Thanks to the good folks at The Outer Alliance I have found a new blog that promises to cover LGBT-themed fantasy novels. It just has an introductory post up now, but I’m sure more will come. And if you have a book to promote… (hello, Roz?)
Feminism
Question Design – Help Please
I’m hoping that I have a few helpful academics amongst my readers here.
As I guess most people know, a lot of research in various fields revolves around questionnaires. You get this in politics, in marketing, and in sociology. The matter of questionnaire design is therefore important, because badly designed questions can bias the results, right?
Now suppose you are designing a survey to measure public attitudes towards something, say science fiction. It seems to me self-evident that if your questionnaire is relentlessly negative about the subject then you will a) encourage a negative response and b) leave your respondents with a more negative view of the subject than when they started. To illustrate the point, here are two short sets of questions.
Neutral Questions
On a scale of 1 (low) to 5 (high) please rate the following:
1. How intelligent are science fiction readers compared to readers in general?
2. What is the quality of writing like in science fiction compared to other fiction?
3. How likely are you to want a science fiction reader as a friend?
Less Neutral Questions
One a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) please indicate how you feel about these statements:
1. Science fiction readers are stupid people who live in fantasy world.
2. Science fiction books are very poorly written.
3. Science fiction readers are dull, boring people with poor personal hygiene.
See what I mean?
I’m sure that someone, somewhere has done research into the comparative effectiveness of these two strategies. But finding that research isn’t easy, and an academic who has inherited the “less neutral” methodology from previous work in the field isn’t going to be able to challenge those previous methods without proof that they are suspect. Has anyone out there ever done any work on questionnaire design, or read any work on it, that might help?
Of course the survey I’m actually interested in isn’t about science fiction readers, but I think you can probably guess what sort of social minority it is still viewed as acceptable to study in this way.
Ignorance at Work
Following trans-related groups online means that I get to see quite a few surveys aimed at or about trans people. I try to fill them in because I feel that gathering data is generally a good thing to do. Every so often, however, you see a survey that is so bad that you quickly come to the conclusion that whatever results it produces will be a waste of time because the people who put it together have no idea what they are doing.
Today I discovered this survey. It was created by Drs Daragh McDermott and Poul Rohleder with the assistance of Ashley Brooks of Anglia Ruskin University, whom I name specifically because I think they need to be publicly shamed for an appallingly shoddy piece of work. It purports to be a survey about prejudice against trans men and women, but it is pretty clear from the poor way that the few questions actually about trans people were worded that the originators of the survey have no understanding of what “trans men and women” means beyond what they might have read in the pages of the Daily Malice. Given the survey’s obsession with aggressively negative questions about gay men and feminism, and the way in which it appears to try to lead respondents into expressing prejudice against both, I strongly suspect some sort unethical agenda at work here.
Sadly it is quite a long survey, so I don’t want to encourage you to do anything with it. Also I don’t want you to get to the end feeling as angry as I did. My only consolation is that “Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells” will be as upset about the waste of taxpayers money on this nonsense as I am.
Pride In Our Past
As I think I have mentioned before, I have got involved with a local LGBT History group, Out Stories Bristol. I’m pleased to report that we should be getting a grant of over £20,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund to put on a exhibition in Bristol next year (we’ve had the notification of approval, we just need to go through the formal process of accepting that grant and officially starting the project). That of course means that there is work to be done, and part of that work is to see what other people have done and learn from it. Consequently today I headed off to Plymouth with a couple of colleagues to see Pride In Our Past. The Plymouth team have done a fine job, so it was a very worthwhile trip.
The only downside of the day out was that we traveled along one of the most beautiful railway routes in the world in weather that was more suited to midwinter than midsummer. I’ve stopped off in Darkest Somerset to visit my mum and it was chucking it down here when I arrived. Summers: we no can haz them.
Congratulations, Ma’am
Via various sources today I learned that April Ashley is to be awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list for services to transgender equality.
