Ursula K. LeGuin, Logic, Gender

[Nick B]

I am not implying that Theresa is sexist. I don't believe she is. But if the same statements were made against women, the roar would be 'that's sexist because...!'

For instance, if you stated that being a car mechanic was male dominated because women thought the job was beneath them and had better things to do, it would be called sexist, and that it was the society stopping women wanting to bemechanics.

The same logic MUST be applied, or it isnt equality.

 

[Brian G Turner]

The problem with systematic sexism is that so many people are used to it and take it for granted that they don't even see it, and so think there isn't a problem.

Indeed, I've often been surprised when my wife has pointed out her daily experiences of this. I don't mean outright aggression or hatred - simply ordinary ways in which she is talked down to because she is not a man.

The same logic MUST be applied, or it isnt equality.

That's missing the point - I doubt anyone here would argue that Martin Luther King was racist because he marched for Black Rights, and not for White Rights. Positive discrimination attempts to balance our ideals of equality in the face of negative discrimination.

 

[Mirannan]

And yet through most of history children were considered the property of the father and the wife had no rights where they were concerned at all. The current idea that women should get custody is rooted in the idea that taking care of children is still their primary function while men are going to have other, better things to do.

If most teachers are women, is that because men are discriminated against when applying for positions, or that most men consider the work beneath them -- especially at the primary level? How many female dominated jobs are that way because few men want them -- being more interested in jobs that pay more and carry more prestige? If male victims of domestic violence are afraid to speak up, is it because they are ashamed for women to know they are battered husbands, or ashamed that other men will know and think the less of them? I don't think any of this is a female conspiracy or female prejudice, but about the way men view other men and want to be viewed in turn.

I was watching "The People Against O. J. Simpson" and was again struck by how much sexism and disrespect Marcia Clark had to fight while trying the case. A lot of it was coming from women, too, but men were also making fun of her hair and her clothes in order to ridicule her, although usually men would consider such matters beneath their notice. And when one of her ex-husbands sold a naked picture of her to the tabloids most people thought it was funny rather than an outrage. Why? Because she was perceived as an arrogant strident bitch, simply because in the courtroom she behaved as any prosecutor would, and so (the reasoning went) she deserved any mean thing that was said of her or done to her. A man would never have been criticized for being so aggressive. And that was in the 1990s!

The problem with systematic sexism is that so many people are used to it and take it for granted that they don't even see it, and so think there isn't a problem.

One reason why men don't become teachers is that it's quite possible (particularly in secondary school) for a vicious little ***** to destroy a man's career by simply making an accusation of improper conduct. And even if the accusation is proved untrue - well, mud sticks.

 

[Nick B]

I don't think thats the same thing at al Ursa. And isnt positive discrimination an oxymoron? How can any discrimination be positive?
Some jobs require a certain gender. That isnt positive or negative discrimination, it is simply necesary.
We either grow up and stamp out all discrimination, or we just continue having these battles over it where no one wins.

 

[Nick B]

One reason why men don't become teachers is that it's quite possible (particularly in secondary school) for a vicious little ***** to destroy a man's career by simply making an accusation of improper conduct. And even if the accusation is proved untrue - well, mud sticks.

That can be just as true for women though.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Positive discrimination attempts to balance our ideals of equality in the face of negative discrimination.

No, it automatically gives a quota based on characteristics that are nothing to do with the placement. It adds to inequality. It's a sop.

Positive discrimination creates resentment, doesn't change attitudes and "punishes" people in the wrong "category" that may be perfectly balanced people that deserve the what ever it is. Positive discrimination is injustice and evil. It's a lazy kind of legislation. What is needed is the harder work of changing attitudes.
I'm in sympathy with socialism and liberalism, but you don't fix oppression of one group by oppressing other groups or fix poverty by making it illegal to be wealthy or fix disability by giving everyone bad eyesight.

Positive discrimination is as bonkers as collective farms.

Positive discrimination entrenches wrong attitudes.

 

[Brian G Turner]

How can any discrimination be positive?

It's simply recognising a gap - usually caused by negative discrimination - and trying to address it. In the original post this can describe Ursula Le Guin's decision to support women writers she felt may be under-represented in SF, rather than patronise an anthology by male writers who may not have given much consideration to female characters.

 

[Brian G Turner]

By the way, has any one else noticed how it's Le Guin being criticised for not supporting an all-male short story anthology - rather than Radziewicz for excluding women writers?

And that Le Guin is not allowed, as a woman, to make a decision where it is in conflict with a man's?

