actual readership. However, there are a lot of qualifiers - such data is quantitative, not qualitative. Additionally, as we've seen in other discussions, it can be difficult to precisely define a genre.


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## Hex (Mar 16, 2017)

RX-79G said:


> I would like to know if there is a perception by publishers of a difference in topic, theme or style between male and female authors.



This is an interesting one, though I don't have an answer to it. Certainly, I find a difference in the books I read by male and female authors, and I suspect the books that may appeal more to men seem to me to be predominantly written by men -- they feel more violent, for example. With the entrails and everything. Are there lots of women who write grimdark?

Sorry hypothesising hasn't been fun 

I wonder also what the impact is of agents trying to second-guess what editors will be interested in -- I suppose that adds a whole level of narrowing down -- and the effect of acquisitions meetings.

Sorry if someone mentioned this before (I blush to admit it, but I haven't read the whole thread): is it the case that self-publishing in sff is more evenly balanced gender-wise? Would that tell us anything about how the traditional publishing industry works, because I guess it would remove the gatekeeper bias (though leave us with all sorts of other biases, arguably)


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## Jo Zebedee (Mar 16, 2017)

Re grimdark - there are some women write the genre. I'm at the edge of it, for instance (though these days am erring more to the psychological than the entrails) but Teresa Frohock is established and Anna Smith Spark is about to explode on the scene with her debut.

As to self publishing - hard to tell. When I researched for a blog it still seemed - in terms of top sellers- there was a bias towards the men. 

(There is a stated belief in some quarters if you want to read good sf seek out the women as we'll have worked much harder to get anywhere!)


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## SilentRoamer (Mar 16, 2017)

I think the readership in SFF is heavily male skewed and the publishing industry therefore pushes what it perceives to be male oriented SFF. My evidence is anecdotal of course but almost all of the book sellers, car booters, friends who read SFF are men. The exception is people I have met from this site at the Northern Chronfests but that's to be expected as this is a gathering place for the greater minds with a love of SFF. 

@Hex I do perceive a different reading experience between male and female authors.


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## Jo Zebedee (Mar 16, 2017)

SilentRoamer said:


> I think the readership in SFF is heavily male skewed and the publishing industry therefore pushes what it perceives to be male oriented SFF. My evidence is anecdotal of course but almost all of the book sellers, car booters, friends who read SFF are men. The exception is people I have met from this site at the Northern Chronfests but that's to be expected as this is a gathering place for the greater minds with a love of SFF.
> 
> @Hex I do perceive a different reading experience between male and female authors.


And yet I see the opposite. I have loads of female mates who read sff. Maybe they're a little shyer about it?


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## Hex (Mar 16, 2017)

But do you think it's equal?

I have to confess in the real world most of the people I know who read sff are men -- less so now than when I was growing up, but back then I don't think I knew one other girl who liked reading the things I read (but lots of boys who did). I wonder if there's some kind of societal issue that made girls less inclined to admit to it -- perhaps the very perception that sff is a male-dominated thing? And of course, in Warhammer, where I spend inordinate amounts of time (and money), everyone's male (except me and the other mothers standing around looking at pictures of Necrons and wishing there was a place to buy coffee instead of a display of Eldar warships  )

On here, of course, and in other online environments, I know lots of women who like sff, but in real life I think I know one, or possibly two (I don't know the reading habits of all of my friends). Maybe that's changing -- everyone reads Harry Potter (but then, once upon a time everyone read Narnia as well).


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## RX-79G (Mar 16, 2017)

Brian G Turner said:


> I know a couple of publishers have published these stats - here's one from Tor UK:
> SEXISM IN GENRE PUBLISHING: A PUBLISHER'S PERSPECTIVE
> 
> I'm tempted to think there's a rough correlation between the stats for submissions and actual readership. However, there are a lot of qualifiers - such data is quantitative, not qualitative. Additionally, as we've seen in other discussions, it can be difficult to precisely define a genre.


If only 22% of SF submissions are from women, why even discuss the decisions that publishers must make with so little material?