That’s thoroughly deserved, April, and many thanks once again for all you have done.
(Photo shamelessly borrowed from the excellent Monica Roberts.)
On The Radio
As Twitter followers will know, I was on Bristol Community Radio today. A few weeks ago I was honored to be asked to help interview Livvy James, an 11-year-old trans girl who had been hounded by the UK media. This was part of the Shout Out Bristol show. You can find the whole program here. There is some news stuff first, but a large proportion of the middle of the show is given over to the interview.
My thanks to Mary the Producer for inviting me onto the show, and to Livvy and her mum, Saffy, for being such amazing people.
(Please note: if you come to this post more than a week after it was posted then you will need to scroll down on the Shout Out page. They don’t provide direct links to individual shows.)
Summer Mslexia
The summer edition of Mslexia crashed through my door this morning and I’ve been reading it over lunch. There are several things worth noting.
First up there’s an excellent article on horror fiction by Sarah Pinborough. It includes a very positive review of Feed (and therefore a mention of the Hugos).
Also Bidisha interviews Sarah Hall, whose The Carhullan Army won a Tiptree. Bidisha is careful to use the term “speculative fiction” and to compare Hall only to respectable writers such as Margaret Atwood and PD James, rather than, say, Ursula Le Guin or Joanna Russ. Hall, however, is having none of this. She says, “I was really embraced by the science fiction community and invited to loads of conventions. It was great.” Thank you, Sarah!
Finally there is a long feature article by Suzi Feay about the lack of new lesbian writers in the UK. Feay is judge for the Polari Prize, which is a debut writer award for LGBT-themed work. She says that they are having trouble finding any lesbians (or at least anyone who will admit to being a lesbian) whose works they can judge. In comparison there’s no shortage of books by and about gay men. Even trans writers are more common than lesbians (though of course some of those may be lesbians).
There’s a short version of Feay’s article on the Guardian website. The longer version in Mslexia has interviews and goes into more detail about possible structural issues in UK publishing that may make it difficult for lesbians to get published. It was all very reminiscent of recent discussions about how hard it is for women SF writers to get published in the UK. It is starting to sound like if there is any way in which women writers deviate from gender expectations then the UK publishing industry won’t take a risk on them. There are, of course, good reasons for that, and for why there are no small presses taking up the slack, but I won’t bore you with economics right now.
What I will do is make a quick survey of the SF&F community. Writing in the US we have Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, Nicola Griffith, Kelley Eskridge, CaitlÃn Kiernan and Ellen Klages, to name but a few. There are plenty of gay male writers in the field too. In the UK we have Geoff Ryman, Patrick Ness and Hal Duncan. I’m struggling to think of a lesbian SF&F writer. (And my apologies if I have forgotten someone obvious).
Of course this year we’ll see a debut novel from Roz Kaveney, Rhapsody of Blood. I suspect that Polari will class her as a trans writer rather than a lesbian, though of course she is both. I’ve read some of the book and it is awesome. If all goes well I’ll get an ARC tomorrow. Here’s hoping that both the Polari and Green Carnation prizes take notice.
Kiev, St. Petersburg and LGBT
When Cat Valente and I tweeted enthusiastically about the prospect of a St.Petersburg Eurocon we immediately received replies condemning us for considering visiting a city that had passed an oppressive anti-LGBT statute. Now it seems that Ukraine is about to follow suit with a similar law to those being adopted in Russia. So, what is one to do?
As ever, these things are much more complicated than they appear on Twitter. To start with, Ukraine is about to play co-host to the Euro 2012 soccer tournament, and the UK papers are therefore full of stories about what a hideous place it is. This happens every time a major soccer tournament takes place overseas. There are few things the British tabloids like more than encouraging their readers to think poorly of foreigners. So my cynicism filters are turned up to the max right now.
