PodCastle Essay: We Have Always Fought

[gutguzzler]

So, I may have missed something, but how is this the patriarchy?  It's one guy who, while obviously biased, does make a fairly good point that the scifi community as a whole tends to be much more liberal/progressive as compared to the larger society in which it was a part of.  His argument that sexism, homophobia, and racism didn't exist because anecdotally he's never see it happen seems rather weak, but how is this evidence of a patriarchal and systemic oppression of women/minorities.  If anything, the existence and popularity of magazines like Women Destroy Science Fiction seems to suggest that the very opposite is true.

To clarify--Women Destroy Science Fiction isn't a magazine, it's a special edition of Lightspeed that was launched because of a perceived need for such an issue, which the Kickstarter results for the special edition implies that many many people thought it a worthwhile goal.

I've seen various discussions of gender parity in current SF/F publications, most notably a series of articles by Susan E. Connolly in Clarkesworld which digs into publication numbers for each, for example this one:
http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/connolly_06_14/

Yeah I read that, and it had some interesting conclusions. Apparently women authors are more likely to be published than their male counter parts. That was based on the submission / acceptance ratio. They published the stats and then said that no conclusion can be extrapolated from this information. I'm not sure why they backed off so hard. If I had to guess I'd say it's because they didn't want to be accused of misogyny for debunking the 'patriarchal culture of genre fiction "narrative"' or whatever. A theme people have spend so much time and effort expounding upon.

[Unblinking]

But where are they? Where are all these misogynist monsters that are perpetuating all these grievous wrongs? They certainly don’t frequent these forums.

IRONY

(It means "sort of like iron.")

Where are the baby pandas?  I'll kill those boogers my own self.

you know I read somewhere that they thinking about changing the definition of misogyny from someone who hates women to: someone who disagrees with me.

I don't see any way to read that comment that isn't in violation of the forums rules of civility.  At the very least, it seems to be participating in the same behavior it claims to be criticizing--categorically dismissing the opinions of others who don't agree.

Yeah I read that, and it had some interesting conclusions. Apparently women authors are more likely to be published that their male counter parts. That was based on the submission / acceptance ratio. They published the stats and then said that no conclusion can be extrapolated from this information. I'm not sure why they backed off so hard. If I had to guess I'd say it's because they didn't want to be accused of misogyny for debunking the 'patriarchal culture of genre fiction 'narrative'' or whatever. A theme people have spend so much time and effort expounding upon.

I'd say it's because there are a lot of complex interactions between variables that aren't taken into account by the data available for this study.  It's easy to knee-jerk and draw hard and fast conclusions from a small study, if you don't know what you're doing.  

What I find interesting in that particular article is how the biggest oldest magazines, which I've heard called The Big Three (Asimov's, Analog, F&SF) over and over have a huge bias towards men, while many of the newer publications like Lightspeed and Daily SF have pretty close to 50/50.

[Scattercat]

Yicheng, a male editor with a position of privilege feeling entitled to write an article dismissing the complaints of female authors as "shrill" (a highly gendered insult), and particularly doing so in the context of passing judgment on a project intended to celebrate women in genre, is in itself a symptom of both the toxic bias already in existence and the difficulties of getting those in a position of privilege to see and understand the problems.  The man has never experienced or seen direct sexism, so therefore it doesn't exist and women are making it up and getting hysterical.  There are layers and layers of built-in patriarchal privilege dripping from every pore of that linked article, which is why Jason linked it as an example of the pernicious and often unseen influence of the underlying structure of historical bias.

For additional examples, well, you should probably be able to find one really easily.  Here's a hint: he doesn't understand how statistics work.

[Fenrix]

Regarding studies and statistics and whether they can be considered rigorous or anecdotal:

Obtaining a large enough sample size to achieve statistical significance is a challenge. Frequently studies are snapshots and have a very limited time frame. If there is a major change from one year to the next, the sample size is unlikely to be large enough to draw any statistically significant conclusions. 

Obtaining a quality sample is a challenge.  Published data can be aggregated without the need for additional access, but submission rates are much tougher. Also, none of the data tends to have check-boxes in order to be able to sort data easily, introducing gaps and sources of potential error (not to mention required investment of time to sort the data).

Some times it may be better to present data that is not statistically significant, caveat the heck out of it, and let it remain anecdotal until the sample size is large enough. This aids in avoiding the brand of "lies, damned lies, and statistics".

[Scattercat]

Yeah, Varda and I both spent a lot of time documenting and collating stuff that we hadn't ever bothered to collect in the past to help Susan with her article, and Escape Pod was still one of the lowest-data markets on there (because we had no ready access to submissions data in any kind of sortable format.)  Even most of the others still only had a few hundred data points apiece, and no way to tell what was influencing which without a lot more data, a lot more complicated math, and preferably some kind of controlled experiment.

[gutguzzler]

It's true that men are published more, but that's because they submit more.

I was going by the stats in the conclusion piece: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/connolly_08_14/

So if you look at the ratios women were a lot more likely to be published than men.  So they have a higher submission / publication ratio. But nobody wants to hear it, and you gotta wonder why not?

I don't see any way to read that comment that isn't in violation of the forums rules of civility.  At the very least, it seems to be participating in the same behavior it claims to be criticizing--categorically dismissing the opinions of others who don't agree.

Is that directed at me or scatter cat, who just called me a misogynist because he disagreed with me?


And regarding the whole tangent thing, I once read somewhere dave trunsdale is the most reviled man in the industry. Him and people like him, are the minority (a widely persecuted minority at that), and to say otherwise is willful ignorance. I think it's safe to say that that horse is well and truly dead, but flog away if it makes you feel better. I think it's safe to say that the tide has well and truly turned on the issue of sexism, so why pretend otherwise? It just makes for bad blood. We should be moving past all this, and if you want to discuss sexism and argue about misogynists I don't think it's necessary to do it on a fantasy podcast.

Lightspeed won the hugo, probably because of WDSF. This story won a hugo, and it's all part of the backlash to the original controversy last year.  Women write great sf. It's not even an argument anymore.  Women are just as good as men. Who says they're not? Anyone here? Anyone on http://forum.escapeartists.net/ ? On any genre fiction forum anywhere?

I just think enough already. The horse is dead.

[eytanz]

Posting as a moderator:

I just think enough already.

One thing we agree on, though perhaps not for the same reason.

In this case, the discussion has veered far enough from the topic of the historical erasure of women into a related but different discussion about publishing practices. Let us return to the actual content of the essay, please. Any more discusssion about whether or not there is sexism in genre fiction publishing should be continued elsewhere in the forum. More importantly, any further insinuation that this essay got the attention it did for political reasons, rather than because it struck a cord with the audience will be moderated strictly. Furthermore, anyone who feels that any topic has been resolved to the degree that there is no point in discussing it is free to not discuss it. The only people in these forums who are allowed to tell other people to stop discussing things are moderators.

Disagreement is welcome. But it must be expressed in a way that is respectful of the people you disagree with, if not with their motives.

Thank you.

[yicheng]

Yicheng - I had just posted above that this discussion should not be continued in this thread. Please do not ignore moderator posts.