Perceptions of equity in sff

[Jo Zebedee]

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

 

[J-Sun]

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.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

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?

 

[J-Sun]

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.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

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.

 

[chopper]

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?

 

[J-Sun]

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.

 

[J Riff]

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

 

[Kissmequick]

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.

 

[J Riff]

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.

 

[Kissmequick]

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....

 

[Luiglin]

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.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

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.)

 

[The Big Peat]

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...

 

[J-Sun]

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.

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.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

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.

 

[Parson]

@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.")

 

[Dennis E. Taylor]

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.

 

[The Big Peat]

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.

 

[J-Sun]

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.