Secondly I’m not convinced of the utility of sending petitions to foreign governments. I know how people here would react if there were a Twitter campaign aimed at discouraging the UK from passing a law that had popular support. It may make more sense to lobby our own governments to put pressure on their peers.
But my main concern is the effect boycotts can have on the people on the ground. Let’s not forget that many people credit developments in telecommunications for helping bring down various dictatorships. From fax machines in Soviet Russia to mobile phones in the Arab Spring, the ability of oppressed peoples to see how their lives might be different, and to organize themselves, has allegedly been crucial to effecting change. It is also believed that in the past science fiction was used by writers to avoid censorship when they wished to protest against dictatorial governments. Refusing to attend a convention in a country because its government has repressive policies may only succeed in depriving ordinary people in that country of support that they desperately need.
Then again, there’s the safety issue. As I understand it, these laws forbid public displays and mention of LGBT activities. So for a lot of people there’s no great danger unless you go with a partner and are very obvious about it. Those of us who are LGBT advocates, on the other hand, are more likely to be known by the authorities. And of course it is pretty much impossible for a post-op trans person to not be publicly trans. You might not be noticed by those not in the know, but you are very definitely doing it, all the time.
So I have a dilemma. I’d love to go to Kiev, and to St. Petersburg if it happens. I want to help fans in those cities become more of a part of the international community. But at the same time I have the real concerns of fellow LGBT people to think about, the possibility that my attendance will get the convention into trouble with the authorities, and my own safety to consider. It’s complicated.
Introducing Roller Grrrls #BristolExpo
By far the most interesting thing I found at the Bristol Expo over the weekend was a new comic from my friend Gary Erskine. Together with Anna Malady, Gary is creating a series set in the wild and wonderful world of Roller Derby. They are not ready for launch yet, but it is very clear from the preview art (see their Tumblr) that the series will both be a lot of fun and address real social issues. I don’t know much about Roller Derby myself, but Gary and Anna talked enthusiastically about the support they had received from people involved in the sport in the UK. This post on the website of the Cardiff team is a good example.
For more news, find links to your preferred social media network here. And here’s some sample artwork.
In Which #PanelParity Rocks #BristolExpo
Much of my weekend was spent in Bristol at the Comics Expo. I was delighted to be asked to be on two panels, the first of which was on Saturday and was about the latest developments at DC and Vertigo.
This is the first time I have been on a panel at a comics convention, and I gather from talking to Paul Cornell that such things, especially when about a major comics company, tend to be very corporate. Well, we didn’t have any official DC presence at the event. Also we were doing Panel Parity, and neither I nor new friend Stacey Whittle have contracts with DC. So we did something else instead.
On the panel with me were Paul, Stacey, Mark Buckingham (the lead artist on Fables) and Ian Churchill, a British artist who had some fabulous sketches with him from a new DC book, The Ravagers. (You can see more of Ian’s work here). Discussion ranged far and wide. We talked about the New 52 re-boot, about the various feminist controversies (including the bat-bonking and the boob window), and although the boys had to mutter “Non-Disclosure Agreement” occasionally it all went very well.
Along the way Mark and Ian got into some fascinating discussions about art techniques. I was rather surprised that my question about the implications of double-page spreads for an audience reading on iPads caught them both on the hop, but Mark responded with some interesting suggestions as to how comic art might change in a paperless world.
The audience seemed very happy. We got them involved and I was interested to see that they were in favour, by quite a large majority, of the New 52. Those who were unhappy were mainly mourning the loss of well-loved characters. Paul and I were delighted with how many people came up to us afterwards and said how much they’d enjoyed the panel.
Paul, of course, talked about Saucer Country, which inevitably led to discussion of anal probes. I gather that Paul hasn’t yet had a visit from the Men in Black, though as Stacey pointed out he wouldn’t remember it if he had.
Ian, of course, talked a bit about The Ravagers. I am deeply disappointed that DC didn’t go for his butterfly-winged version of Beast Boy. I’ll check the book out when it launches as I really love his art. (And while I’m on the subject, thanks to Tansy for recommending Earth 2, because Nicola Scott’s art is fabulous too.)
