Collateral damage

[la_marquise]

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone who has commented, and is still commenting, on my piece yesterday about sfnal futures and women. I'm reading. I'm nodding and thinking. I'm finding it hard to reply, but I am listening.

A number of people have asked what has been going on with me, that I wrote this (and my long twitter rant, which you can find storified here: https://storify.com/KariSperring/calling-out-the-men-who)
It's this. Lately, I've been feeling like all I am is collateral damage. I seem to have been fighting to be allowed to exist, to be a person and not just a thing, almost my entire life. It's exhausting and draining and endless and I never seem to make any lasting gains. Indeed, as I age, the amount of space I'm permitted to occupy gets smaller and smaller and my sense of existence is shrinking.

And it's not just me. On all sides I see other people facing the same thing. I see brilliant women writers like dancinghorse (Judith Tarr) and scifiwritir (Carole McDonnell) dismissed from the narrative of fantasy and sf because they're older, or because their books have fallen out of print, or some variation and combination of those, because genre history continues to belong to men. I see the same thing happening to QUILTBAG writers and writers of colour and writers with disabilities. On all sides there are wonderful initiatives like the Geekfest Nine Worlds, anthologies and projects promoting the work of writers who are not white westerners, anthologies of queer fiction, blog series on ableism and othering in sf. I love all of this. It's a step forward.

But what I'm also seeing is that in almost all of these, there's a group that's consistently left behind. I'm seeing collateral damage.
I'm seeing older women -- whether women of colour or white women, lesbian, bi or straight, trans or cis forgotten, or only considered relevant once they're dead or long out of print and the limelight (if they ever had any share of the latter to begin with). I'm seeing women writers who debut later -- and women writers, along with writers of colour and writers with disabilities often face additional challenges which mean that they are more likely to debut later -- being written off with no or few reviews, dismissed unread as predictable.
It's the pattern we seem unable to see when we fight for change. It's the pattern we just reproduce without thinking -- and then excuse, usually on the grounds that we -- that insidious, apparently collective sff 'we' which masquerades as all of us but all too often means only those with more privilege -- that we need to attract more new blood, more 'young fans'.
I have never once heard or seen anyone suggest that 'young fans' won't want to see established older male writers. Every single convention, including 9 Worlds, has its roster of established male pros over 40. Whenever I hear this line about attracting the young, my heart sinks. Not because I don't want to see new people in fandom -- of course I do.
Because the people who are asked to stand aside, the people whose work is deemed of little or no interest, are almost entirely older women. The older men go sailing merrily on.
Now, older men of colour are also victims in this: I would never deny that. It infuriates me that our genre is still talking about Robert E Howard but never mentions Charles Saunders, who wrote and is still writing some of the best swords-and-sorcery out there.

What it comes to is this: most women who are now over about 40 have been told their whole lives to be good, to keep their heads down, to keep on working away quietly and to wait their turn. And now, within sff, at the point when their male contemporaries are celebrated, these same women are being told, No, it's too late for you, you don't matter enough; that space is needed. Get out of the way.

We're collateral damage. If we debut later, we may well find ourselves declared over, irrelevant, not worth reading even before the print is dry on our 1st book. If we've been in the industry for years, we find ourselves forgotten or dismissed and our innovations and talents and insights attributed to others (all too often male others).
I've been making a rough list of writers who were big names in the 80s, male and female, and looking at where they are now. The biggest women writers of that period, in my memory, anyway, were Barbara Hambly, R A McAvoy, C J Cherryh, Katherine Kurtz, Judith Tarr, Julian May, Mary Gentle, Lois MacMaster Bujold, Tanith Lee, and Connie Willis.
Only three of those women are still being published regularly by major publishers (and one of those -- Cherryh -- is largely ignored). Most of the others are still writing, but in other genres, for small presses, or via kickstarter.
The big name men, though. Guy Gavriel Kay, David Brin, William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Greg Bear, Larry Niven, Michael Swanwick, George R R Martin, Samuel R Delany, Charles de Lint....
They're pretty much all still there. They're famous, their books get inches of review space, they're talked about and promoted and cited as influences.
Now, I'm not saying there aren't male writers who have fallen out of contract or seem to be being unjustly neglected. Gary Kilworth springs to mind, along with Graham Dunstan Martin (whose work I love) and the great, great Walter Jon Williams, who does not get the recognition he deserves.
On every side, I see people telling most of those women I listed to step aside. (The exceptions are Bujold and Willis.) I see their books go unreviewed. I see their influence marginalised. Those are some wonderful, wonderful writers, writers you should be reading. There are more established women writers than LeGuin (great though she is). They deserve to be celebrated, too. They deserve their place in genre. So does Charles Saunders.
They deserve better than to be pushed aside while their male peers sail merrily on.