Jo Zebedee said:


> And yet I see the opposite. I have loads of female mates who read sff. Maybe they're a little shyer about it?


Maybe women are reading SF in large numbers. Do women readers prefer SF stories written by one gender or the other? Is it possible that the deciding factor in gender sales has been the female readers? (Yes, it is possible.) Donald Trump was elected because 46% of woman voters didn't vote for Hillary. Women consumers have massive power, and it is important to remember that many of them buy and vote across gender lines.


HareBrain said:


> As part of my day job, I did some work with a Big 6 publisher on their online surveys, and I got the impression that they didn't really know what data they wanted to acquire, and wouldn't have known how to acquire it if they did. I suspect that the research side of traditional publishing isn't very well organised or funded, so it wouldn't surprise me if publishing turned out to be governed by perception rather than proper analysis.


This is common in many industries. Try having a discussion about metallurgy with knife makers. They point to industry charts that show that steel A = steel B, but don't know what to say when other industry charts show B is = to C, but C is not = to A. And that's industrial engineering information.


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## Jo Zebedee (Mar 16, 2017)

I think for fantasy it's not that unequal. I think for sf it's less equal. Since both genres were equally guilty of sidelining women I suspect there is an imbalance in SF.i also know @Gary Compton says he rarely gets sf submissions from women - and we know, even on the Chrons (cos I asked) a tiny minority of the women write sf rather than fantasy. 

What we don't know is how big that imbalance is (and how it varies between the genres) or if it has been led by exclusion or natural tastes.


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## Jo Zebedee (Mar 16, 2017)

Incidentally this isn't about decisions publishers take with the submissions they receive per se - but if there is equity in the industry on a range of parameters.  Publishing is, ironically, only part of it.

Equally interesting are embedded assumptions around sff - like that women going to a sf film might not be interested in it per se, but going along. Like that it's naturally a man's genre and women are not inclined to be attracted to it.

Those assumptions are part of what feeds into accessibility to the genre. Frankly these days I'm mostly writing fantasy (which is more a serendipity thing than avoidance of sf, in which I have several planned projects) and am finding it a much more welcoming zone than sf. How many other women feel like that and walk away? We'll never know until we at least make them feel welcome and not like some sort of strange being for being both a woman and into sf....


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## Hex (Mar 16, 2017)

I think I need to go and read the rest of this thread...

The article was about lists of "great authors" as represented in newspapers etc, which rarely mention women. Can I suggest a radical (and possibly unpopular) theory?

It's men who like making lists.(*)

(*) High Fidelity


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## nixie (Mar 16, 2017)

I do prefer fantasy although I am starting to  read more sci-fi. My tastes do lean towards Grimdark and the majority of my favourite authors are male. Before I joined here I hadn't met other females who read sff. I have encountered a few since but not any who have same tastes. I get a lot of raised eyebrows when asked who my favourite authors are, they can't believe I enjoy authors like Erikson, Abercrombie, Lawrence, etc.


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## Jo Zebedee (Mar 16, 2017)

Hex said:


> I think I need to go and read the rest of this thread...
> 
> The article was about lists of "great authors" as represented in newspapers etc, which rarely mention women. Can I suggest a radical (and possibly unpopular) theory?
> 
> ...


Hey! I'm an auditor. I love me some lists!


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## RX-79G (Mar 16, 2017)

Jo Zebedee said:


> What we don't know is how big that imbalance is (and how it varies between the genres) or if it has been led by exclusion or natural tastes.


For it to be exclusion, the vast majority of potential female SF writers would have to have a well formed impression that writing their favorite genre would be fruitless. Brian's post contends that the decisions made in the publishing houses are not easy to apprehend, so it is hard to see why those female SF authors would so roundly assume that their submissions would be passed over to the point that they don't bother. They could just as easily assume their submission would be a welcome, given the heavy male authorship on bookstands.

And while there might be a correlation to the relative disinterest women have in STEM jobs, submitting a book for publishing isn't the same as joining a particular workforce, so it is unlikely that becoming a member of the SF industry is daunting.