I also got Mark to talk a bit about the new fables spin-off, Fairest. Ostensibly this features all of the famously beautiful characters from the series, and from the Adam Hughes cover below you could be forgiven for thinking that this was just an excuse for “good girl art” (a comic-world technical term that means “big boobies”). However, the first couple of issues mainly feature Ali Baba (who is rather cute) and a imp called Jonah who is very clearly a geek kid and therefore amusing and annoying in equal quantities.
What’s more, the whole point of Fairest is to provide a vehicle through which other writers can explore the Fables universe. One of the first people to do so will be Lauren Beukes. Oh dear, people are going to die horribly, aren’t they…
Footnote: Paul introduced me to Stacey. She said, “You are a science fiction person? You must know James Bacon then.” There may have been giggling.
The Aurealis Awards
While I was talking about DC and Vertigo comics in Bristol, much excitement was happening in Sydney where the annual Aurealis Awards were being handed out. The full results are available here (PDF), but I want to highlight three particular winners.
The Science Fiction Novel category was won by Kim Westwood for The Courier’s New Bicycle, while the YA Short Fiction category was won by “The Nation of the Night” by Sue Isle from her collection, Nightsiders. Both of these books feature positive and sympathetic portrayals of trans people as the central characters in the story. This makes me very happy indeed. Thank you, Australia. And thank you Kim and Sue for writing such great stories.
Congratulations are also due to my pals Alex, Alisa & Tansy at Galactic Suburbia who have done so much to promote interesting writing about gender. They won the Peter McNamara Convenors’ Award, which is given to people who have done something spectacular for the SpecFic community that doesn’t otherwise qualify for an award.
Is Australian Fantasy Dominated By Women?
In all of the discussions about gender balance in SF&F, Australia has seemed to stick out as a counter example. Is that really the case? I asked Tansy Rayner Roberts to take a closer look at the issues. Take it away, Tansy…
Our industry runs on perceptions and, let’s face it, superstition. All manner of beliefs still do the rounds like gossip that never dies: from green books don’t sell and you must have a name on the A-F shelf to Boys Don’t Read Girl Books, SF is For Menfolk, No One Hires Proofreaders Any More and, oh how about:
Australian Fantasy Fiction Is Dominated By Female Authors.
Cheryl asked me to peck away at this particular perception, because it’s been raised several times in the Writer and the Critic podcast, usually as a throwaway, teasing comment from Mondy, followed up by a necessary jab of the Pointy Stick by Kirstyn.
Yes, it is a common perception in the Australian spec fic community, that our fantasy (itself the most healthy and flourishing of the spec fic genres) has more female authors than male, and certainly more women who have a substantial professional profile. But is it true?
Certainly we can see impressive representation by female authors across awards lists in Australia over the last few years. I was startled after winning last year’s Ditmar Best Novel (a community award voted upon by members of the National Science Fiction Convention each year) to realise I was only the sixth woman to have won it in the 40+ years of the award’s history. (Cherry Wilder, Lucy Sussex, K.J. Bishop, Margo Lanagan, Kaaron Warren and me, in case you were wondering) Those wins occurred in 1977, 1997, 2004, 2009, 2010 and 2011.
What a development! Four of those wins are from the last seven years, and the last three consecutive Ditmar awards have been won by women. Which suggests something big has changed, right?
The indomitable Mondy wrote his own post recently, looking at the pattern of Ditmars given to Australian spec fic writers over the last decade which includes not only the Best Novel category but the two short fiction categories too, and notes a definite shift in the pattern overall, from being an award that mostly honoured male writers to being one that mostly honours women.
