media world

J.A. Pak
Jul 09, 05:56pm

"Joanne Harris highlights sexism in the publishing industry in string of tweets" ~The Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/11726082/Joanne-Harris-highlights-sexism-in-the-publishing-industry-in-string-of-tweets.html via The Passive Voice

Mathew Paust
Jul 09, 08:33pm

This is criminal of me, I know, and lazy, too. Without reading the piece I will blurt with ill-considered audacity that the female scrivener of the species is riding high and handsome in the world of traditional publishing right now. **dons hardhat and flame-retardant suit, and dashes headlong for the thorn bushes**

J.A. Pak
Jul 10, 01:20am

Mathew, instead of hiding in the thorn bushes, how about considering

1. a greater percentage of men are being published (this includes books as well as magazines)

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/books-and-arts/82930/VIDA-women-writers-magazines-book-reviews

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/11/no-men-allowed-publisher-accepts-novelists-year-of-women-challenge

2. books about women are far less likely to win lit prizes

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/01/books-about-women-less-likely-to-win-prizes-study-finds

3. that women still find it necessary to take male names

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324355904578159453918443978

4. that SF/Fantasy books by women are more likely to "disappear" even though they were bestsellers when first published.

These are just a few things to consider and doesn't even address the condescending attitude that the Joanne Harris tweets talk about.

And from my own personal experience, I've recently realized that almost all of the stories of mine that have been published have had male protagonists.

Mathew Paust
Jul 10, 01:51am

I haven't studied this as you obviously had, nor do I have the time or inclination to read the articles you have linked here. Perhaps you are right. I was speaking from my readings of writers' blogs, most of them by women and none of them that I recall bemoaning a disadvantage in the literary world because they are female. Again, perhaps you are right, but perception counts for something too. I consider myself a a progressive-thinking feminist, but I believe my perceptions are free of bias one way or the other on this issue.

My remark about the thorn bushes was an attempt to allow a bit of insouciance into the discussion, because I've also learned from experience that discussions such as this tend toward an irony deficiency or, less flippantly, a lack of good humor.

If the perceptions you've indicated in these articles and tweets are substantive and can be documented in an objective fashion, I would hope to be among the first to say, goodness, I've been blind but now I see.

Perhaps coincidentally in this context the last four books I have reviewed on my blog and on Facebook, Amazon and Goodreads have been by female authors. I published the most recent of these about an hour ago. You may find it here: http://mdpaust.blogspot.com/2015/07/angel-in-concrete-book-report.html Incidentally in three of the books the protagonists are female.

J.A. Pak
Jul 10, 02:43am

Ah...I thought I was matching your insouciance. :)

And...if women show a lack of good humor in these discussions, perhaps this is because we're worn out and tired from fighting the same battles. I mean, the last time women were the privileged class was when fertility goddesses ruled. ;)

Mathew Paust
Jul 10, 09:07am

As I see it, the privileged class right now has more to do with material wealth than gender. No doubt this derives from a tradition of a male-dominant culture, but I see a progressive shift in the works that one can only hope brings about a saner, more empathic society. At the same time I hope we never surrender our mutual fascination for <i>la difference</i> in all its natural splendor.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 12, 11:05am

Mathew, you are right but you already know that.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 12, 11:06am

Except about the progressive shift,

It was Marxists that said that to destroy a society from within you first have to make it a matriarchal one. this is what is happening.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 12, 11:11am

What is going on in Glasgow right now is abominable is that police are going into bars and teaching bar staff how to spot potential sexual predators. It means if I go to a bar I am going to be immediately under suspicion just because I am alone and male. This is turning into 1970s East Germany where/when the Stazi ruled.

It is also anti-feminism because it is saying that women cannot look after themselves.

Mathew Paust
Jul 12, 11:36am

I agree with your last statement, Samuel. The prospect of any police state anywhere under any ideology is regressive. As to your first statement, if Marx said that he evidently had mother issues. It isn't sexual politics we have to fear. It's oligarchy, no matter the gender.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 12, 11:52am

I agree.

Iain James Robb
Jul 12, 06:10pm

I notice that in the article the writer highlights implied attitudes of male interviewers and not those of publishers, except for quoting one rejection note. But the fact she became a bestselling novelist regardless shows the lack of bias. Progressives like to assume a patriarchal conspiracy afoot in publishing and criticism prior to the twentieth century as the reason for so few canonised female writers, but there were actually a myriad of female novelists, in Gothic writing especially, prior to the twentieth century among many writers of Regency romances and the best of these are still with us and are still highly regarded. The most criminally ignored and out of favour writers and poets up until this century, people like Swinburne, DG Rosetti and Hart Crane, are invariably males. There were a large amount of pre-twentieth century female poets, but very few great ones, and they were generally overvalued on account of chivalric puffery the same as they are nowadays under PC. In Britain, we have the awful Cultural Marxist publisher Bloodaxe, which in spite of affirmative action supposedly being unlawful in Britain, though it's still practised regularly among the arts and media, keeps a deliberate 60 percent fixed quota of female writers on their roster which their editor has insisted should be the case for other publishers. But this sort of thing mostly is. It's been statistically recorded even by The Guardian that women now make up the large majority of journalists (straight from one-sided Gender Studies courses), published novelists and published poets. The quota-system involved here has been admitted to by everyone who uses it. I stopped submitting to the small press that used to print me once they switched to an all female editorial panel and started rejecting the work of most of the males who were submitting. There are all female poetry anthologies and magazine issues all over the place, but none for men, and that's in addition to also finding it normally much easier to get printed, because the arts and media in Britain are overwhelmingly run or subsidised by the Left Wing. They find it easier to win prizes. And the majority of printed female poets in Britain have little to no talent, since the only reason they've been printed is in order to push repetitive programmes of misandrist cant and matriarchal propaganda. Of course, and this is not really a gender-specific concern either, the Left Wing has never been especially good at poetry, which is an art form associated less with collectivist ideal than individualist imperative; it just happens however that modern women in Britain are more inclined than men to be Left Wing. The UK is a totalitarian PC state, that is overly geared towards the interests of programmers of matriarchal conditioning, and this is evident in the publishing industry. Part of the reason I've found it so very difficult to get printed over here, and I know this as a fact, is not just that I have no contacts, but that I hold the view that politics should have no place at all in poetry, in addition to my being male.