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## Dan Jones (Mar 16, 2017)

HareBrain said:


> I suspect that the research side of traditional publishing isn't very well organised or funded, so it wouldn't surprise me if publishing turned out to be governed by perception rather than proper analysis.



Well this is it, isn't it? At LBF yesterday I listened to Jo Fletcher and Ian Drury both say that it's impossible to say what's going to be a hit, but you know it when you see it, and even then you can get it wrong. Research is pretty worthless, but the big publishers probably think they at least have to try. The gateway to the industry is not objective, it's subjective, and based upon certain people's opinions, which is what makes publishing, and the attempt to get one's work published, a frustrating and emotive topic of discussion. So I'm not surprised that research into what makes a hit is aimless and/or meaningless.

It could be that the subjectivity of publishing creates perceptions of inequity, and as Hex says, a innate sense of conservatism may lead to skewed publishing / reading / writing statistics among the sexes, which may be perceived, or may be very real. But there are lots of women in the SFF business who are successful and impressive: I'll name check Jo Fletcher again; Ella Diamond Khan, Bryony Woods and Elinor Cooper at DKW; Emma and Tik at Snowbooks; Carolyn Whitaker, and more that I can't recall off the top of my head, but there are many.

All of which lead me to think that the statistics are driven by the skewed number of submissions, where men seem to sub more than women. So what's the root cause of that? One possible answer is representation within the work itself. One old saw is, "if I don't see myself somewhere, then I feel I don't belong there." So the inclusion of a range of personas in literature (where appropriate, and it's not always) helps to dispel that idea of lack of representation, which in turn encourages participation, and over time, you may gradually arrive at equity. But it ain't a quick fix.

And lastly, as a writer with a massive stake in a product, why wouldn't I want to make it as attractive to as many different audiences as possible?


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## RX-79G (Mar 16, 2017)

Dan Jones said:


> And lastly, as a writer with a massive stake in a product, why wouldn't I want to make it as attractive to as many different audiences as possible?


How does that factor in to the choices a female writer makes? Are you suggesting pen names, or abandoning her preferred genre for a more salable one?


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## Dan Jones (Mar 16, 2017)

RX-79G said:


> How does that factor in to the choices a female writer makes?



It doesn't. I'm not responsible for the choices other people make. Neither am I writing for any _particular_ cross-section of the audience, but at the same time I want to create something that has the best possible chance to succeed, as well as tell the story and convey the themes I want. If that has knock-on effects, so be it.


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## Jo Zebedee (Mar 16, 2017)

Sorry - all female sf writers I know (more than a few) feel the genre is closed to them, that they face additional obstacles, and that only the bloody minded ones make it.

Entering a male dominated sphere is daunting. It may not seem it when you are of the demograph that leads a genre, of course, but it is. Little subtle sexist memes, assumptions and jokes.

I am the only girl in a family of blokes - blokes environments don't daunt me. But they do others.

With respect, until you've been the female trying to make it in the sf world I don't think you're in the position to judge if it's off putting to run the gauntlet and to be told (as I have this week and previously and will again, I'm sure) that it's a man's genre anyway. It is. Hats off to those who run that gauntlet. How nice it would be if they didn't have to face such resistance to doing so.


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## RX-79G (Mar 16, 2017)

Jo Zebedee said:


> Entering a male dominated sphere is daunting. It may not seem it when you are of the demograph that leads a genre, of course, but it is. Little subtle sexist memes, assumptions and jokes.


If the publishing industry is squarely female, and you don't require the assistance of your fellow writers to write or submit, what active male force is dominating it?


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## Teresa Edgerton (Mar 16, 2017)

RX-79G said:


> Do women readers prefer SF stories written by one gender or the other? Is it possible that the deciding factor in gender sales has been the female readers? (Yes, it is possible.)



In my conversations with editors at large publishing houses I have heard that women SF readers care far less about the gender of the writer than men do.  So if women are about equally likely to read a book whether it is written by a woman or by a man, but significantly large numbers of men will only read books written by other men, who do you think is really the deciding factor?