Women over 40, whatever our colour, our sexuality, our ability should not just be Collateral damage.

I call foul.

Edited to add: this isn't about expecting younger women to step aside, either. It suits our patriarchal culture to try and play the dis-privileged off against each other and to pretend that there's only enough space for a few. This isn't about women gaining at the expense of other women. This is about a system that builds in barriers for everyone who doesn't conform to that straight, white, able-bodied, male norm.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Tanith can't get a contract with major UK publishers, either. I find it... curious that men who were big in the 80s seem to have far less trouble being seen as 'still relevant' than women. Apparently as our bodies age, so does our talent.
I too take heart that writers like Nnedi Okorafor and Ann Leckie are doing well. I want them to enjoy long careers, and respect at all ages, too.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

C J Cherryh is still publishing and quite active on FB. She recently hit trouble with the outrage brigade for signing Dave Truesdale's petition regarding SFWA. I have little time for Truesdale, but the reaction to the petition made me wonder whether they're teaching anything resembling reasoning in schools these days. (Objecting to being told, in an increasingly doctrinaire fashion, what to say, is not the same as wanting to make intentionally objectionable remarks). Cherryh, who married her female partner last month, got it in the neck for being 'homophobic.' I suspect most of her readers will ignore this, however.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

She's very productive as a writer. But the reviewers and bloggers and critics seem to ignore her completely and, indeed, to have largely forgotten her contribution. Which is tedious.
I wasn't impressed by that petition but I ascribed it to US views on free speech, which seem to mean something to some of them that makes little sense to me.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

It made little sense to me as well until I started getting the cultspeak: last case was a week ago when a very angry woman had a go on someone's thread about how I think I'm so superior, and obviously an impeccable judge of character, and a victim-blamer.....because I had said that in my travels people had been kind to me and this was a matter of luck. This sort of thing is happening over and over and it is becoming a serious problem. The Right call it groupthink and they're right. It is trying to silence anyone who is female and departs from the current discourse, anyone who is from an ethnicity other than white (particularly Hispanic and Jewish) and departs from it, or anyone who is anything else and departs from it. The only person addressing this coherently from the left, IMO, is Will Shetterley, and if supporting Will makes me persona non grata, so be it. I find myself incapable of agreeing with something that I think is dangerous and wrong. What are we replacing the patriarchy with? More of the same, plus (usually) a vagina.

[anna-wing.livejournal.com]

In certain internet circles there are definitely Rules for how 'Persons of Colour' and especially 'Women of Colour' should be, from which they depart at their peril.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