Mathew Paust
Jul 12, 08:00pm

And let us not forget Michiko Kakutani. Please.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 12, 11:28pm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michiko_Kakutani

Gary Hardaway
Jul 12, 11:40pm

If women were allowed to rule, we would soon run out of complaints because things would work for almost everyone except the shits who remember their time as rulers and have to talk about about God and other male bullshit.

Gary Hardaway
Jul 12, 11:42pm

Why are the Scots here such infantile misogynists?

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 12, 11:47pm

Can anyone say MANGINA????

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 12, 11:50pm

I'm not sure if Gary is parodying (seems like it but I sadly do not think so) but it is so transparent that when anyone dares to criticize modern feminism you automatically get labeled a misogynist, kinda like when any non-Jewish person dares to criticize Israel they automatically get labeled a anti-semite.

These charlatans can only resort to ad hom.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 12, 11:54pm

Anyone who believes this:

"If women were allowed to rule, we would soon run out of complaints because things would work for almost everyone except the shits who remember their time as rulers and have to talk about about God and other male bullshit"

is fucking insane add would have really fitted in at Jonestown run by Jemima Jones.

It's just passing on to another plane, yes but what about Russia? What about the poor little children?

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 13, 12:02am

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkookcrAnSE

Mathew Paust
Jul 13, 12:19am

Samuel, Gary is a master of droll, satiric irony.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 13, 12:23am

Mathew, I hope so because I quite like his poetry.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 13, 12:43am

This is cool:

http://www.irishexaminer.com/world/quirky-world-101-year-old-woman-falls-hard-for-abseiling-342096.html

Gary Hardaway
Jul 13, 01:09am

Boys, I'm dead serious about wanting a matriarchal society. Men have failed miserably. Perhaps eliminating 95% of the males right now would be a good start towards saving humankind. Followed by decanted children ala Brave New World.

Chris Okum
Jul 13, 02:26am

A world run by woman would be just as horrifying as a world run by men, just in a different way. Anyone, whether they be male or female, who desires power and control over other human beings is prone to indulging in their basest, most atavistic desires. That's just human nature. And it's human nature that is the glitch in the system. I'm hoping maybe the post-humans will be able to do a better job than we, but I doubt that too. Now, would men, as a whole, deserve a taste of what they've been dishing out since time immemorial? Absolutely. That would only be fair, wouldn't it? When a man goes outside alone at night he's not afraid of being attacked by a woman, is he? Is there any man anywhere who feels that way? Maybe they're afraid of other men, but women? Women, on the other hand, live with a constant dull throbbing anxiety concerning their safety, as well they should, because there are a lot of lonely, rage-filled men out there. When men feel as unsafe around strange women as women do around strange men then we will be at the very beginning of squaring away our debts to each other.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 13, 04:38am

The only reason that men don't fear physical attacks from women (walking down a deserted street, down a dark alleyway etc) is because most women are not physically endowed enough to exert prolonged physical attacks or to have the physical upper hand.

The only reason that men do not have to fear rape (from women) is that hetero women control who has sex and who doesn't, so they have much more power over men when it comes to sex. It is perhaps possible that if men (like women) could decide who they wanted to have sex with and who they didn't, if they were in the sexual driving seat there would be a lot less rape crime from men and maybe more cases of sexual molestation from women.

I disagree that men who commit rape are lonely and rage-filled, I am slightly lonely ( more in the sense that I would rather be living in another planet) and am often rage filled but I am mostly incapable of violence (except in self-defence) I think rape is committed for other more complex reasons, men who rape are often married, have good jobs and have good social lives.

Running an advert on the telly telling men not to rape and "training" bar staff how to spot sexual predators (sexual predators are a lot more devious and a lot less transparent) is definitely not the answer, that is just going to demonize men like me who want to occasionally go out to bars and drink and perhaps socialize (not with the intention of meeting a female, I find very few females sexually attractive and I am totally hetero)

In the same way that women are all for the right to abort their unborn children perhaps there should be a campaign by men to legalize prostitution??? I myself would not go down that route but I know that there are men who would benefit from it immensely, as therapy etc. This could be in a controlled environment, there would be strict safe sex procedures in place and it would all be very professional.

I know there is a leftist belief that women go into prostitution because they are oppressed, that may be in some cases, as in peddling their wares on a dark street, but there are lot of young female students who are escort girls and there are a lot of older ones as well.

The Fems would be against it, they invented the BS of male sexual entitlement, there is no female sexual entitlement because as I said before, women are in the sexual driving seat, men are at the mercy of women when it comes to sex.

I think if a woman has the right to abort her unborn child then a man should have the right to have sex under controlled legal terms and I know there are women out there that would provide that service, sex after all is natural and is part of the human condition, a man going without it for a long period of time is not a natural state.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 13, 04:40am

I am aware that I at times appear to be contradicting myself but that is only because the subject is so complex.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 13, 04:44am

And do not forget that very few men commit rape. I know there is a propaganda campaign in the UK to make believe that there is a rape epidemic, and unfortunately there are a lot of people who watch Eastenders as part of their routine and so will probably believe the BS.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 13, 04:53am

And what happened to the statistics (modern fems always love statistics) that most rape is committed by men their victims know, that they are not in fact strangers.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 13, 05:02am

http://www.returnofkings.com/10624/the-mosou-a-matriarchal-dream-or-aberration-of-history

And here is a comment I found regarding Communism and Feminism:

Communism in Eastern Europe ended in the late 80s and early 90s. That is basically 25 years ago now.