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## Teresa Edgerton (Mar 16, 2017)

RX-79G said:


> If the publishing industry is squarely female, and you don't require the assistance of your fellow writers to write or submit, what active male force is dominating it?


I don't think that it is squarely female at all.  Most of the editors may be female, but in order to make an offer on a book an editor has to get her superiors, as well as the folks in sales and marketing, to sign off on it.

To prove that the industry is dominated by females you would have to have numbers that say they are holding most of the top positions, as well as occupying most of the positions in sales and marketing.  I don't believe they are.


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## RX-79G (Mar 16, 2017)

Teresa Edgerton said:


> In my conversations with editors at large publishing houses I have heard that women SF readers care far less about the gender of the writer than men do.  So if women are about equally likely to read a book whether it is written by a woman or by a man, but significantly large numbers of men will only read books written by other men, who do you think is really the deciding factor?


If you have to choose only those two, then you pick male readers. But if the men's preferences aren't particularly strong, then it pays to keep looking.

Especially since many people perceive that woman and men aren't writing the same sort of books, or supply the same number of manuscripts.


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## RX-79G (Mar 16, 2017)

Teresa Edgerton said:


> I don't think that it is squarely female at all.  Most of the editors may be female, but in order to make an offer on a book an editor has to get her superiors, as well as the folks in sales and marketing, to sign off on it.
> 
> To prove that the industry is dominated by females you would have to have numbers that say they are holding most of the top positions, as well as occupying most of the positions in sales and marketing.  I don't believe they are.


I don't know or believe either way - I'm repeating what others have said in this thread. Even if they are not, you still have to then decide that the men are the actual ones creating the inequity - which takes us back to the submission stats and the buying preferences.


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## Hex (Mar 16, 2017)

RX-79G said:


> If the publishing industry is squarely female, and you don't require the assistance of your fellow writers to write or submit, what active male force is dominating it?



To be fair, it's not just about the subbing -- acceptance -- publication aspect (though that's important), it's also about things like conventions, other fan environments and who you perceive as a writer in your area. When I started writing I wanted to write like Patricia McKillip (or Holly Black), who are presumably women, but I wonder if I wanted to write like Joe Abercrombie if it would be harder? Maybe it depends on the person?

EDIT: we could always have structural inequality in the publishing industry, if we wanted -- it doesn't have to be the case that women editors will inevitably be biased towards women's books (or neutral).


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## Teresa Edgerton (Mar 16, 2017)

Apparently men's preferences _are _particularly strong.  A great number of them actively avoid books by female writers, and some will say that the gender of the writer doesn't matter to them at all but a look at what they actually buy tells a very different story.


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## Hex (Mar 16, 2017)

(I'd feel very strange reading a romance written by a man -- I don't know why I would, but I think I would. I wonder if it's a similar thing?)


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## RX-79G (Mar 16, 2017)

Hex said:


> To be fair, it's not just about the subbing -- acceptance -- publication aspect (though that's important), it's also about things like conventions, other fan environments and who you perceive as a writer in your area.


I honestly wonder if this perception is another gender difference?


Teresa Edgerton said:


> A great number of them actively avoid books by female writers, and some will say that the gender of the writer doesn't matter to them at all but a look at what they actually buy tells a very different story.


I don't doubt either, mainly because there is some agreement that women tend to write a slightly different brand of SF, on average. And maybe that would be different if more women were writing and submitting SF in the first place?


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## Teresa Edgerton (Mar 16, 2017)

RX-79G said:


> And maybe that would be different if more women were writing and submitting SF in the first place?



You mean if more women were writing, more of them would wise-up and write like men?


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## Jo Zebedee (Mar 16, 2017)

RX-79G said:


> If the publishing industry is squarely female, and you don't require the assistance of your fellow writers to write or submit, what active male force is dominating it?


Any writer who makes it without support from their peers is in the minority. But the active male force is in the realms of interactions with the genre. Convention panels (and the cons now work hard for equity, the stars), sf forums, networking are all still male dominated.


