Newspapers often get things wrong and then bury their corrections. Earlier today I got something partially wrong, so I want to make the correction more prominent than the mistake.
SFSignal is one of the blogs I read. They started a series called Mind Meld, where they ask a number of people connected to the industry (using connected in a loose way) a question of the week. Sometimes it’s serious, sometimes it’s more fun. Today’s question was about world building.
I read through it and was struck by the predominance of white men who got to participate. Only Nancy Kress was not white and male. So I re-read through it, but not very thoroughly (i.e., just scanning for names), and counted the number of female authors mentioned. I saw two, one from Nancy Kress, and commented as to my observation.
However, I got the count wrong and missed three female authors mentioned by Lou Anders and Jeffrey Ford.
My implication overall was that female authors are ignored or forgotten. I believe that to be true, but in the instant example, that was not the case for Jeffrey Ford and Lou Anders. I should have counted more carefully before I opened my mouth (or keyboard).
On to the balance thing. Today I read an article from I.E.E.E. Spectrum on the geek rapture
, otherwise known as the singularity
. The singularity is the point when technological innovation passes some imaginary point and we lose control of it. To put it another way, machines become smarter than us and design their own descendants without our help. Or maybe it’s the point when we can upload our brains and have them think at computer speeds. It takes somewhat different forms depending on which prognosticator is asked.
So that’s what started me off. Spectrum highlighted the views of 15 prognosticators for a table and got quotes from a number of others for sidebars throughout the magazine. There were seven contributors for the articles. All but Esther Dyson appear to be white men. So up pops into my head, couldn’t they have found just a slightly broader cross section to get talk about this?
.
A few minutes later I open up Google Reader and read this Mind Meld. Same sort of deal. Since I didn’t do my counting well before, I’ll do it now.
Joe Abercrombie mentions Scott Lynch. Karl Schroeder mentions Stanislaw Lem, Ian McDonald, Mervyn Peake, Thomas Pynchon, James Joyce (indirectly), Samuel Delany, and Olaf Stapledon. Nancy Kress mentions Ursula Le Guin. Orson Scott Card mentions James Clavell, Bruce Sterling, and James Maxey. Mike Brotherton mentions Larry Niven. Lou Anders mentions Frank Herbert, John Meaney, Kay Kenyon, David Louis Edelman, J.R.R. Tolkien, China Miéville, Greg Keyes, Tom Lloyd, and Michael Moorcock. Jeffrey Ford mentions Henry James, Lucius Shepherd, Margo Lanagan, Jeff VanderMeer, China Miéville, and Leena Krohn. Jeff VanderMeer mentions Stepan Chapman. Mike Resnick mentions James White. L. E. Modesitt, Jr. mentions no names. Jeff Somers mentions Frederick Pohl. Paul Levinson mentions Isaac Asimov.
That’s the complete list, unless I missed someone again (smack me down in the comments if I missed someone). I’m not counting Ellen Datlow as she’s not mentioned as an author but as a Livejournal forum.
Twelve people interviewed: eleven white males, one white female. Authors mentioned: 31 (Miéville’s second mention would be #32). Number of women mentioned: 4 (Le Guin, Kenyon, Lanagan, and Krohn), unless one of the names mentioned is a James Tiptree like pseudonym that I don’t know about.
Is there a numerical balance point that makes everything okay? Eh, not so much in my book. I know some feminists will argue that, but not me.
But jeebus! That ratio of authors mentioned is seven to one! The people interviewed is eleven to one. That’s almost as bad as the ratio of people who voted for Fidel Castro in his rigged elections.
What gets my dander really itching is that just a month or so ago another SFSignal Mind Meld dealt with the question of bias in science fiction and fantasy. It’s almost as if folks make a point to include women when bias is the question but forget about them for the most part when any other question comes up.
I believe SFSignal certainly should make more of an effort to include other voices in their questions sometimes.
Counting myself in the group, white men in this day and age by and large don’t think about gender. It’s not intentional (mostly, after reading some of Orson Scott Card’s opinion pieces, I wouldn’t put “intentional” past him). We were taught from a white male literary canon. For many reasons, science and technology this century was the domain of men. The men interested in science were spurred to read and write the fictional side, and the publishing industry was pretty heavily male as well. So we were raised on male S.F. authors. But it’s been 40 years since women began making big names for themselves in the field.
My own reading has been remiss. I committed to read five of the top whatever list of under-appreciated S.F. works by/about women when the Feminist S.F. blog picks that list. (I figured they would have done so by now, and they haven’t. So my August dedication to that project is postponed.).
I could have thrown up a few names of female authors who are known for world building. Anne McCaffrey. Not a big fan of her writing now, but her world of Pern sucked me in when I was younger. Julian May’s Pliocene Exile world was awesome enough that I’ve kept the books for years. With my lack of reading female authors, though, I don’t have a large list.
I don’t think it’s smart to expect white men to have a lot of balance in our perspective. Frankly, I think the female feminists are going to have to lead us by the nose. Which is why it’s imperative that folks like SFSignal broaden their pool. Sometimes they do pretty good. Too often they don’t.
However, if you don’t think it’s important to have female voices, then ratios like that won’t worry you.
Photo teeter totter by Flickr user taryn used under a Creative Commons By-Nc-Nd 2.0 license.
2 Comments
I know it’s a bit late to nip this in the bud, but I’ll try:
“I believe SFSignal certainly should make more of an effort to include other voices in their questions sometimes.”
This is the same mistake that everyone who complains about the gender imbalance in our respondents makes. Namely, that those who have replied are the only ones we’ve asked. Not so.
What you don’t see in a Mind Meld are all the people we’ve asked to participate. Many, for one reason or another, choose not to respond. So it seems silly to castigate us for not posting responses we never get, or for not including more women when we strive to ask as many women as men for each question. We cannot, however, control who chooses to respond.
So, we do make an effort to include women and men, it just may not show up in a particular post.
Our pool is very broad, thank you very much.
Whatever the reason, the final result is still hugely biased. That should really concern you.