It was already crumbling in the mid 80s. Mired in secret police and terrible human suffering. This of course installed a more male - female societal role precisely because the society was so unsafe and insecure.

Furthermore anyone born post 1980, has not grown up with much living memory of communism AT ALL. They have grown up in what is termed the robber baron economy, which is similar to the USA 1800s... wild west, Rockefeller etc.
compares pretty well with the Russian Oligarchs and set up today. It's an immature capitalist goldrush type society where those well placed and aggressive end up super wealthy. A Man's world. !

This is absolutely unsafe and male dominated... So basically any chic from Eastern Europe and Russia under 30 is well polarized as a female.

There was a time in the 50s, 60s and 70s, when female Russian Athletes and even females in the military, female scientists, female soviet artists were uber feminist. They of course didn't have to get on a soap box for their status, it was government mandated, so their attitude to men was more one of indifference than open hatred and shaming. Also the more basic technology back then limited the female capabilities. Today a female is more able to be equal because the technology is much more advanced. A small girl can drive a huge truck or a tank now it's all electronic, but not until 10-15 years ago.

None the less communism and feminism are bred from the same stable. Anything preaching equality is essentially a social disaster waiting to happen.

Equality means dragging everyone down to the lowest level. Pure equality means we would all have to live as blind, deaf, dumb quadriplegics, with Parkinsons, Downs syndrome and AIDS. - or something like that you get my point.

If you ask me, whether by accident or design the communists actually won the cold war. The Tai Chi master collapses in the face of the aggressor, providing no resistance, so that the aggressor's own force is all that is needed to make him fall over and lose.

USSR is gone, and America is collapsing under the weight of the military industrial complex it built to fight the cold war. Like a huge body builder all puffed up against Karate Kid's grandpa... grandpa steps out of the way, gives him a gentle tap in the right place and the big proud American guy is on the floor...

The socialist / feminist / communist agenda implanted by the KGB is the tap... we're screwed.

Obama has us $18 Trillion in debt... It was failed economics that killed the USSR, it will be failed economics that justifies all out socialism once again, as the so called democratic system that is strangled with the military industrial complex, installs all manner of secret police and control mechanisms to try to keep themselves in power.

The redpill is not just about 'game' - it's about the world finally over throwing communism and socialism.

Give it 10 years and the redpill guys will be the resistance fighters... trying to bring down the insane KGB style government that has led the world into a global version of the USSR. You will afraid to post on a forum like this incase someone knocks on your door.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 13, 05:17am

And one last thing before I leave this thread alone:

I lost my virginity when I was 29 to a woman with whom I was having a relationship, when I was 23 a woman picked me up in a bar and took me back to her apt, she wanted to have sex with me and I refused and told her that just because she was lonely and I was lonely it was not reason enough to engage in sexual intercourse, perhaps if she had the physical upper hand I would possibly have been the victim of rape.

There are lot more men like me than there are evil sexual predators, they are not the norm.

Iain James Robb
Jul 13, 08:51am

My last comment here as well. I got positively harrassed by a female on Twitter who was responding to my attempts to debate with her with a slew of ad hominem comments, including her insistence on me adopting my 'sexist' attitudes were down to me not getting laid, when I dared to criticise a UK publisher on The Independent's Twitter page for taking the decision to print only female novelists for a solid year. Some of the Tweeters felt this to be a 'necessary' thing and declared that these kinds of measures were long overdue. I personally didn't, for reasons I've already been into earlier. The editor had helpfully mentioned why she felt justified in doing so, and had posted an image of her favourite books by women over the previous year to give an example of 'superior' female literary quality. They were mostly PC feminist tracts, even when disguised as fiction. There has never been such systematic bias in the history of Western literature against the promotion of female writers by either critics or editorial boards composed of males. I remember one tweet that summed up the incoherent attitude of the person I was trying to have a reasonable debate with, that "social justice is not about equality, it's about levelling the playing field", which is all you need to know really, and an entirely predictable attitude: except that the playing field at the moment in UK publishing is not exactly weighted in favour of men. Naturally, levelling it in favour of merit as opposed to quota would be a start in giving us the only equality we need.

Mathew Paust
Jul 13, 10:49am

I'm with Chris in this debate. I agree with Gary that men have fucked things up and that a feminine approach to certain priorities is apt to correct our (humanity's) course for a spell. But at base we are all still predators. This was the theme I tried to satirize in my novel Sacrifice.

Iain James Robb
Jul 13, 06:58pm

I'm with Chris as well, except to say that men are statistically more at threat when walking down the streets at night from other men than women. Sexual assault has been on a statistical decrease over the last ten years in Western society and was never an especially massive threat in the first place. I've personally been assaulted by drunkards for doing nothing more than walking down a street at night, and men still make op the largest numbers of cases brought into emergency wards who've been victims of unprovoked violent assaults. Apologies for the incoherent grammar of my last post, but there's no edit function here.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 14, 05:05pm

Everyone needs to dabble in humility a bit more.

Matt Dennison
Jul 16, 06:50pm

Write stuff people want to read.

No one gives a damn what's between yer legs.

Nonnie Augustine
Jul 17, 12:05am

Hmmm. Well the tweets are funny and spot on. I read them, you see. Thnaks, J.A. Pak.

J.A. Pak
Jul 17, 01:41am

Thanks for reading, Nonnie. Another sobering fact, this time from the Pew Research Center: "Men, for the most part, still run newsrooms".