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## RX-79G (Mar 16, 2017)

Teresa Edgerton said:


> You mean if more women were writing, more of them would wise-up and write like men?


Well, you clearly would prefer that to be my meaning. Why bother asking?


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## Jo Zebedee (Mar 16, 2017)

Teresa Edgerton said:


> Apparently men's preferences _are _particularly strong.  A great number of them actively avoid books by female writers, and some will say that the gender of the writer doesn't matter to them at all but a look at what they actually buy tells a very different story.


Hence my post earlier - that those picking up an advert for a sf book by a female writer have been 90% female despite more males receiving the ad. I know my marketing will skew on the basis of that.


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## Teresa Edgerton (Mar 16, 2017)

Although, to be fair, Jo, I think that sf forums are working toward equity, too.  There are certainly plenty of strong female voices here who refuse to be dominated by anyone.


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## Teresa Edgerton (Mar 16, 2017)

RX-79G said:


> Well, you clearly would prefer that to be my meaning. Why bother asking?



Actually, I'd _prefer_ that you meant something else, and told me _what_ that something else was, and it was something that gave us some sort of common ground in what we hope and expect for the future.  But if you'd rather not answer then I guess I will have to draw my own conclusions.


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## Hex (Mar 16, 2017)

Teresa Edgerton said:


> You mean if more women were writing, more of them would wise-up and write like men?



It doesn't have to mean that, though, does it? I mean, is it likely that the more submissions you got from women, the more likelihood there would be more diversity among them? Or that if women submitted science fiction, and were published, in the same numbers as men, the imbalance would gradually become less because men would stop assuming that only other men wrote in the genre they enjoyed.

If fewer women than men submit sff then women will represent a narrower slice of the published fiction. That seems to make sense to me, though it's late, so maybe it doesn't. I don't think there's any reason to assume anything else was intended.


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## Jo Zebedee (Mar 16, 2017)

Teresa Edgerton said:


> Although, to be fair, Jo, I think that sf forums are working toward equity, too.  There are certainly plenty of strong female voices here who refuse to be dominated by anyone.


We do try   

And, actually, I've never had anything but support wherever I go. The forums are great. So are conventions. But it still takes (virtual) cojones to walk into a blokey environment, take your place at the (virtual) bar and announce yourself as an equal...


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## nixie (Mar 16, 2017)

A gentle reminder to keep things civil, and respect others or the thread will be locked.


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## Teresa Edgerton (Mar 16, 2017)

Hex said:


> It doesn't have to mean that, though, does it? I mean, is it likely that the more submissions you got from women, the more likelihood there would be more diversity among them? Or that if women submitted fiction, and were published, in the same numbers as men, the imbalance would gradually become less because men would stop assuming that only other men wrote in the genre they enjoyed.



Of course it could mean that.  But why would that be more desirable than if male SFF readers (as a group) were more open to giving books by women writers a chance?  What is the worst that could happen?  They might read a few books that they don't like and confirm their opinion that women don't write the kind of thing they like to read.  What is the best that could happen?  That they could discover that their tastes are not so narrow as they thought and find a great number of new authors and new perspectives to enjoy.

Personally, I think that second one would be a better outcome than bringing in new writers simply so that they can write what the writers already there are writing.


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## Hex (Mar 16, 2017)

Absolutely. Though to be fair, I don't read that many fantasy books by men because most of my favourite writers are women. I didn't consciously make that decision, but it turned out that way. It leads me to wonder if maybe there _are _differences in the way men tend to write vs the way women do. Do you think there are?


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## RX-79G (Mar 16, 2017)

Teresa Edgerton said:


> Actually, I'd _prefer_ that you meant something else, and told me _what_ that something else was, and it was something that gave us some sort of common ground in what we hope and expect for the future.  But if you'd rather not answer then I guess I will have to draw my own conclusions.


Yet you phrased it in a pretty insulting way, Teresa. Would it not be preferable to not start with the base assumption that the person you are speaking with is a Neandrathal?