But that’s just one award. Luckily, we have another! If you look at the Aurealis Awards, a jury-based award of Australian speculative fiction excellence which has been running since 1995, awarding a Best Novel prize annually across several categories including science fiction, fantasy and horror (as well as categories for children & young adult which I won’t look at for the purposes of this article), we have the following breakdown:
Best Fantasy Novel
Male authors – 6
Female authors – 13
Best Science Fiction Novel
Male authors – 15 (including 3 co-authors)
Female authors – 3 (including 1 co-author)
Best Horror Novel
Male authors – 6
Female authors – 8
In the last three years, when the Ditmar has been won by exclusively female authors, the Aurealis has also awarded Best Fantasy Novel to three women, while awarding Best Science Fiction Novel to two men and one woman, and Best Horror novel to two women and one man.
On the face of it, then, when it comes to local awards, we see that female authors are doing better than male authors in Australian fantasy fiction, but also that they are doing better in fantasy than in the other two speculative fiction genres.
Ah, but I hear you say, never mind awards! Answer the question! Is Australian fantasy dominated by women?
The trouble with the word ‘dominated,’ and the reason so many of us roll our eyes when it is trotted out, is that it has connotations of unfairness. If there is a dominator, then doesn’t that also mean someone is being oppressed? And indeed, that’s the reason I was hesitant to tackle this topic. The last thing I wanted was to give ammunition to anyone who wanted to throw stones at the women of the Australian spec fic community on behalf of its poor, oppressed male authors (most of whom, I should note, are not publicly complaining, at least where I can hear them).
The truth is that as long as Australia has had an active professional science fiction and fantasy publishing industry, female authors and readers have been a massive part of its success. While Australia has also had successful male authors in science fiction and in fantasy, we have never lacked for female role models; living proof that a) fantasy by women can sell in high numbers and b) fantasy doesn’t necessarily become less epic because of a female byline.
What’s really surprising is that it has taken this long for that success to be mirrored in the Ditmars (whereas you can see it reflected in the Aurealis results of the last 15+ years). The change, if this is a change and not an anomaly, may be found by looking at who are nominating and voting in the Ditmars, whether this demographic has changed or merely changed their reading habits. As I commented at Mondy’s blog: either Ditmar voters have begun to respect females, or readers who respect female authors have begun to vote in the Ditmars.
Rowena Cory Daniells has been blogging a regular series of interviews with female fantasy writers (and occasional men) on her blog, and one question she consistently asks is about their experiences with gender issues and fantasy — have they found fantasy & SF to be a boys club in countries other than Australia, and whether they think women and men write differently. It’s worth looking across the interviews because of the variety of responses!
Still, that’s still mostly talking about perception and anecdote, isn’t it? Let’s get back to some number crunching.
Tsana Dolichva was kind enough to compile some stats for me. Her data is based on the eligible works for the 2011 Ditmar ‘Best Novel’ which was an open wiki, and almost certainly has some texts missing, but should give us some good general information. Tsana looked at the gender breakdown across genres of all fantasy/SF/horror novels published by Australian authors, and then again with children and YA books filtered out to just look at the adult books. Her numbers include small press and self-published works, which combined provide a little over half the data. They also don’t distinguish between Australian and o/s publishers.
The results?
Tsana worked out that 55% of all published Aussie specfic books in 2011 were written by women, 44% by men, and 1% by other. When she looked just at the Aussie specfic written for adults in 2011, it shifted to 53% women and 47% men.
But we weren’t really talking about speculative fiction, we were talking about Australian fantasy. And what do the numbers (for adult novels) say about that?
62% female authors. A healthy majority, certainly, but I’m not sure it’s enough to justify the term ‘dominate’, and I certainly don’t think it’s a dramatic enough statistic to make people panic about the lack of menfolk, especially seeing it side by side with the gender statistics for science fiction and horror. Neither, of course, is it a dramatic enough statistic to explain the recent ‘DOMINATION’ of Australian spec fic awards.
