Forum / Wikipedia Novel Gender Kerfluffle

Lynn Beighley
Apr 25, 01:42pm

I imagine most of you have heard about the Wikipedia classification of Novelists vs Women Novelists:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/opinion/sunday/wikipedias-sexism-toward-female-novelists.html

It won't stand, I imagine it's already being corrected. I think it's surprising that it happened in the first place. But it does make me wonder if many readers only read books by one gender versus another.

Gone
Apr 25, 02:34pm

"But it does make me wonder if many readers only read books by one gender versus another."

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Hell no.

I think the average reader could care less about the author's gender, color, age, photogenic quality, sexual preference, religion, or any other qualifier you can imagine. These considerations are more representative of the conntinuing influence of marketing on publishing, a factor that still lives under the impression that the author is a defining factor in the commercial success of a book.

No doubt, there are readers who prefer their authors to be male or female... and even those who drill down to the point that they like their authors to be sexually appealing, but I try to avoid people like that, since they usually sound like John Travolta's character in Saturday Night Fever.

"Would ya just watch the hair. Ya know, I work on my hair a long time and you hit it. He hits my hair."

Wiki, on the other hand, is a database that should use every subset possible in the process of object subset classification. PC outrage in the area of database manipulation and navigation is just damn silly.

Does sexism exist? Absolootely, but the intelligent reader is more interested in content than mystique.

Lynn Beighley
Apr 25, 02:41pm

"Wiki, on the other hand, is a database that should use every subset possible in the process of object subset classification. PC outrage in the area of database manipulation and navigation is just damn silly."

In this case, female novelists were being removed from the Novelists category. That is not just PC outrage. It's someone making a judgement that a particular author was a female novelist before being a novelist. Stupid decision by people who weren't thinking rationally.

Gone
Apr 25, 03:12pm

Maybe, but the assumption speaks to motivation rather than the act, which is, in itself, a huge bias. You question, however, asked about what the reader thinks and if they have similar bias, which was the greater part of my response.

I'm not here to pick a fight or to combat feminism, something I've never done. PC ourage? It's only my opinion and I could be wrong, but I think we live in a time when outrage is the new 'opium of the masses.' Discussion is difficult and sometimes impossible when the words themselves can be a minefield.

Lynn Beighley
Apr 25, 03:17pm

No, no fight. I am genuinely interested. I confess that I often have an awareness of the author's gender, but it never dissuades me from reading. Nor do you. I think you pegged it with this:

"Does sexism exist? Absolootely, but the intelligent reader is more interested in content than mystique."

Sam Rasnake
Apr 25, 04:19pm

One more reason never to visit Wikipedia.

Charlotte Hamrick
Apr 25, 05:15pm

Exactly, Sam. Anyone can open a page on Wikipedia.

Joani Reese
Apr 25, 10:38pm

Imagine being a Black, Arabic, Asian, female writer... It's ridiculous that we feel the need to categorize individuals by gender, race, culture because it's so much easier to keep track of them and to delineate them from "us." The slow decline of white male supremacy in western culture is dying publicly and not without a fight. Knee-jerk categories like this, which I'm almost sure no one actually gave a lot of deep thought to before creating them, are the symptom of a larger problem.

Lynn Beighley
Apr 26, 12:07am

Can we back up a minute? I've been thinking more about this, and not even taking Wikipedia into account (which seems to immediately discredit any reasonable discourse)*

Okay, so you pick up a book. You notice the author is someone you've heard of who has a completely opposite take on an issue that you do.

Or you think the author's fabulous memoir is a lie

Or your experience of a certain horror is much more intimate than said author's

Or the author espouses a religious belief you find repugnant

Or you've noticed that in general you like male authors better than female ones

How does your knowledge of the author influence your interpretation of the work?

And should the author's bio be part of the reader's interpretation of the work ? Only if the work is non-fiction?

Sorry for the palaver. How does what you know about an author influence how you read that author's work?

*I think we're naive if we discredit wikipedia because it's a crowdsourced environment. In the end, aren't classic works those which achieve a broad acclaim that allow them to linger and attain legendary status? And, well, aren't we writing to be read? I am. I am.

Sam Rasnake
Apr 26, 02:02am

In terms of how and why I read:

I want to separate the work from the writer. The work is, absolutely, more important than the writer. The writer's bio should not be connected to my interpretation - no matter the genre.

I do realize, however, that magazines, print and online, don't seek to publish works ... they to publish writers - but that's not how I think it should be. Works first, writers second.

I also understand your point on Wikipedia, Lynn - and it's a valid one - but I take the other view ... that crowdsourced environments only delegate the now - and that they do effectively. That acclaim, while present and active now, will not necessarily last. Time is the great leveler.

I do hope that I'm read, but that's not why I write.

Joani Reese
Apr 26, 02:30am

I rarely pay any attention to who an author is when I bring stacks of books home from the college library as entertainment. I never read their bios first. I rarely read bios at all. I only remember an author's name if I like what I have read and want to read more--Sometimes, I even forget that and have to "google" one of the characters' names to find out who the author is so I can find another book to read. I, too, am pleased when my work is read, but that reason, like Sam's, is also not why I write.