No, that is not what I meant. I meant that when the sample size of female writers grow, we will see more diversity in what they are writing, just as we see more diversity in everything when the sample size is larger.

Will some of that larger sample read as "male". I don't know - what does male writing look like? But it is likely that there will be new styles and themes that don't appear to cluster in the way men and women currently perceive female SF does. 

Maybe that is an unacceptable premise, and the problem that the current crop of female SF books should be enjoyed by all whether everyone likes it or not. Can you think of a way to make SF readers more interested in whatever female SF subject matter is?


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## Jo Zebedee (Mar 16, 2017)

Hex said:


> Absolutely. Though to be fair, I don't read that many fantasy books by men because most of my favourite writers are women. I didn't consciously make that decision, but it turned out that way. It leads me to wonder if maybe there _are _differences in the way men tend to write vs the way women do. Do you think there are?


I think there probably are - but that is put forward as an argument against women writing sf, that we don't write what the market wants. So, for me, I'd like to see a more open market where those differences don't matter because we have room for all the stories


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## Danny McG (Mar 16, 2017)

As a voracious sff reader I do tend to look out any new books by male writers first. Only if nothing catches my eye do I then scan back along the same shelves to see the latest women writers new offerings. 
However my bought stuff at home doesn't really show this. Its near enough equal by gender.
I think it's because 'back in the day' when my tastes were developing women genre writers were very rare, and also a lot of my teen peer group would have sarky commented if they saw me at the library checkout with a 'girly' book. This has obviously defined my preferences decades later.


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## Teresa Edgerton (Mar 16, 2017)

Hex said:


> I didn't consciously make that decision, but it turned out that way. It leads me to wonder if maybe there _are _differences in the way men tend to write vs the way women do. Do you think there are?



Of course.  And for all sorts of reasons, although I believe most of those come down to social conditioning.

But just because we might _write _differently that doesn't mean that we shouldn't seek to read what the other gender is writing.   In fact I think the reverse must be true.  If we want to understand each other, reading things written from the other gender's perspective seems like an excellent way to begin.  Not all the time, mind you, but often would be good.


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## RX-79G (Mar 16, 2017)

Jo Zebedee said:


> I think there probably are - but that is put forward as an argument against women writing sf, that we don't write what the market wants. So, for me, I'd like to see a more open market where those differences don't matter because we have room for all the stories


This sounds good. What does "a more open market" mean?


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## Ursa major (Mar 16, 2017)

Is this a five minute argument, or the full half hour?


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## Dan Jones (Mar 16, 2017)

No, this is abuse. Arguments are next door.


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## Teresa Edgerton (Mar 16, 2017)

RX-79G said:


> Would it not be preferable to not start with the base assumption that the person you are speaking with is a Neandrathal?



Highly desirable.  Which is why I didn't start with that base assumption.



RX-79G said:


> Can you think of a way to make SF readers more interested in whatever female SF subject matter is?



I don't think we can _make_ anybody more interested in anything.  They have to want to expand their interests. Maybe, as a male, you could tell me what might possibly encourage them to do so.


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## Jo Zebedee (Mar 16, 2017)

RX-79G said:


> This sounds good. What does "a more open market" mean?


what we've been talking about for the last 10 pages.

One where there isn't an assumption that blokes read sf or that women just go along to the latest Star Wars film because they fancied popcorn, or were brought along, rather than that 41% of the audience were as likely to want to be there as the other 59%. (Personally I pop along for the space pilots.)

In short, a market that is open to the many, many female readers in it and that actively supports women entering the genre in the hope it encourages more - without discouraging males.


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## Hex (Mar 16, 2017)

I guess if the people who make the films have that opinion about the audience -- and they might have the demographic information to know -- then you're back to square one.

Is our argument that it's down to men to make the sff environment more welcoming to and sympathetic to female authors?

(have to admit, I'd prefer it wasn't expressed that way, though if that's the desirable outcome, I guess there may not be many different ways to express it)


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## Teresa Edgerton (Mar 16, 2017)

Jo Zebedee said:


> or that women just go along to the latest Star Wars film because they fancied popcorn, or were brought along, rather than that 41% of the audience were as likely to want to be there as the other 59%.