What the numbers do tell us is that Australian Fantasy is NOT dominated by Male Authors, and that’s apparently something that makes us stand out from the international crowd. I’d love to see the gender number crunching pie charts for other countries to check against the perceptions we have about UK and US fantasy being dominated by men…
Many thanks, Tansy. For those of you not familiar with her work …
Tansy’s award-winning Creature Court trilogy: Power and Majesty, The Shattered City and Reign of Beasts, featuring flappers with swords, shape changers, half-naked men and bloodthirsty court politics, have been released worldwide on the Kindle, and should be available soon across other e-book platforms. If you prefer your books solid and papery, they can also be found in all good Australian and New Zealand bookshops.
You can also check out Tansy’s work through the Hugo-nominated crunchy feminist science fiction podcast Galactic Suburbia, Tansy’s short story collection Love and Romanpunk (Twelfth Planet Press). You can find her on the internet at her blog, or on Twitter as @tansyrr.
Equal Under The Law?
One of the supposed cornerstones of democracies is that we are all equal under the law. Rich people, of course, always have means of avoiding consequences, but once you end up in front of The Beak (that’s a judge, non-UK readers) you expect to be treated fairly. Well, some of you do.
You’ve doubtless all heard of the case of Trayvon Martin who was gunned down in Florida earlier this year. His killer, George Zimmerman, claimed that Martin had attacked him and he had acted in self-defense. Martin was armed with a hoodie, some iced tea and a packet of fruit candy. The local authorities initially declined to take any action against Zimmerman. Florida is one of the parts of the US that has a “Stand Your Ground†law that protects people acting in self defense.
As a comparison, consider the case of trans woman CeCe McDonald. Last year she and some friends, all African-American but not all trans, went out to buy groceries in Minneapolis. As they passed a bar a gang of white people began yelling transphobic abuse at them and attacked them. CeCe had a glass smashed in her face which cut her cheek. The group ran, and were chased down the street by their assailants. At some point, CeCe decided that enough was enough. She took a pair of scissors out of her bag and stopped. Dean Schmitz charged at her, was impaled on the scissors, and later died.
The reaction of the Minneapolis authorities was very different to that in Florida. CeCe was arrested and charged with murder. Yesterday she accepted a plea bargain for a charge of manslaughter that carries a custodial sentence of 41 months. Well, she did kill someone while trying to defend herself, and Minnesota does not have a Florida-style Stand Your Ground law. But it is the way the trial was conducted that shows how the justice system can be perverted.
Firstly it is entirely legal in Minnesota to remove someone from a jury because they are LGBT. The assumption is that such people would be biased against decent, upstanding citizens, and in favor of, well, people like themselves. So CeCe would be facing a jury comprised entirely of straight cis people. Then there’s the matter of what evidence would be presented. Judges, at least in Minnesota, have quite a lot of leeway in defining what they deem relevant to a case. CeCe had a previous conviction for passing a bad check, and the prosecution was planning to mention that as evidence of her criminal nature. Schmitz had three previous convictions for assault. They were all domestic abuse cases. He had attacked his ex-girlfriend, her father, and her 14-year-old daughter. He had a swastika tattooed on his chest. He judge refused to allow any of this to be mentioned in court. He also refused testimony from an expert on the dangers faced by local trans people. Some of Schmitz’s friends, who would be standing as witnesses, had convictions for theft. Again the judge refused to allow this to be mentioned.
There’s a lot more in this article at Bilerico, but the basic fact is that CeCe could either accept 41 months in jail, or go to trial on a murder case that was clearly being stacked against her by the judge, and expect a 40-year sentence.
You might ask why she chose to defend herself. Wasn’t that a little unwise? Well, here’s what happens to trans people who don’t defend themselves. On Sunday night Brandy Martell and two friends were sat chatting in Brandy’s car in Oakland. Two men came up and talked to them. The fact that the women were trans was mentioned. The men went away. Some time later they came back with an automatic weapon and opened fire. The two other women got away, but Brandy died from gunshot wounds.