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/07/01/men-for-the-most-part-still-run-newsrooms/

J.A. Pak
Jul 17, 01:55am

Here's some good news! Young women dominate the social media dept in media. But that's it. Interesting points in this article from Matter:

https://medium.com/matter/the-pink-ghetto-of-social-media-39bf7f2fdbe1

And two viewpoints:

1. '“If social media gets more credibility, you are going to see men pushing women out of leadership roles,” she says. “That’s what happens in every field once it becomes more institutional.” Historically, it’s been easier for women to dominate spaces that men don’t want to be part of.'

2. 'Wallpaper’s associate editor of Audience Daisy Alioto doesn’t see things quite so bleakly. At just 23 years old, she held the title of director of social media and analytics at the International Business Times. Alioto thinks that part of what’s great about working in social media is that a lot of the old guard media men don’t get it, and in their ignorance, give young women carte blanche.' (Ah, to be young and optimistic!)

Matt Dennison
Jul 17, 04:07am

Write stuff people want to read.

No one gives a damn what's between yer legs.

Mathew Paust
Jul 17, 08:49am

Depends on how cute the legs.

Matt Dennison
Jul 17, 06:54pm

Varicose veins and shriveled white hairs aside, my legs are very cute.

Still doesn't guarantee me publication of 51% of what I submit.

(it must be because I'm a man. *sigh*)

Carol Reid
Jul 17, 11:04pm

J.A., I read the tweets mentioned in the article and the comments and questions Joanne Harris refers are (sadly) predictable and tiresome. Your word, "banal", fits perfectly. My own view is that female writers are doing pretty well these days, working hard, producing great work and getting published in the small, medium and large presses. I was pleased to read this morning that Sarah Hilary won the Theakstons Old Peculier award for best crime novel of the year with her debut novel. Who ever knows whether statistics are accurate, but I've read that female writers dominate the mystery genre, which ( I believe) is the most read and profitable genre of all.

I think the biggest problem remains ( as suggested by your link above) that successful female writers are not taken as seriously ( by poor interviewers) as successful male writers, that they and not their male counterparts have to "juggle" their domestic and parental duties to include their work as writers. This is just weird and outmoded thinking. In young families I see ( I'm thinking 40 and under) everyone is juggling these days.

I'm feeling generally optimistic that things are improving for female writers, that they are reaping the fruits of their labour. Interviewers like those mentioned in the tweets need to wise up.

J.A. Pak
Jul 18, 03:12am

Publicizing the raw data does seem to be helping. The latest VIDA count showed improvement in magazines: http://www.vidaweb.org/2014-vida-count/.

Mathew Paust
Jul 18, 12:16pm

Twitter is another indicator of gender trends in publishing, as seen in the hashtag groups for pitch contests. Some examples: #mswl (manuscript wish list), #pitmad, #pitchmas, #pbpitch, #writepitch. Young adult fiction seems to be most popular now, which might be another indicator.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 19, 03:55am

Twatter?

Robert Vaughan
Jul 28, 02:14pm

I highly recommend a great book, the latest by Lidia Yuknavitch called The Small Backs of Children. 'Nuff said. (P.S. She was interviewed on the Fictionaut blog recently).

Charlotte Hamrick
Jul 28, 03:00pm

Lidia is a talented writer and I enjoyed her interview here so much, Robert. I can't wait to read this new book.

Here's a link to an article relevant to this thread, if the boys care to spend a few moments reading it:

https://www.guernicamag.com/daily/rebecca-solnit-men-explain-things-to-me/

An excerpt:

"Being told that, categorically, he knows what he’s talking about and she doesn’t, however minor a part of any given conversation, perpetuates the ugliness of this world and holds back its light. After my book Wanderlust came out in 2000, I found myself better able to resist being bullied out of my own perceptions and interpretations. On two occasions around that time, I objected to the behavior of a man, only to be told that the incidents hadn’t happened at all as I said, that I was subjective, delusional, overwrought, dishonest–in a nutshell, female."

Mmmmmm-hmmmmm.

J.A. Pak
Jul 28, 05:37pm

Mmmmmm-hmmmmm, indeed.

There was a recent Twitter hashtag: ‪#‎GrowingUpAGirl‬. My contribution was: Being called a radical feminist by the guys because I raised my hand in class. Now I don't raise my hand; I just shout it out. Radical.

J.A. Pak
Jul 28, 06:30pm

Apropos of the silencing of women/women's experience, from today's NYT:

Publishing a Female Marine’s Silenced Dissent

By C. J. CHIVERS 9:19 AM ET
Lt. Col. Kate Germano was relieved of command at Parris Island in June, and the Marine Corps Gazette killed her article, “When Did It Become an Insult to Train Like a Girl?” It is published here.

http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/28/lt-col-kate-germano-on-the-marines-and-women/?_r=0

James Lloyd Davis
Jul 28, 08:57pm

Personally, I believe the fiction writer cannot afford to be a gender specific creature, any more than he or she can afford to be age or culture specific. If a male writer cannot get into a woman's perspective and, conversely, a woman cannot understand a man's point of view, their fiction will often be one dimensional and, frankly, wanting.

It takes courage to project beyond your personal experience, but that's the beauty of fiction, in that it travels beyond boundaries. Your mind is not limited to personal experience because the creative experience demands and expands imagination.

Fiction is the great leveler because it functions on the level of the mind and not through physical expression. But there are those who would say, "Only women could possibly understand this." Or, "Only a man can possibly tell you about that." If such were the case, our literature would be lifeless, arrogant, and dull.