 

[galanx]

So we both run a relay race, except the first three runners on my team are in leg irons; but I can take the baton and run the last leg without leg irons- what could be fairer than that?

Or up until now we have refused to hire your particular race/sex/religion/caste/ whatever for this particular job. Now however, we can start hiring equally- except all the people already in place (the people in my group) will decide who gets hired. Or even if the hiring is completely blind from now on, and your kind has to wait thirty years for natural replacement to achieve a balance- perfectly fair.

Reminds me of a Saturday Night Live satire depicting an announcement from MTV, back before the color bar was broken: "Of course when black performers start to contribute to popular music MTV will show them- but we don't want to have quotas, you don't want to see bands on the network just because they're Eskimos..."

 

[J-Sun]

By the way, has any one else noticed how it's Le Guin being criticised for not supporting an all-male short story anthology - rather than Radziewicz for excluding women writers?

And that Le Guin is not allowed, as a woman, to make a decision where it is in conflict with a man's?

LeGuin is not being criticized for not supporting an all-male anthology. She is being criticized for condemning an all-male anthology (and for being unable to see any merit in such a book by that fact alone) while contributing to an all-female one.

This has less to do with gender, as such, and more to do with her logic and with people promoting it as something admirable. And my point was not that all-female or all-male or mixed this or mixed that anthologies were intrinsically wrong but that seeing one as wrong and one as right is rather selective.

Further, it's not Radziewicz who excluded women writers but Zebrowski who simply didn't choose any women writers for that particular anthology. He is obviously not constitutionally unable to publish stories by women, as that series, as stated, did eventually publish a couple.

Perhaps he didn't even receive any submissions from women. This is ordinarily an impermissible line of argument because, if no women are represented, it is, of course, because they are being suppressed, but - as others have noted - Teresa regards this as legitimate argument when it comes to men: "If most teachers are women, is that because men are discriminated against when applying for positions, or that most men consider the work beneath them -- especially at the primary level? How many female dominated jobs are that way because few men want them..." Yes, and obviously if few women are represented in a science fiction anthology it's because they don't statistically have as much interest in SF and don't contribute to hard SF as often and so naturally aren't going to be represented in proportion to their demographic numbers but to their "level of interest" numbers. At least, that's Teresa's argument if it applies, um, equally, to women as to men.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

they don't statistically have as much interest in SF

The future may be different as supposedly in USA most teen readers of SF & F are girls. In 1950s and 1960s supposedly overwhelmingly boys. But I don't know how these claims are arrived at.

 

[J-Sun]

Yeah, while I think that's likely been true and may not stay true - hopefully not (I'll take all the hard SF I can get) - I wouldn't seriously argue the truth or falsity of it - I have anecdotal/experiential reasonableness but no concrete numbers. I was just saying, whether true or not, such an argument - just in form - is usually not even permitted in a discussion of genre gender imbalance because it's considered ipso facto sexist. But if it can be used as an argument to excuse male under-representation, then it's presumably okay for female under-representation, too. Again, a case of unidirectional sexism: all-male anthologies are inherently sexist; all-female are not, or are a "good" sexism. To say women are under-represented in something due to their lack of interest is inherently sexist; to say men are under-represented in something due to their lack interest in something is not. I don't buy this logic.

Incidentally, I think you've made an excellent point that some folks seem not to hear: that reverse-discrimination is still discrimination and reinforces the thing it's meant to be dissipating and, beyond that, produces resentment and possible counter-movements. I actually tend to support gender equality in most everything[1] but find my support strained when people basically don't want justice but their own turn at injustice and, while I don't give in, I certainly understand all those would-be-moderate people who become antagonistic. This is all going a bit further along the road than my modest note, but it's kind of what impels it in the first place.

[1] When I say "most everything" I mean in the sense that, if a woman completes Ranger training just like her male counterparts (as some recently have), she should be a Ranger (assuming no degradation in unit cohesion and so on and, even then, perhaps all-female squads could be created while all-male units persist or some other workaround). But the idea that women are unequal until they make up 50% of Rangers is wrong. And, if some women are going to have the opportunity to be Rangers on a volunteer basis like the men, then all women must register for the draft like the men. That sort of equality.

 

[HareBrain]

(and for being unable to see any merit in such a book by that fact alone)

(My bolding)

Can you highlight the bit which shows that she claims the anthology in question can have no merit purely by virtue of being all-male, rather than because of its content? Do we know what the stories were actually about? If they were all stories about interplanetary big-game fishing or which only showed women as sex-slaves, would her refusal seem anything other than merely sensible?