It took until yesterday (Wednesday) for the San Francisco Chronicle to run an article on the murder. Kudos to Laura Anthony of ABC News who appears to have been the only local journalist from a major outlet to cover the story the day after the murder. As the Daily Kos put it, “Transgender Woman Murdered in Oakland. Nobody Caresâ€.
One thing we can conclude, of course, is that Brandy and her friends were not prostitutes. It would have been all over the media had there been any evidence of that. In fact Brandy worked as a peer advocate at the TransVision center in Fremont, the Bay Area city where Kevin and I had our home. I wasn’t much involved with the local trans scene when I lived there, but had I been I would have met Brandy, possibly known her as a friend.
Well, you may say, that’s America, and Oakland at that. And it is true that people don’t wander around the streets with automatic weapons in every country. But don’t assume that the sort of official manipulation of the justice system that happened to CeCe can’t happen anywhere else.
Felix Wamala is a gay man from Uganda who is seeking to stay in the UK, where he has lived since 1995. He has been in detention since 2010 when his request for asylum was “lost†by the Home Office. Uganda is a country where instituting the death penalty for homosexuality has been seriously discussed in parliament recently. The British authorities have already tired to deport Felix twice, once on December 24th and once on January 2nd. I’m not sure why the previous attempts failed, but there have been cases of pilots refusing to accept such deportees onto their planes on humanitarian grounds. Another attempt to deport him will be made tomorrow. Note that all of these actions have been timed for holiday weekends.
Felix has been trying to get his case reviewed. A post on the LGBT History month blog explains what happened.
But there are further signs that Felix has been strait-jacketed in terms of his appeal. First, he cannot challenge the Judicial Review of the 22nd of March because he has not been provided with the deportation order on paper that he needs to appeal against. Second, a 14 year rule application that he made on the grounds that he has lived here for over 14 years, and which he sent to the Home Office with the correct funds was returned month ago with the funds returned. It was then refused on the grounds that he had not provided “sufficient funds†to secure the application!
The Borders Agency has also said that they can’t grant him asylum because he can’t prove to their satisfaction that he is gay. One wonders how he is supposed to do that. So much for fair treatment under the law.
If you are white and a UK citizen things are probably a bit different, but even so I’m not inclined to take chances. My sole brush with the courts was almost 20 years ago, and thankfully it wasn’t anything that might have resulted in a criminal conviction. Nevertheless, like CeCe I quietly took whatever the judge chose to throw at me. I well remember my lawyer saying, “There’s no justice in British courts for people like you.†Since then we have had the Gender Recognition Act, so hopefully things are better, but I’m not going to assume that.
Women In Comics: Japanese Edition
So, “everyone knows” that there are no women comics creators, right? That’s why it is unthinkable that there should be any female guests or panelists at comics conventions. We wouldn’t want Mark Millar to catch a nasty case of Girl Cooties now, would we? (Actually he’s done a bit better this year, but I note that Paul Cornell couldn’t negotiate panel parity so he isn’t doing panels.)
Anyway, that’s here in the West. Japan is different. Japan doesn’t think that comics are just for boys. And last week Moto Hagio, one of the most respected manga creators, was awarded the Medal of Honor (Purple Ribbon), which I gather is the highest honor that a creative person can get in Japan. (It’s a bit like getting an OBE, complete with audience with the Emperor.) I found out via a follower on Twitter this morning, but Anime News Network did report it.
Moto Hagio is a three-time Seiun winner in the Best Comic category. It looks like a lot of her work features m/m romance. If I wiggle my nose I may be able to summon Jonathan Clements who can doubtless tell us everything about her.
Major Trans Rights Breakthrough In USA
This morning my Twitter stream was full of rejoicing from the far side of the Atlantic thanks to a major breakthrough in trans rights. Here’s what happened.
The story began when Mia Macy applied for a job with a government agency in San Francisco. She was extremely well qualified for it, and was given the post, but she had applied in her male name and, when she explained that she would be transitioning prior to taking the job, the offer was withdrawn and someone else appointed. Mia and her partner tell their story here.