Mathew Paust
Jul 29, 08:22pm

Well said, JLD. And as it appears we are engaging in a bit of cyberlink jousting, here's an interesting one: http://tinyletter.com/thecrimelady/letters/the-crime-lady-032-women-crime-writers-the-website

James Lloyd Davis
Jul 30, 06:19pm

Yeah, but it doesn't address the thread. I figure no one is ever going to change the status quo of any inequality without addressing it in real time.
Good example: Gessy Alvarez is carrying her project to new and different levels.

http://diggingthroughthefat.com/letter-from-the-editor/

Mathew Paust
Jul 30, 09:53pm

Good project, Gessy's. As I see it the gender parity issue for most hangs on viewpoint and perception. Statistics can be subjectively arranged and interpreted. I have all I can manage keeping my own mind open and, I hope, progressive.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 30, 10:02pm

Statistics is the feminist's best friend.

Sam Rasnake
Jul 31, 12:52am

"The socialist / feminist / communist agenda implanted by the KGB is the tap... we're screwed." - sounds a bit Dr. Strangelove to me, Samuel. I know you believe it, but I don't.

Statistics for NY Times Notable Books (fiction & non-fiction) each year... 1998-2014 list

(1998) nearly 2 1/2 times more men
...
(2004) nearly 3 times more men
...
(2008) nearly 2 times more men
...
(2011) nearly 3 times more men
...
(2014) a 50 / 50 split

Historically, in this country, men have dominated the literary scene... not because they were better writers, but... becsuse they have dominated the scene. This, no doubt, parallels most every aspect of our culture. As a father of a daughter and a son, I find this repugnant, cruel, and a crime. It's against every moral bone in my body.

The same historical evil in the US is even more evident in terms of race, but that's not the focus of this thread or the NY Times list. That needs to bein another thread.

Finally, things are starting to change, but just starting to. And not fast enough for me.

I'm filtering Dylan now... "something is happening, and you don't know what it is..."

http://thesocietypages.org/graphicsociology/2015/01/28/the-new-york-times-notable-books-and-gender-equity/

Gary Hardaway
Jul 31, 01:12am

Misogyny is in the DNA of all human culture at this point. Eliot and Larkin could make a bit of art of it but it is as pervasive as racism and the hatred of the poor. I feel a triple burden of guilt: Male, white, Southern- an ugly trifecta.
Until we behave differently, we will never change
the patterns in our social cells.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 31, 01:55am

You would have fitted in at Jonestown.

Sam Rasnake
Jul 31, 02:01am

Male, white, Southern - my ugly trifecta as well, Gary. But we know it, we say it, and that's a start. I absolutely agree with until we behave differently.

I don't drink Kool-Aid. That's an acquired taste I don't have.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 31, 02:05am

And Sam, that's BS.

Name me a female that is as good as Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, Blake, Hopkins, Crane, Ginserg, Coleridge, Whitman, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Wordsworth, Yeats, Byron, Poe, Tennyson, Frost, Longfellow, Browning, Cummings, Auden, Neruda, Eliot. Thomas, Donne, Homer, Owen, Alighieri, Milton, Chaucer, Pound, Emerson.

They just don't exist. The likes of Dickinson and Vincent Millay and a select few of others are anomalies.

It is down to communism/socialism/politcal correctness thats aays otherwise.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 31, 02:06am

Men suffer differently from women, men look inward and create, women seek refuge in other women.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 31, 02:11am

I know I'm not going to make any friends here with what I have just said but I don't give a shit. I've always been a loner anyway.

And I'm not on Facebook or Twitter either.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 31, 02:12am

And there are female writers on this site whose work I admire but I am NOT going to name them.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 31, 02:18am

Hardaway would have been a taker at Jonestown. Rasnake would have been a dissenter but might have give in to peer pressure at the end, like that woman who asked about Russia and questioned the purpose of feeding cyanide to little children

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 31, 02:22am

They would have to have put a fucking bullet in my head.

Sam Rasnake
Jul 31, 02:24am

For one thing, Franz Kafka, Jack Gilbert, Rumi are better writers than any on your list.

I'll add Elizabeth Bishop and Flannery O'Connor- also better than the writers on your list.

So, men create and women look inward. Don't agree. Never did, never will. But, we have the right to disagree. Sojourner Truth didn't have that luxury.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 31, 02:30am

So you mention Kafka, Gilbert, Rumi as being better writers as if that diminishes what I am saying?

LOL.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 31, 02:32am

Bishop better than the ones I mentioned?????

Hardaway is calling you, he needs you to assist the administering.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 31, 02:37am

And I never said that men create and women look inward, I said that men look inward and create, and that women seek refuge in other women.

Sam Rasnake
Jul 31, 02:54am

You've right, Samuel. That was my mistake. Your implication by word choice is that men create and women do not. I won't drink that Kool-Aid, no.

If you want to argue that Blake or Poe Crane is a better writer, you could probably gather some ammunition. That could be a good discussion. But Frost, Owen, Ginsberg. Please-

But again - literary tastes are subjective and beyond real proof. It'll leave it with I trust my tastes and not yours.

Sam Rasnake
Jul 31, 02:59am

My typos are absurd - thanks to the auto-check on my Kindle. Sorry.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 31, 03:09am

I know. We are really down to apples and oranges.

I really respect Matt Denison, he told me 99 percent of my stuff is shit, I naturally don't agree with him ( and he really pissed me off) but I still respect him for the audacity of saying so. Now if I were female I could have easily dismissed him as being a misogynist.

There is a female on this site who writes about ex-boyfriends coming over her tits and whose work I don't admire and think is shit, she still gets about 17 favs for everything she has put up so I know it is pointless to criticize her work and so I don't.

The difference between me and Matt is that he names and is direct. I am still somewhat of a shitbag. I'd rather ignore than say anything neagative.

This bs stuff about sexism in publishing is what it is, bs. It is socalists and communists and feminists that are currently control as to what gets publshed and what doesn't. It is really Misandry that is in control.