I think @farntfar's vegetarian/carnivore cook-book analogy is just about right.

 

[J-Sun]

Further, the OP suggests that this was done to make a public statement,

Sorry, I meant to reply to this earlier, but forgot. I didn't suggest that.

the self-satisfied repetition of these things years later in the current web-o-sphere

I was speaking of LeGuin's logic/behavior (whether public or not) and the webfolks' publicizing it as an admirable thing when it isn't. Usher made it public and vox.com promoted it as a good and proper thing. I take issue with each thing and their cumulative effect, but don't conflate them and didn't mean to encourage others to. Sorry if I was unclear. Le Guin and others make very public statements of this nature so, even if this particular letter was not meant to be broadcast, it's not out of keeping with things that have been, but this particular statement's initial semi-private status wasn't part of my point.

Can you highlight the bit which shows that she claims the anthology in question can have no merit purely by virtue of being all-male, rather than because of its content?

No, because it's implicit. Her sole expressed judgment of the work is completely lacking in any aesthetic, qualitative ground beyond her emotive distaste for clubs and locker rooms. I can highlight that she says it "contains no writing by women, but the tone of which is so self-contentedly, exclusively male, like a club, or a locker room" and concludes that "I just don’t belong here." Since that's the only fact she states, I say "by that fact alone." And, as I said, I surely don't belong in a book called "Millennial Women," either, but I would trust that something in it is likely to have aesthetic merit and that I could learn from an alternate perspective even if I naturally - by virtue of its being alternate - didn't "belong" to it. If it somehow didn't, I would surely state that as the reason for my unwillingness to provide a blurb. So either her sole criterion was its all-maleness or she's a poor writer and failed to express herself and her true complaints. I think most people would agree with me that the latter is less likely.

 

[HareBrain]

Since that's the only fact she states, I say "by that fact alone."

Sorry, that doesn't logically follow. "By that fact alone" means "of the set of facts", not "of the set of facts available to us in this source material" (which wouldn't be correct even if it did mean that, because the line about the tone extends her argument beyond the simple fact of the anthology being all-male). Other facts exist which she hasn't given (possibly because she didn't think she was providing material for a public debate), and we're not in a position to infer what they are. Both she and Radziewicz know exactly what's in the anthology -- why would she list her detailed reasons for the judgement she makes, given that he would almost certainly be able to infer them from the contents?

I'm not saying her stance isn't open to any criticism whatsoever, but her letter does not even say that she wouldn't blurb any all-male anthology, let alone that she would be against them on principle. I disagree that such a stance is implicit in the words of that letter alone.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I'm not saying her stance isn't open to any criticism whatsoever, but her letter does not even say that she wouldn't blurb any all-male anthology, let alone that she would be against them on principle.

There is too much we don't know to make any judgement about the "logic" of her letter.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

One reason why men don't become teachers is that it's quite possible (particularly in secondary school) for a vicious little ***** to destroy a man's career by simply making an accusation of improper conduct.

I don't buy that. Most men who are teachers teach at the secondary level. (I'm guessing it's because it pays more and holds more prestige, but I really don't know.) If that was a position of such great peril why would they prefer it to teaching younger children?

And even if the accusation is proved untrue - well, mud sticks.

I find your phrasing here particularly interesting, with the innocence (or guilt) of the accused coming as an afterthought, and your vicious characterization of the possible victim right up front.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Most men who are teachers teach at the secondary level. (I'm guessing it's because it pays more and holds more prestige, but I really don't know.)

Both my parents were teachers, my wife was a teacher, all Secondary. In N.I. and Ireland the majority of primary teachers are women and majority of secondary teachers are men. I don't know why. Secondary does pay more than primary I think, but that can't be the explanation?

 

[The Big Peat]

I wish Le Guin hadn't been quite so polemical in what she wrote there.

But given the imbalance in how the world treats women as opposed to how they treat men, I don't see an issue in Le Guin trying to address it in this fashion.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I think, too, she is referring to a genre where women are underrepresented. If that wasn't the case, things might feel different. But go and look at the sf charts on kindle, or on the shelves of your local bookstore. It is a male-dominated genre despite a good balance of readership. It is an improving picture with the likes of Kameron Hurley, Jennifer Foehner-Wells, and others coming through but there is still a massive imbalance (as there also is in romance, which is sad, too - men have love stories, too with one of my favourite books containing a beautiful one, written by a man).

So, yes, clumsily done, perhaps. But I can understand her sentiments, and her frustrations.