Of the 'evil empire', about which the more egregious elements of the social justice crowd get all atwitter, Larry Correia is Hispanic, Sarah Hoyt is Portuguese (and female, obviously), and Theodore Beale is of Hispanic extraction. I have seen posts suggesting that they're 'not really' Hispanic; I can only conclude that the disquieting fact that not everyone of a particular ethnic origin or gender agrees with their 'allies' makes people's pointy little heads explode. Diversity is only allowed if it's an acceptably narrow diversity. It's relevant to this discussion because, once again, women are being told to shut up. I have to say that, although we don't hold similar political views, I find Sarah Hoyt's absolute refusal to be quiet, be a nice acceptably safe Hispanic person, and be told what she should think, highly entertaining.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I think there's a danger that US-specific models of diversity are being prioritised and presented as universal without noting how complex such things can be and how different cultures are from each other. I honour and support calls for diversity but I want them to work for everyone, not only for the subset who are mainly US or US-centred in their approach. I've certainly seen non-US writers of colour express concern about this and say that they feel excluded. The tendency some Americans have to define ethnicities in terms that are really about X-American rather than X makes this hard to talk about, too (I have no idea how Mr Correia, Ms Hoyt and Mr Beale actually identify but I would guess it's 'American' -- that's how they read to me, anyway. I'm not sure their ancestry is relevant to their views, either, at least not from those pieces by them I've read. I don't read them much because I find their politics and public opinions repulsive and wrong-headed.) And the same models arise around women. For good or ill, the US is currently dominant in sff and that has an effect. It's a mess and I am going to get shouted at for raising it here, too!
There's a small minority who behave unkindly in almost any situation. I find it hugely positive, though, that most of those who are active in trying to increase diversity are good people who are thinking hard about how to do the best they can for everyone.
I'm ambivalent about Will S. I've had interesting conversations with him in person and he has constructive things to say on class but at the same time he tends to the Old Left model whereby women's rights and the rights of non-whites should be subordinated to the wider struggle. Which doesn't work: it often compounds the problem. I've been there with the left wing men who are saving the world -- so get my beer, woman! They can't change conditions for us because they don't see them.
I will confess to an irrational prejudice against Ms Hoyt because I really didn't like her musketeers' books. This is very petty of me.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

No, Musketeers are important.

Will is heavily class-based, but I can see why because so much of America chooses to ignore it, so I suspect he feels that he needs to work extra hard to get the point across. I'm not old Labour although I do think there's a case to be made with regard to working class men having a rougher deal than middle class women. No one has ever suggested I go down a mine. If we still had them, mind you. But I concur with much of your point, having suffered at parties from Socialist Worker Boy at uni. Not sure some of the male allies are much better (I still haven't forgiven X at an Eastercon dinner for eating all my prawn crackers, for on such petty things are revolutions made in the breast of the resentful middle aged woman. First. World. Problems.).

Complete agreement about models of diversity. For example, I have had problems on other threads with Americans who cannot grasp that Brits do not see the Spanish as a separate and inferior ethnicity, but as a great naval power who put the wind up us with the Armada and whom we respect as fellow Europeans.

Beale: well, you know my view and so does he. Larry C: never had a problem with him. Again, his politics are not mine, but I don't in fact think that he's either racist or sexist, and he has some interesting things to say. The last private conversation we had was about the IT industry in Newport so, you know, I'm still quaking in terror.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I've never met LC. He took a potshot at me on twitter for being British t'other day, though, so I'm not currently impressed with him. And I haven't read his books, so I can't speak to that side of things. He wrote a piece this week about rape which was... Well, on the 'women should prevent rape by not doing X or Y or Z because some men will always be rapists' side of things, which I found tedious. I suspect him of not always thinking through what he says, maybe. But like many people, he may be more reasonable in person: the net does polarise things!

[dryadinthegrove]

I wonder if she's being ignored because she's pretty much only publishing in the Foreignerverse, which a lot of people are a) intimidated by and b) don't seem to like very much and c) don't seem to think it's particularly well written? I have to admit that even though I like the 'verse, I'm really ready for something different from her. I feel guilty writing that.

And I know, personally, ah...SFF fans and authors who find her work 'difficult'. By which I think they mean 'I don't like her writing because she doesn't explain everything and leaves it up to me to figure out what she means'. Maybe I'm the outlier, because I love that.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

That may be so, yes. But I also get a sense that a lot of people are surprised to learn she's still publishing: she's a big name of yesteryear in their eyes, not a current writer. I tend to contrast this with Brin, who debuted just after her, I think, but is still seen as Big and Important.

[dryadinthegrove]

She's in my Writer's Pantheon, and I was so very disappointed to see her name on that petition. That's when I decided to stop reading who else had signed up for it, because I can only take so much heartbreak.

Glad they finally got married, though!!