There are 2 female poets in my top five favorite writers so the likes of Hardaway can blow me.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Jul 31, 03:27am

I want people to disagree with me, I just don't want to be labeled something I am not just because I don't agree.

Chris Okum
Jul 31, 04:30am

General Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk... ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake, children's ice cream.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: [very nervous] Lord, Jack.
General Jack D. Ripper: You know when fluoridation first began?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: I... no, no. I don't, Jack.
General Jack D. Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Uh, Jack, Jack, listen... tell me, tell me, Jack. When did you first... become... well, develop this theory?
General Jack D. Ripper: [somewhat embarassed] Well, I, uh... I... I... first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Hmm.
General Jack D. Ripper: Yes, a uh, a profound sense of fatigue... a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I... I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Hmm.
General Jack D. Ripper: I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women uh... women sense my power and they seek the life essence. I, uh... I do not avoid women, Mandrake.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: No.
General Jack D. Ripper: But I... I do deny them my essence.

J.A. Pak
Jul 31, 06:54am

To the list of great writers, I would add these women:

Wisława Szymborska, Anna Akhmatova, Willa Cather, George Eliot, Murasaki Shikibu, Anne Carson, Ursula Le Guin, Octavia Butler, Zora Neale Hurston, Adrienne Rich, Angela Carter, Alice Munro—the list goes on and on. Pretty good considering that for most of history, women did not have access to education in the same way as men.

Iain James Robb
Jul 31, 09:43am

There are antecedents even further back in history, however: a few great poets such as Sappho and Chiyo. The nineteenth century was populated by a host of great female novelists and short story writers still read today, and the same century presented us with our language's best female poets. In my opinion, the real difference today is that too many publishers are printing people purely for being female, so it's going to be a long wait before we have another Doris Lessing or Angela Carter type of character. One need only look at every single female poet printed by Bloodaxe according to their self-admitted quota system. They are absolutely terrible. A total absence of artificial quota is the best way forward for the new generation of women, in a spirit of the same competitiveness men have always had to deal with, to be encouraged to create great art instead of gender-oriented material which is simply going to be accepted by publishers easily.

Sam Rasnake
Jul 31, 11:40am

Especially like Szymborska, Akhmatova, Carson, and Rich, as well as Lessing.

I would also add Jane Hirshfield, Mary Oliver, Jeanette Winterson, Toni Morrison, Natasha Trethewey, Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, Simone de Beauvoir.

Sam Rasnake
Jul 31, 11:59am

And Emily Dickinson, of course - no list of writers is complete if she's missing.

David Ackley
Jul 31, 01:32pm

Lady Murasaki, Marina Tsvetaeva, George Sand, Willa Cather, the Bronte sisters, Jane Austen,Edith Wharton, Nazdhezda Mandelstam, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Mary McCarthy, Carson McCullers, Madame de Sevigne, Anne Bradstreet, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, H.D.,Marianne Moore, Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, Kate Chopin, Grace Paley, Iris Murdoch, Jean Stafford, Muriel Rukeyser, Elisabeth Hardwick, Joan Didion, Hannah Arendt, Margaret Atwood. Julia Child( a personal taste.) Annie Dillard. Anyone can make lists, of course, and this one is hardly comprehensive, just women who I've read and appreciated.

Mathew Paust
Jul 31, 03:38pm

Oh, Lord, won'tcha buy me a Mercedes Benz...

Iain James Robb
Jul 31, 08:35pm

Sappho, Emily Bronte, Dickinson and Christina Rossetti top my list of female poets, as would Edna St Vincent Millais probably, except I've not read enough of her work to reach a definitive conclusion. I also like Marianne Moore.

Chris Okum
Jul 31, 10:52pm

Lydia Davis is a better writer than 99.99% of all men who have ever lived. As a husband of a woman and a father to two little girls I have to say that in my experience if I never hung around another man for the rest of my life it would be too soon. The Female species is the bees knees. Women are cooler than men and definitely funnier than men and tougher than men. I'm tired of inhaling all the testosterone fumes. Men exude nothing but anger and neediness to me. I find most men a whole lot more "womanly" (in the way that term is usually used, as a pejorative, which is not how I use it, but how most people do, so...) than almost all the men I meet or know or have to talk to out of professional courtesy. This is where I stand on this issue and my name is Chris Okum and I approve of this message.

Chris Okum
Jul 31, 10:54pm

That penultimate sentence makes no sense. What I meant: men's behavior in the 21rst century is the exactly opposite of masculine to me. They come across, mostly, as little boys, needy and whiny and always on the verge of throwing a snit fit. Bitches, in the parlance of our times.

J.A. Pak
Aug 01, 02:57am

David, I'm not surprised you mentioned Julia Child. Culinary literature is a great joy and underestimated. I've loved reading Alexandre Dumas, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, Claudia Roden, Madhur Jaffrey, Laurie Colwin. And, of course, Julia.

Charlotte Hamrick
Aug 01, 03:34am

I'm so glad to see this thread turned around into positivity and inclusiveness.
Life is short.

Sam Rasnake
Aug 01, 04:32am

And yes, yes, yes to Lydia Davis, Chris. Great writer.

James Lloyd Davis
Aug 01, 05:07am

"My list is bigger than your list."

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Aug 02, 01:16pm

"There are antecedents even further back in history, however: a few great poets such as Sappho and Chiyo. The nineteenth century was populated by a host of great female novelists and short story writers still read today, and the same century presented us with our language's best female poets. In my opinion, the real difference today is that too many publishers are printing people purely for being female, so it's going to be a long wait before we have another Doris Lessing or Angela Carter type of character. One need only look at every single female poet printed by Bloodaxe according to their self-admitted quota system. They are absolutely terrible. A total absence of artificial quota is the best way forward for the new generation of women, in a spirit of the same competitiveness men have always had to deal with, to be encouraged to create great art instead of gender-oriented material which is simply going to be accepted by publishers easily".