I don't like when writers make themselves and their personal lives the subject of their promotions in order to sell their fiction or poetry. I suppose a memoir requires the writer sell their intimate information to some extent, that's an inevitable part of writing in that genre.

Generally, I don't care what a writer's personal views are, and they don't influence how highly I value the work--Eliot was antisemitic for most of his life, Pound was a fascist and insane (sometimes), Joyce was a complete narcissist, and Plath and Sexton both damaged and cranky people. I don't care about this. I care about their work. To paraphrase Eliot--Writing is not the expression of personality; it is an escape from personality.

We may live in a culture fawning over full/half/wanna be celebrity and one big commercial television shows like Entertainment Tonight and American Idol, but I don't have to buy into the cult of personality.

Gone
Apr 26, 03:43am

The beauty of a novel is that we never have to know anything about an author's life to enjoy the richness of their fiction. The perfection of the artistic mind in full flight therein transcends the author's truth as through the seduction of words and story, he or she tells us a whopper...

It's a process not unlike the magical transformation of ordinary people into anything they need to be at closing time in any old gin joint in any little town or any big city in all the mumbling world.

Love the Eliot quote.

Charlotte Hamrick
Apr 26, 04:52am

I completely agree with J.Reese (sorry,I don't know your first name or maybe it is J.?). I choose to read a book mainly on the recommendation of my friends. I rarely even know what book or author is on the top ten bestsellers. It's only recently that I've begun to pay attention to the authors because of 2 or 3 whose work I find to be extraordinary. I don't care about bios or the private lives of authors - I only care about a story well written and engaging and I don't care if the author has written 20 books or only 1.

However, I do find it a bit discouraging that any venue - even Wikipedia - separates women novelists from American novelists. The gender or race or ethnicity or sexual orientation of a writer is irrelevant UNLESS you, as a reader, are seeking a specific type. In that case, it's not hard to find your preference and we don't need some misguided drone doing it for us.

Sam Rasnake
Apr 26, 10:56am

Elizabeth Bishop was once asked to contribute a poem to an anthology of women poets, and she refused, stating that she wanted to be recognized and read as a poet because of the work and not because of her gender.

Any source that, like Wikipedia, removes female novelists from the novelists category is making a backward and wrong move. And the same would be true of any genre of writing.

Matt Potter
Apr 26, 12:04pm

OK, I tend to (that's tend to, not exclusively) prefer female novelists ... but with non-fiction, of course, it's the subject.

Gloria Garfunkel
Apr 26, 01:31pm

When I was a rigid radical feminist in the early seventies, I divided my book collection between men and women (fiction). The male students who moved me into my apartment couldn't believe it. Margaret Atwood was at the top of the list. If I read a man, it was Henry Miller. Second female was Colette and third Doris Lessing. I had plenty to read with the females. I felt they deserved my attention more. Now I'm not so young, naive, stupid. I don't think twice about book gender. There are so many more factors. And the male authors have gotten less sexist.

Gloria Garfunkel
Apr 26, 01:38pm

Being Jewish and writing on Jewish themes, I find the Wikipedia Jewish writers list useful. It mixes men and women, yet still has a category of female Jewish writers for whatever reason.

Gone
Apr 26, 04:00pm

We are not isolated intellect, but an amalgam of flesh, mind and spirit. We can choose to embrace our identity in terms of faith, gender, race... or we can ignore it, the latter being a way of peace.

This brings to mind a book I'd like to recommend, Charles Johnson's 'Oxherding Tale.'

The taboo of words, the denial of identity, these are the byproducts of exclusion and bigotry, a necessary purge of words and perceptions will follow, I suppose, but it makes me sad whenever the language includes scar tissue with a hair trigger response.

The link below perfectly, if profanely illustrates a point I'd like to make... it's a clip from the film, Lenny, with Dustin Hoffman in the title role. It beautifully portrays one of Lenny Bruce's old stand up routines... please note that it's hard to listen to at first, until you 'get it,' get through to the point of it... until you 'dig-it.' It's a point to be considered, but if you are easily offended by dark, profane satire, don't watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOnkv76rNL4

stephen hastings-king
Apr 26, 05:14pm

the problem lay with the removal of women's names from aggregate lists and not with the creation of the separate lists, yes?

it seems goofy, and it's entirely possible that this reflects a reflexive sexism on someone's part...but i wonder (without knowing anything for sure) whether it followed from the application of some rule or another geared toward reducing duplications. i work with academic databases so understand something of the endless hunt for duplicates and how rules can be applied with mechanical enthusiasm.

btw i agree with lynn that it is naive to simply dismiss wikipedia because it is crowdsourced. you simply have to read it critically. but that's true of any source.

fact is that wikipedia is often more transparent than are more conventionally "authoritative" sources about controversies concerning political viewpoints and/or categorization and so on.
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