Bias in SFF Publishing, or, Why It's Good To Venture Outside Your Comfort Zone

A quickie post to say that today I'm over at BookSworn, talking about bias in SFF publishing and how challenging yourself to read outside your comfort zone can lead to all manner of awesome book discoveries:

If you hang around online SFF forums like I do, you’ve probably seen the following: a blogger will post that they are challenging themselves this year to read X number of books by women (or writers of color, or LGBT writers, or what have you). Invariably, another poster will respond saying something like, “That’s silly. Books should be judged on quality alone, not on the race/gender/orientation/etc of the author. I pick my reads solely based on whether or not the story appeals to me – isn’t that how it should be?”

I sympathize with this reaction. It’s one I would have had myself only a few years ago. After all, there’s truth in it: the identity of the author *shouldn’t* matter. And personal taste is, well, personal – not something that can (or even should) be forcibly changed.

But here’s the thing I’ve learned since I’ve become an author and gotten a much deeper experience of the publishing industry: personal taste is not the only factor that affects our reading choices...

Read the rest: On the Utility of Reading Challenges

Boosting the Signal

If you haven't already read Elise Matthesen's excellent post on sexual harassment at SF conventions, then go.  Read now.  Elise discusses how to properly report an incident of harassment - important information to know for everyone who ever might attend a con, because even if you are never the subject of such harassment, you might witness it happening to someone else.  Since Elise spoke out about her experience being harassed by a senior Tor editor at a con party, there's been a veritable blizzard of posts and tweets from other women about their negative experiences at cons (here's a post from Tansy Rayner Roberts with links to a few).  I can't even tell you how sad and horrified I am to hear that so many of my fellow female authors have had to endure such awful behavior.

To extend a shred of hope, I myself have had nothing but good experiences at cons.  I've been to WorldCon the last two years, World Fantasy and my local convention MileHiCon the last three, and had a wonderful time at each, without any inappropriate remarks or touching or anything that would make me feel the least bit uncomfortable.  I don't say this to deny the prevalence of harassment - I know I've been lucky - but to say that I've seen what cons *could* be like for women in an ideal world, and I want very, very badly for every woman to have my experience of a safe, fun event.

But to make that happen, we need people who feel safe enough to do so (women AND men) to stand up and say, THIS IS NOT OKAY, when inappropriate behavior does happen.  Mary Robinette Kowal wrote a great post on why it can be hard to do this - and why you should do it anyway.  More and more cons are putting policies into place, so people will have official recourse.  I know as the organizer for this year's BookSworn party at WorldCon, I'm going to make sure those of us hosting have a plan set in advance for how to handle any inappropriate behavior at our party.  Because con parties should be FUN, dammit, not places where women have to fend off creeps.

ETA: Carrie Cuinn has a great post on how to stop sexual harassment at conventions. 

The Big Reveal, and a Few Thoughts on Gender in SFF

As promised, today Teresa Frohock revealed the results of her "Guess the Author's Gender" experiment!  I wrote sample #9, The Sea-Folk's Price.  (In case anyone's curious: I wrote the story specifically for Teresa's experiment, but I didn't attempt to alter my usual style in any way (consciously, at least!).  Heh, it was quite interesting to write a piece of fiction *not* involving Dev and Kiran.  First time since November 2007!)

The numerical results of the experiment are interesting to see, but I think the most fascinating part was reading the reasons people gave for their guesses in the comments to each writing sample.  (My personal favorite comment?  The person who voted "male" for my piece because it reminded them of George R. R. Martin.  My husband now wants to know when I'll be making zillions of dollars like George.  Had to inform him that would be Never.)  I'm hoping participants will now comment on the reveal post with their reactions upon seeing the truth of who wrote what - I'm quite curious to know what people think.

If I'm honest, I was surprised that so many people guessed "male" on my piece, and I'll admit that the experiment's results did indeed challenge some of my own assumptions.  See, I've long thought that there *is* often (but not always) a difference in the writing of male vs. female authors.  Not in terms of quality, but of focus.  After all the thousands of SFF books I've read, I feel there's a grain of truth in the old saw that female authors are more likely to focus on character, while male authors are more likely to focus on plot. Deep, well-rounded characterization is first and foremost on my list of what I look for in a book, and I find the majority of my favorite SFF authors are female.  Dorothy Dunnett, C.J. Cherryh, Emma Bull, Carol Berg, Martha Wells, Elizabeth Bear...all their books feature wonderful characterization, and the heart of the story (as I see it) lies in the characters' various internal arcs rather than the specific events of the plot (even when the plot is fast-paced and exciting!).

That's not to say male authors can't pull off the same.  Guy Gavriel Kay is an excellent example of a male author with incredible skill at characterization; or even Mark Lawrence, whose novels work beautifully as a character study of damaged, near-sociopathic young Jorg.  Yet when I look at my shelves - I only buy paper copies of books I truly love and intend to re-read a hundred times over - I'd say a good 70% or more of the SFF books are by women.

Anecdotal, I know.  Yet after reading much discussion of the "male gaze" vs. the "female gaze" in recent months (see Kate Elliott's excellent post on the subject at SF Signal, as an example), I can't help but think there is sometimes a difference.  The gazes that Kate discusses are of course potentially independent of gender - a woman can write with a "male gaze" and vice versa - yet the cultural component of it makes me wonder.  Perhaps we can't always so easily cast aside our culture and upbringing and gestalt of experiences; perhaps all these things flavor our stories, and it's not out of the question to think that people of one gender in a given culture might share enough experiences to affect our personal "lens" in similar fashion.  A subtle effect, not always easy to discern (especially in short samples), varying from one author to another...but still potentially there.  And if it is...to me, that's not a bad thing.  One gaze isn't better than the other; they're just different - and one reason I love to read is the chance to experience the world through different eyes, so hooray for a diversity of focus.

That's not to say that there aren't frustrating misconceptions around gender in SFF fandom.  There are two in particular that drive me up the wall:

1) A female name on the cover means a book with a lot of romance.  No. Just...NO.  The romance genre might have a huge female readership, but trust me, guys, there are plenty of women like me who prefer stories with a different focus.  I said that 70% of the SFF books lining my shelves are female-authored.  None of those books are romances.

2) Women don't write epic fantasy.  This one simultaneously boggles and frustrates me.  Most people saying this are using "epic" to mean secondary-world fantasy, but even if you restrict the definition to sprawling multi-volume grand-scale stories, there are plenty of excellent female authors to choose from.  (Janny Wurts, Michelle Sagara/West, Helen Lowe, Robin Hobb, Sherwood Smith, Elspeth Cooper, for example.)  If you open it up to secondary-world fantasy in general, the list expands exponentially.  Yet this bizarre blind spot remains, in certain segments of fandom.  Why?  I don't know.  I figure all I can do is talk loud and long about the many awesome female-authored secondary-world fantasies that I love, in hopes new readers will discover them.

So I certainly hope Teresa's little experiment might help to challenge the participants' assumptions, as it did mine - and maybe even convince some to give a few new authors a try.