As to why posters keep referring to the stats on Escape Pod, the not so subtle point they are making is when the stories are all about men, this conversation does not happen.
Just as an anal-retentive quibble: this conversation DID and DOES happen all the time when there are male trends involved. It's going to come up whenever anyone *feels* that something is unfair, and goes looking for numerical data to back up the feeling. Steve even devoted an intro to the subject of finding minority voices in SF/F in one of the early EP episodes (if someone can recall offhand which one, that would be greatly appreciated; I thought he framed it eloquently and non-confrontationally).
You know, since reading the first few posts in this thread I've been half-tempted to make a topic in the "About Escape Pod" forum titled "Is Escape Pod Sexist?" And essentially make these exact same arguments against myself -- including the 87% male narrator statistic that Ann so helpfully compiled.
I do think it's a really good point. The main reason I'm not engaging in that sort of pointed self-satire is that I'm afraid too many people would miss the point or take it too seriously. They might even try to defend me against myself, and then it would just get weird.
For the record, and in utter seriousness: I would answer "Yes." The representation of stories by or about men on Escape Pod is too high. It's unbalanced. But I don't feel like a villain for it. I feel like I'm doing what I can with the stories I can get. More men send us stories than women. More men are
writing science fiction than women. It's getting closer to parity all the time, but it's not there yet.
Fact for you number crunchers: When Scott Janssens was our slushpile editor, he kept statistics on the submissions, including author's gender (as best he could guess from names). During the first 18 months or so of the podcast, something around 33% of the stories submitted to us were by women. Of the stories we
bought, if you ignore the large number of flash stories I acquired from Greg van Eekhout all at once, about 45% of the stories were by women. So the ratio of women's sales was higher than the ratio of women's submissions.
You could jump to any number of conclusions from this one isolated fact, depending on your biases. You could conclude that it's an interesting coincidence but not proof of anything. You
could conclude that women are better writers. Or you could simply conclude that Steve Eley likes women. (Actually I think that one's supportable.)
Regardless, it's still a minority. EP was and is more testosterone-heavy than estrogen-heavy. My intentions don't matter, and the slushpile doesn't matter. What matters is the stories we present, and those stories represent men more than women. By the criteria of this thread, Escape Pod is sexist. Most major SF markets are sexist. Science fiction
as a genre is sexist. I seriously do believe this. It's come a hell of a long way in recent decades (the feedback on sexual attitudes in "Nightfall" was fascinating) but modern SF is still more of a boy's genre than a girl's genre. I do feel like I'm doing what I can, and I'm not losing sleep about it -- except for writing this thread post -- but I think it's an objective truth.
Is modern fantasy more of a girl's genre than a boy's genre? Maybe. I think that's a defensible claim at least, though it's not as clear-cut. But here's my take. If it
is... Well, good for them. I don't lose anything by that. I'll still read it. I
like reading about women. And if it gets more girls into reading fantasy, because they can identify with those authors and those protagonists, at least some of them will start reading SF too, and maybe writing it. Or horror. (I don't have any idea of Pseudo's numbers and don't want to touch
that debate with a ten-foot shoggoth.) Balance gets closer, and everybody wins.
Meanwhile... I look at my numbers, at that 87% male figure, and say "Yeah. That's really too high. Escape Pod is sexist." And I look at this thread, where people are going nuts about... What? 60% female representation, depending on which metric you're looking at? And I have to wonder, what exactly is the problem? It doesn't seem that off-balance to me. Certainly not worth going nuts about if people aren't going nuts about Escape Pod.
So if you're going to say that PodCastle has issues with gender balance,
please do start with Escape Pod. I mean it. Protest. Bitch about the stories you hear, and how they're not the ones you
want to hear. Many of you are doing it already, and I'm glad -- keep it up! Just know that it won't create change automatically, because I'm still limited by what people are writing and sending. So even better than protesting, try writing the story you'd
like to hear and send it to us! If EP's off-balance, write some hard SF with strong female characters. If PodCastle's off-balance, write some solid fantasy with strong male characters. Become the change you want, and if you're good at it, you'll change the world. Even if you're not -- it feels pretty good to have written something.
That's my take on the gender balances in these two podcasts. One's off for sure; the other I'm not so sure about but I'm good with it if it is. I'd go on at even
more length, but having a penis diverts the blood flow from the brain when I think too much and I become easily fatigued.