Women in SF fandom/girl geekdom

[eytanz]

And in an attempt to un-hijack the conversation - obviously, being male, I'm not on the receiving end of a lot of the attitudes women SF fans have to face. And I try to avoid perpetuating them myself. But there's another issue I noticed which is attitudes among women who are not part of the fandom. I have a very good friend of mine, who I've known for over 15 years, who embodies this very clearly - she and I have been swapping book recommendations for as long as I've known her, but she has always utterly refused to even consider anything that's SF or fantasy. Her husband reads a lot of SF, but she doesn't touch them. It could be that she's simply not a fan, but I've heard her labelling an interest in SF/fantasy as masculine, and I'm pretty sure that's why she never gave it a chance.

If you can bear a recommendation, the next time you see this woman put a copy of Elizabeth Bear's Carnival in her hands.  Don't recommend, just give it to her.  I think it's the sort of book that can win non-SF readers over.

I should read it myself, probably, then. But I'll need to find a copy that doesn't mention it's SF anywhere, on the cover, or I doubt she'll even open it.

[DKT]

And in an attempt to un-hijack the conversation - obviously, being male, I'm not on the receiving end of a lot of the attitudes women SF fans have to face. And I try to avoid perpetuating them myself. But there's another issue I noticed which is attitudes among women who are not part of the fandom. I have a very good friend of mine, who I've known for over 15 years, who embodies this very clearly - she and I have been swapping book recommendations for as long as I've known her, but she has always utterly refused to even consider anything that's SF or fantasy. Her husband reads a lot of SF, but she doesn't touch them. It could be that she's simply not a fan, but I've heard her labelling an interest in SF/fantasy as masculine, and I'm pretty sure that's why she never gave it a chance.

If you can bear a recommendation, the next time you see this woman put a copy of Elizabeth Bear's Carnival in her hands.  Don't recommend, just give it to her.  I think it's the sort of book that can win non-SF readers over.

Nicely done!

[Anarkey]

If you can bear a recommendation, the next time you see this woman put a copy of Elizabeth Bear's Carnival in her hands.  Don't recommend, just give it to her.  I think it's the sort of book that can win non-SF readers over.

Nicely done!

Thanks!     I'm still not going into the punning threads though, I'm not consistent enough with my wordplay.

P.S. Mods feel free to adjust my citation to be a happy EPified link to amazon.

[zZzacha]

Personally, I don't mind being a minority.

I love being the minority! I always tried very hard NOT to be whatever people expected from me. So I love being female and knowing what to do with computers, reading+watching SF, getting all warm inside when I see and understand some new gadget (with blue lights. I LOVE blue lights. Really. Mmmmm)

Also, being female and enjoying such 'typically male things' has advantages:
- In shops, they expect women not to know a lot about the stuff they sell, so I always listen to their (mostly BS) stories and then I ask a real difficult question. Or tell them something they didn't know. That's really a FUN thing to do!
- We women have the (dubious, but also advantageous) prerogative to ask 'dumb questions' and everybody needs to ask a stupid question sometimes. We women can do that, without being very embarrassed about it, because "Hey, I'm a woman. I don't know any better..." LOL
- Being female in I/T also has its advantages. It's easier to get your colleagues to do stuff for you when you're a woman. Especially when there aren't many women in the business.

So, being part of that minority does give me a lot of advantages and I use them. Also, I just like the crowd. I'm not part of this crowd because I can be a minority, I just really like the people and the mindset of that crowd. My kinda people! I'm just a geek who happens to have boobs and beautiful eyes (winkwink).

[Sandikal]

And in an attempt to un-hijack the conversation - obviously, being male, I'm not on the receiving end of a lot of the attitudes women SF fans have to face. And I try to avoid perpetuating them myself. But there's another issue I noticed which is attitudes among women who are not part of the fandom. I have a very good friend of mine, who I've known for over 15 years, who embodies this very clearly - she and I have been swapping book recommendations for as long as I've known her, but she has always utterly refused to even consider anything that's SF or fantasy. Her husband reads a lot of SF, but she doesn't touch them. It could be that she's simply not a fan, but I've heard her labelling an interest in SF/fantasy as masculine, and I'm pretty sure that's why she never gave it a chance.

Anyway, she is a relatively extreme example, but, growing up, whenever I tried talking about an SF book that I liked to my female friends, they would normally be disinterested and/or explicitly tell me that being women they are not into that sort of stuff. While my male friends - genre fans or not - at least listened. Now, there were also exceptions to this - I had a friend whose older sister was a huge SF fan and quite a few of the books I've read in my teens came from her - but assuming this was a somewhat typical situation I can see why a lot of people will grow up assuming that SF lies firmly on one side of the gender divide.

I don't think not having an interest in science fiction is strictly a female thing.  My husband can't stand science fiction.  I did get my daughter hooked, but my son is taking after his dad.  Frankly, my daughter is the only person I know in the real world, not the internet world, who likes science fiction.  She's out of the house now, so I'm stuck watching Dr. Who by myself upstairs on the little TV.

[eytanz]

And in an attempt to un-hijack the conversation - obviously, being male, I'm not on the receiving end of a lot of the attitudes women SF fans have to face. And I try to avoid perpetuating them myself. But there's another issue I noticed which is attitudes among women who are not part of the fandom. I have a very good friend of mine, who I've known for over 15 years, who embodies this very clearly - she and I have been swapping book recommendations for as long as I've known her, but she has always utterly refused to even consider anything that's SF or fantasy. Her husband reads a lot of SF, but she doesn't touch them. It could be that she's simply not a fan, but I've heard her labelling an interest in SF/fantasy as masculine, and I'm pretty sure that's why she never gave it a chance.

Anyway, she is a relatively extreme example, but, growing up, whenever I tried talking about an SF book that I liked to my female friends, they would normally be disinterested and/or explicitly tell me that being women they are not into that sort of stuff. While my male friends - genre fans or not - at least listened. Now, there were also exceptions to this - I had a friend whose older sister was a huge SF fan and quite a few of the books I've read in my teens came from her - but assuming this was a somewhat typical situation I can see why a lot of people will grow up assuming that SF lies firmly on one side of the gender divide.

I don't think not having an interest in science fiction is strictly a female thing.  My husband can't stand science fiction.

I never said it was. I'm saying that I know women, whose general interests indicate to me that they are likely to be interested by SF, and who refuse to even try it because they are women. Men may not be interested, but they don't grow up in cultures telling them to avoid SF.