June 18th, 2008
by
the angry black woman
I promise to write up my con report from WisCon really soon, mainly because that report includes a panel report from the discussion we had about the debate over Eclipse One’s cover and how marketing, ideals, and gender imbalance all played a part in the online discussion. The panel was really good and I felt a little hopeful for the future.
And then Jonathan Strahan had to go and mess it all up.
First, he announced the Eclipse Two TOC which has 14 stories total yet only 1 by a woman (Nancy Kress). Eclipse One had a 50/50 split (which made the all male cover seem particularly odd), so a collective WTF on this 90+% male second volume.
When SFSignal posted the TOC the very first comment made mention of the male-heavy offerings. Strahan then responded:
On gender issues: I try to be gender blind.
O RLY?
Further down:
For both volumes of Eclipse, about half of the invited writers didn’t deliver. [...] By weird chance, most of the women writers dropped out before the deadline and most of the men delivered. Of the stories actually delivered, some didn’t quite work for me (that happens all the time too). Again, as it happened, more submissions for women were knocked out, but only by chance.
[...] I honestly don’t think about this when buying stories. I’m not looking to achieve a gender balance. It’s great when it happens, and I’d be honestly happy if a volume in the series ended up with all female contributors, but I’m reading for great stories first, second, third, last and always.
Firstly, the gender blind argument is just about as valid as the color blind argument (as in: not so much). Secondly, it isn’t even that only one woman submitted, but only one woman’s story was accepted. Thirdly, I don’t think “by chance” really plays into it. Strahan didn’t just happen to reject those stories, he made a decision to. He also made the decision not to ask any more female authors to submit once it became clear that a large number of them weren’t going to. If he didn’t know until the last minute, the lesson there is: widen your net casting. And last, it’s just unacceptable to have an anthology with 13 of 14 stories by men. He’s not gender blind, unless someone is taking names off of stories before he reads them. And I and others have already addressed the nonsense about how “I’m just choosing the best stories” is a bunch of hooey. I would say that, if one ends up with 95% guys, one is not trying hard enough, but it seems Strahan isn’t trying at all.
And need I mention that, to the best of my knowledge, everyone in this anthology is white?
When books like these end up with a majority of stories by white men, it’s an indication not of color blindness, but blindness to the reality of the world. The world is not 95% white men. And neither is the SF community or readership.
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Filed under Books & Literature, gender in marketing | Comments (15)
Damn. He seemed relatively on top of things, gender-wise, when I saw him a few months ago. Looks like I overestimated.
[...] … And Strahan posts the contents for Eclipse 2, kicking off this week’s debate, part two, when people notice that there’s only one story by a woman. Abigail Nussbaum provides an overview here, Strahan answers questions about the selection process here, and there’s further comment here, here and at the Feminist SF blog here [...]
[...] Gender blind, right… [...]
I was at most of that panel and I am quite confused. At the time, it sounded like the second anthology was going to not only have some women, but a few of them on the cover.
I understand things change, but that drastically? In less than a month?
Did someone record/transcribe that panel?
I transcribed some of it but have not posted yet. I know there were at least two other transcriptions floating around on LJ.
[...] TOC is (as far as I can tell) entirely made up of white men, with one white woman. I’m with ktempest: I find this sort of thing wholly unacceptable. And no, I refuse to look at some sort of long-term [...]
gaaaaaaaaah! they’re doing what?
i was on a panel with lassen, the nightshade books publisher, and i was under the impression that he knew it was a fuckup and that they’d work to correct it.
i hate being wrong about these things.
I transcribed the panel and posted my notes on the Feminist SF Wiki here.
J. Andrews, you’re right: Lassen clearly said that the second volume of the anthology would have some female names on the cover. Not just one, but two or maybe three. I wonder what the hell happened?
Abigail Nussbaum has a post about the Eclipse 2 news here. She thinks the criticism is unwarranted this time. She makes a good argument, but for me it is all invalidated by the fact that Strahan used the “gender blind” defense. The fact that he has no clue that this is a bogus stance — even after last year’s brouhaha — makes it obvious that he doesn’t care to think about gender issues as they affect his work. Given how embedded gender bias is in our culture, I can’t see how someone who is so unaware or unbothered by it could possibly NOT be biased himself. Maybe not the most iron-clad argument logically, but… I’m annoyed by these guys. I don’t feel they’re being honest or even very smart. I certainly wouldn’t pay money for any of their anthologies at this point.
@therem: I have to agree–the whole ‘methinks they protest too much’ behavior on behalf of Strahan, et al, basically negates my ability to let it go. It’s the same old story, like ‘but I have black/gay/female FRIENDS’.
Screw it. I didn’t buy the first and I won’t be buying the second, that’s for sure.
After clicking around to various links, I found a partial answer to the “what the hell happened?” question. On his blog, Jonathan Strahan commented that the anthology was not finalized with the publisher until June 15th, two weeks after WisCon. So Lassen’s representation of the contents — based on a tentative list — was premature.
The world is not 95% white men. And neither is the SF community or readership.
But it would appear, from Strahan’s account, that the world of authors who were able to deliver a quality manuscript to deadline for this particular anthology is 95% white men.
it’s an indication not of color blindness, but blindness to the reality of the world.
The reality of the world is that books have deadlines. I don’t imagine for one second that there is some law of nature that says women in general are crap at meeting deadlines – but on this one occasion, most of the female authors concerned happened to be crap at meeting the deadline. Tough.
It’s not that cut and dried, Iain. Even Strahan says as much in this follow-up post on his blog. He had to solicit some more stories close to the deadline and went to people he had ties to, who were all men. In the game of “who do you know?” women often end up losing, at least in science fiction publishing.
It’s also interesting to me that people who say things like “I try to be gender blind” or “race doesn’t matter to me” or “I don’t care about class issues” pretty much always turn out to be rich white guys.
Also, Iain, if it were just this one occasion, no one would care.
Ian is also not taking into account the # of men asked vs. women in the first place. Or the # of POC vs. white. If you only ask, say, 30% women and 10% POC to submit to your anthology, and past experience tells you that not everyone you ask will be able to give you a story and not everyone gives you a story you will like, the result will still be fewer or no women and/or POC. Basically you’re already failing if that’s the case.