"Sappho, Emily Bronte, Dickinson and Christina Rossetti top my list of female poets, as would Edna St Vincent Millais probably, except I've not read enough of her work to reach a definitive conclusion. I also like Marianne Moore."

I agree with this totally. I'd add even Daphne Du Maurier and Agatha Christie to the list.

Why is it that all these past great female writers never went on and on about how women are oppressed and rampant sexism/misogyny etc etc??

I think there must be a reason.

Iain James Robb
Aug 02, 06:15pm

It's because great female writers at their respected periods had never heard of Radical Feminism, and so were taken seriously on their own terms because they sought to be universal. There is a definite feminine quality in Emily Brinte and C. Rossetti, but it's no more overbearing than the quirk of masculinity in Dante, say, or Wordsworth is. Though a bunch of these past great writers would qualify loosely as feminists, it's in the liberal centrist 'sexual identity and civil rights equality' sense the term used to have before PC took it over. Since then, a number of people who previously regarded themselves as feminists disassociated themselves from the third wave of the movement because they were basically libertarians. None of the great female writers of the past would associate themselves with Radical Feminism, which with its quota of cultural destruction and self-declared victimhood in order to claim unequal rights, and affiliation with totalitarian Marxism, is quite another thing entirely from a movement based on the principle of equal right to be judged by merit, as the Brontes for instance have been.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Aug 02, 07:41pm

All really excellent points. Most likely the most intelligent post to this thread.

Iain James Robb
Aug 03, 08:46am

Thank you. I have already covered these points in all three drafts of the essay book I'm writing, though. I just took a paragraph to make my point here as opposed to the pages I did previously.

Iain James Robb
Aug 03, 08:52am

The work of actual pre or anti PC feminists such as Simone de Beauvoir and Camille Paglia, or the relationship based porn of French director Ovidie, a feminist who declares herself anti 'modern feminist', would seem completely alien to those who think that being a feminist means being an anti-individualist and having to take part in a movement that takes Dworkin and Sarkeesian seriously.

Nonnie Augustine
Aug 05, 06:36pm

There will eventually be an end to this battle, because no one can win it. Women are out there in the world now, at least in a good deal of the world, and there is no way to reverse this, is there? I can’t think of one. Women can’t be tucked back into the second class compartments on this civilization train. Margaret Atwood thought the issue through and came up with an ingenius plot for the men (white, educated, prosperous) in a part of the so-called first world to subjugate everyone else (women got the worst deal, but young, poor, minority men got screwed by the tyrants, too.) The bad guys planned and executed their plans, everyone suffered for awhile, and then all hell broke loose, of course. No. There will have to, finally, come a time when we stop noting “firsts” i.e., the first woman to…the first black to…the first Latino to…etc.,.
We will either proceed as human beings without this nonsense or our species will be sucked into the quagmire of hate and bias and drown. No winners.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Aug 05, 07:40pm

"the quagmire of hate and bias and drown"

you mean the world?

Mathew Paust
Aug 05, 08:04pm

Well, I ain’t a-gonna grieve no more, no more
Ain’t a-gonna grieve no more, no more
Ain’t a-gonna grieve no more, no more
And ain’t a-gonna grieve no more

Come on brothers, join the band
Come on sisters, clap your hands
Tell everybody that’s in the land
You ain’t a-gonna grieve no more

Well, I ain’t a-gonna grieve no more, no more
Ain’t a-gonna grieve no more, no more
Ain’t a-gonna grieve no more, no more
And ain’t a-gonna grieve no more

Brown and blue and white and black
All one color on the one-way track
We got this far and ain’t a-goin’ back
And I ain’t a-gonna grieve no more

Well, I ain’t a-gonna grieve no more, no more
Ain’t a-gonna grieve no more, no more
Ain’t a-gonna grieve no more, no more
I ain’t a-gonna grieve no more

We’re gonna notify your next of kin
You’re gonna raise the roof until the house falls in
If you get knocked down get up again
We ain’t a-gonna grieve no more

Well, I ain’t a-gonna grieve no more, no more
Ain’t a-gonna grieve no more, no more
Ain’t a-gonna grieve no more, no more
I ain’t a-gonna grieve no more

We’ll sing this song all night long
Sing it to my baby from midnight on
She’ll sing it to you when I’m dead and gone
Ain’t a-gonna grieve no more

Well, I ain’t a-gonna grieve no more, no more
Ain’t a-gonna grieve no more, no more
Ain’t a-gonna grieve no more, no more
I ain’t a-gonna grieve no more -- Bob dylan

Nonnie Augustine
Aug 05, 11:41pm

oh, man, oh man, I love dat man. xxoononnie

Gary Hardaway
Aug 06, 03:50am

Nonnie, I am not optimistic about there ever being an evening out of things across gender, race, class. I don't think we have that much time to become an admirable species before we inherit the extinction our environmental stupidity grants as our deserved reward.

Nonnie Augustine
Aug 06, 04:15am

Um, Gary. Maybe at best its a toss-up, eh?

Ann Bogle
Aug 06, 04:35am

Passionate thread. Nice to see it and read the answers. Today is a good day because I feel most like myself at my present age. Some days I feel like someone else, such as Arthur Miller, when I am pacing in the living room and dining room, that are very small as rooms go, by the way. Let it go! Feeling like myself again is almost the only important goal, more important even than writing my 70s novel that I long and enjoyably envisioned.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Aug 06, 11:57am

I am confident that the Reverend Gary Hardaway and his band of dutiful disciples shall one day usher in the utopia where all are equal and everything is as boring as hell.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Aug 06, 12:03pm

Will the casual murdering of unborn children and bias towards women in child custody cases still exist in that utopia? HMMM

Will a man still be thrown into jail just on the hearsay of the woman who falsely accused him of rape?