When I think of how keen some of the younger women in my family are on Star Wars . . .



			
				Hex said:
			
		

> Is our argument that it's down to men to make the sff environment more welcoming to and sympathetic to female authors?



Personally, I'd happily settle if some of them (and I am NOT referring to anyone posting in this thread) were less actively hostile.


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## Jo Zebedee (Mar 16, 2017)

Hex said:


> I guess if the people who make the films have that opinion about the audience -- and they might have the demographic information to know -- then you're back to square one.
> 
> Is our argument that it's down to men to make the sff environment more welcoming to and sympathetic to female authors?
> 
> (have to admit, I'd prefer it wasn't expressed that way, though if that's the desirable outcome, I guess there may not be many different ways to express it)



God no. It's a cultural thing. Time is what it's down to. And chipping away. And more female authirs getting their stuff out there and to hell with the gatekeepers. And slowly the dinosaurs become the minority and we all live happily ever after


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## RX-79G (Mar 16, 2017)

Teresa Edgerton said:


> I don't think we can _make_ anybody more interested in anything.  They have to want to expand their interests. Maybe, as a male, you could tell me what might possibly encourage them to do so.


A small thing would be to not have so many reviews focus on the "uniquely feminine voice" of an author. It isn't bad that something is feminine, but if you actually are trying to get those stupid, stupid men to read something on its merits rather than gender, how about emphasizing merits that aren't gender?


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## Jo Zebedee (Mar 16, 2017)

Teresa Edgerton said:


> When I think of how keen some of the younger women in my family are on Star Wars . . .
> 
> 
> 
> Personally, I'd happily settle if some of them (and I am NOT referring to anyone posting in this thread) were less actively hostile.


I know! My 12 yr old came home from R1 and went straight into New Hope. She even rated the prequels as Very Poor. I wiped a proud tear from my eye (actually she is leaning towards genre in her voracious reading - where my older daughter likes crime and mysteries)


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## Jo Zebedee (Mar 16, 2017)

RX-79G said:


> A small thing would be to not have so many reviews focus on the "uniquely feminine voice" of an author. It isn't bad that something is feminine, but if you actually are trying to get those stupid, stupid men to read something on its merits rather than gender, how about emphasizing merits that aren't gender?


Where are you reading these reviews? In hundreds of reviews I have one that mentions me being a female. Do you have a source or evidence for how prevalent such reviews might be?


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## RX-79G (Mar 16, 2017)

Jo Zebedee said:


> One where there isn't an assumption that blokes read sf or that women just go along to the latest Star Wars film because they fancied popcorn, or were brought along, rather than that 41% of the audience were as likely to want to be there as the other 59%. (Personally I pop along for the space pilots.)


When Dave asked you to drop the attacks from the Movie thread or be banned, does that somehow not apply to you?

This place is seriously lacking in personal courtesy.



Jo Zebedee said:


> Where are you reading these reviews? In hundreds of reviews I have one that mentions me being a female. Do you have a source or evidence for how prevalent such reviews might be?


Do you mean a study or infographic? No.

But I quoted a number of them in my first post in this thread a month ago.

Is this a universal thing? No. 
Is it something I've noticed more than a few times as a "male reader" that Teresa asked advice from? Yes.


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## Ursa major (Mar 16, 2017)

RX-79G said:


> When Dave asked you to drop the attacks from the Movie thread or be banned, does that somehow not apply to you?


You seem to be labouring under the delusion that Dave's comment did not, and does not, apply to you.

It did and does.


Please act accordingly.


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## nixie (Mar 16, 2017)

When I asked for this to remain civil I meant it thread locked


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## Teresa Edgerton (Mar 16, 2017)

Well, sorry to drop out of the discussion everyone, but being in a different time zone I have just spend a large amount of time in what should have been the middle of my work day talking about this.  Now I have to be good and go away and try to catch up on what I should have been doing instead.


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