Comments on: Literature: Not Enlightened Yet

By: C.J. Cherryh: Link roundup at Feminist SF - The Blog!

C.J. Cherryh: Link roundup at Feminist SF - The Blog! — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 19:46:28 +0000

[...] Essay on feministe about women in literature. Cherryh’s work came up several times in the comments thread. Surprisingly often, I [...]

By: MLO

MLO — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 02:36:59 +0000

Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty Series would make an excellent series for TV or movies. And Kitty is a great, and strong, female character.

Bujold is a no-brainer as far as I’m concerned.

You realize she was one of the writers that went to Harlequin to get the Luna line set up? Do not diss my romance books!

By: Feministe Posts « The Girl Detective

Feministe Posts « The Girl Detective — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 23:33:49 +0000

[...] Looks Like (or “How to Get 120 Comments On Your Blog Post”) On Being Jewish and White Literature: Not Enlightened Yet (which attracted several MRA trolls – [...]

By: Maggie

Maggie — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 07:13:39 +0000

I’m planning on using my initials for as long as possible. Ambiguity is the way to go, especially if you’re writing sensitive or ambiguous subject matter, and it’s always interesting to see which stories have people assuming you’re male and which have them guessing you’re female. For instance I wrote a short short story in the first person in which a sexual encounter could have been gay or straight because the gender of the speaker was uncertain. I decided to leave it like that because the gender of the speaker was in every way irrelevant, but I knew if I had a girly name after the title people would assume the story was about a woman. I’m not sure if the story would have lost something, had most readers begun with that assumption. To be on the safe side I just gave my initials.

By: Shinobi

Shinobi — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:48:56 +0000

I just wanted to point out that I almost exclusively read Sci-Fi/Fantasay novels written by women. So if you publish as a guy, you might lose some of your audience.

(Side note: could we please put a moratorium on the sexy hot vampire/vampirehunter/werewolf books here for a while? Everytime I grab something that looks interesting it turns out to be another one. And many of them are not that good.)

By: JPlum

JPlum — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 14:25:34 +0000

I remember learning years ago that while women tend to read both male and female authors, men tend to read only male authors. I already had a tendency to read female authors, but that just solidified it. A male author has to be pretty special to get on my reading list.

By: Never Yet Melted » SF & Feminism

Never Yet Melted » SF & Feminism — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:54:29 +0000

[...] girl because she actually likes Science Fiction, which got the gender wars rolling, and provoked discussion of girls & SF. Poor Megan has had to respond [...]

By: Rockit

Rockit — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:59:17 +0000

Oh yeah, I should have mentioned. Up until recently I was working in a bookshop, hence I sell the books in the first place and get to read all the trade publications.

By: Rockit

Rockit — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:56:55 +0000

You’ve got a point, Mrs J, but I don’t think you’re aiming your vitriol in the right directions. For one thing the study mentioned books, not fiction and it’s important to mention that there are many areas of non-fiction which are still dominated by men: history, politics, business, computing, sport, music and film, etc. Basically, the ‘serious’ categories which are reviewed often but which rarely sell in large quantities. The ones that tend to sell the most, biographies/memoirs (esp. ‘misery memoirs’) and self help books generally sell more to women, and are more likely to be read by women even if they’re rarely respected by the literary establishment.

As for fiction, it varies from genre to genre. I was going to mention the romance thing before someone else got there. It probably accounts for a good deal of the female/male statistics featured, not leats because the most voracious romance readers often buy/read six or more a month. Probably the reason they aren’t respected is that far too many still fall within the ‘The Swarthy Foreign Billionaire’s Shameful Proposal’ formula.

As for other genre fiction, crime and fantasy are about 60/40 male right now while horror’s pretty much 50/50. Literary fiction tends to lean more toward men, though nowhere near as much as it used to. Not only the Orange, but also the Costa, the Booker and the Nobel Prize were all won by women this year, though I’m not sure that translated into big sales in every case. Commercial fiction, you can really split down the middle into chick lit and spy stuff, though these days the former’s probably better represented. That could well be down to women making up the majority of staff these days in both the publishing and bookselling industries. At least they do in the UK.

By: Mandolin

Mandolin — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 04:22:03 +0000

“Check out the Tiptree Award lists.”

And Sheree R. Thomas’s _Dark Matter_ anthologies.

Has anyone been talking about compiling the Carl Brandon winners and nominees into anthologies?