Will women who physically attack men be dealt with in the same way as men who physically attack women?

Will children in kindergarten (without the consent of the parents) be conditioned into believing that homosexuality is a natural thing and something admirable?

Will nagging be classified a punishable crime?

And lots of other questions.....

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Aug 06, 12:33pm

There are women that are more equal than other women.

There are men who are more equal than other men.

Women are more equal than men in some ways.

Men are more equal than women in some ways.

There is never going to be equality, not in the way the poisonous Cultural Marxists would want.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Aug 06, 12:58pm

And to address this ridiculous thread once and for all:

1. a greater percentage of men are being published (this includes books as well as magazines)

Says who? The Guardian? You just have to read the literary magazines and supplements in broadsheets to know this is a blatant lie.

2. books about women are far less likely to win lit prizes

Maybe they're just not that interesting?

3. that women still find it necessary to take male names

Rubbish

4. that SF/Fantasy books by women are more likely to "disappear" even though they were bestsellers when first published.

Ludicrous.

You can't just make claims and accusations and provide as proof other claims and accusations (that happened to turn up in feminist websites and newspapers with a Marxist and feminist agenda such as the Guardian)

JK Rowling wrote a crime novel using a male psuedonym, it did not sell very well and got poor reviews, until it was exposed that it was Rowling who wrote it and then it sold a hell of a lot more copies and got better reviews, lol.

Mathew Paust
Aug 06, 03:09pm

How the hell does that old saw go again...? Oh yeah: "If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging." - Will Rogers

Charlotte Hamrick
Aug 06, 04:30pm

Stop feeding the troll, y'all.

Nonnie Augustine
Aug 06, 05:38pm

Wow. I had no idea.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Aug 06, 11:40pm

Troll?

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Aug 06, 11:43pm

I was going to add to this but im gonna wait until im sober

SDR

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Aug 07, 02:21am

Mathew, I would have picked It's all over now Baby Blue.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Aug 07, 06:16pm

I went pub-crawling with a couple of lesbians last night and I feel somewhat liberated, they didn't have anything nice to say about radical feminism.

That's the thing, whenever I come across radical feminists they don't seem to have a personality and they are always hostile, not very nice people. These 2 women last night were sweethearts and I even got one to slap me on the face, I just asked her to do it and she did, not too hard but hard enough.

Iain James Robb
Aug 08, 08:16am

You should have asked her to spank you, Samuel. It is rather pleasurable.

Mathew Paust
Aug 08, 07:50pm

I think I've stumbled into the wrong bar...

Gary Hardaway
Aug 09, 02:25am

Christ, even when SDR pledges to shut the fuck up, he doesn't. Or can't. Self control issues, obviously.

Mathew Paust
Aug 09, 05:26pm

Can we go with irrepressible spontaneity?

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Aug 10, 01:09am

Gary is a pussycat and Mathew is a St Bernard.

Mathew Paust
Aug 10, 03:30pm

Only if I get to keep the brandy.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Aug 11, 04:40pm

You carried it up the hill, if it's anyone's it's yours.

Mathew Paust
Aug 11, 10:28pm

Hey, I don't care what they say, you're not so bad!

James Lloyd Davis
Aug 13, 04:43pm

I hadn't noticed this. What fun these boys are having... dipping girl's pigtails in the inkwell, so to speak. Is misogyny more popular than football in Glasgow? Or less? Puerility and virility sound somewhat similar, so I can understand how some fellows might get these qualities confused.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Aug 14, 03:37pm

That word again.

Iain James Robb
Aug 14, 05:43pm

I love women. The word 'misogyny' is basically a third-wave feminist catchphrase meaning 'agree with us or else.'

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Aug 14, 06:05pm

Yeah. I don't have any respect for women, I don't have any respect for men, I do have respect for individuals, some of them women, some of them men.

:)

Chris Okum
Aug 14, 06:22pm

If masculinity is a performance than the current performance of masculinity being enacted by straight white men all over the world is like some unholy combination of James Dean and Robert Bork. And tangentially, I always thought that one of the great unmade camp classics would have been Dean as Hamlet as directed by Joseph Losey with an updated setting of a coal mining town in West Virginia.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Aug 14, 07:14pm

Second part of your post would be worthy of a poem or short story.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Aug 14, 07:15pm

I find straight white men these days to be a little too pussified.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Aug 14, 07:22pm

Call it James Dean as Hamlet Directed by Joseph Losey.

SCENE I. West Virginia. A truckstop before Devils Fork

Chris can write the rest.

Mathew Paust
Aug 17, 03:17pm

Hey "boys," check out the discussion thread on Fictionaut's Facebook page. This is becoming the summer of discontent. I would hate to see anyone else get expelled. https://www.facebook.com/groups/562814007195304/

Iain James Robb
Aug 17, 07:51pm

I've been staying well out of any friction here regardless. I once got suspended on another site I used for merely complaining that my posts were being moderator-deleted on a thread concerning modern feminism, where I wasn't even being particularly critical or argumentative; my posts were simply being deleted after I'd been criticised for joining in on the discussion while being a guy. I'm not allowing myself to say anything that could be misconstrued to my disadvantage here, and haven't in any case said anything amiss.

Sally Houtman
Aug 17, 08:35pm

For the love of GOD

will someone drive a stake

through the heart

of this thread

(the horse was dead WEEKS ago!)

Chris Okum
Aug 17, 09:03pm

YAH! YAH! YAH! DIE FUCKER! DIE! YAH! YAH! YAH!
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