The good people at the Transgender Law Center took up they case, and they referred it to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission requiesting the right to sue for sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yesterday they were granted that right.
This is a landmark decision in two ways. As the NTCE explains, this will be of huge help to people in states where the local state government has refused to pass protection laws for trans people. There is now a federal decision that applies to such cases. In addition the EEOC has recognized that discrimination on the grounds of gender is still discrimination, regardless of how well or poorly the person in question conforms to the gender binary, which is a major philosophical victory.
I had the pleasure of meeting Masen Davis and his colleagues at TLC a few years ago, and interviewed them for Press for Change. I was very impressed by them then, and am even more so now. Well done folks, that’s a huge breakthrough you have achieved.
I should add, by the way, that Mia’s story is far from over. Yesterday’s ruling only gives her the right to bring a case. Given the EEOC’s ruling, it is highly unlikely that she would lose, but even then there’s the question of whether she then wants to take up a job with an employer that despises her. While she has helped make life better for thousands of other trans Americans, there’s no guarantee of a happy ending for her. Hopefully someone will find her skills attractive.
In Which I Meet Awesome People
Today I was off to Bristol again, for a rather special meeting. Mary the Producer from Shout Out had asked me to help with an interview that she was recording for broadcast later in the year. The interview subject was Livvy James, an 11-year-old trans girl who has become a bit of a media celebrity in the UK, and who I have written about before. I wasn’t there to ask questions, or indeed speak much. Mary is a very capable interviewer. But I guess my presence would have helped reassure Livvy and her mum, Saffy, that the show was trans-friendly, and also if any issues came up about the wider trans community I could offer expertise that Mary doesn’t have.
Although Livvy and Saffy have been in great demand in the media since they hit the headlines last year, we were the first LGBT show they had ever been on. As such, we provided them an opportunity to set the record straight in a number of ways. For example, Livvy didn’t suddenly decide to become female last year. As with many trans people, she had known from a very early age that her body and identity didn’t match. She’d been living as a girl at home since the age of 7, and only pretending to be a boy when she had to leave the house. Livvy and her family never had any intention of becoming media celebrities. They were outed to the press by the parents of other children at Livvy’s school, and have been dealing with the fallout from that ever since. They have never asked for payment for a media appearance.
Listening to the interview, I was struck by how similar Livvy’s experience was to my own, and yet how different. When she talked about hating having to wear boy’s clothes, about wanting to play with toys that are deemed “for girlsâ€, or about her fear of puberty, that could easily have been me. And yet here she was, living as a girl, with a wonderfully supportive family, and with a promise of medical intervention when she needs it to save her from the ravages of testosterone.
I can’t blame my parents for this. When I was Livvy’s age, hardly anyone in the UK had heard of trans people. It wasn’t until the April Ashley divorce case hit the headlines in 1970 that I even had a word to describe what was wrong with me. Had I acted on that knowledge, the medical profession would probably have told my parents that I needed to be sent to an asylum so that I could be “curedâ€. And because they would have wanted the best for me, they would have agreed. The world is very different now.
Meeting Livvy, I can’t imagine how anyone who encounters her can fail to see how happy and comfortable she is as a girl. She’s every inch the “little princess†that parents dream of. But she’s also incredibly brave, determined and selfless. She and Saffy talked about how they saw their unfortunate outing and subsequent notoriety as a gift that enabled them to talk to a wider audience and help other families in the same situation. Of course, like all other representatives of minorities who finds themselves in the public eye, Livvy and Saffy tire of the constant need to explain to the clueless. One day soon, I hope, they will be able to retire gracefully and let someone else carry the load. But in the meantime they are amazing ambassadors for the trans community, and we are very lucky to have them.
I don’t know, as yet, when the interview will be broadcast, and the end result will only be about 15 minutes of the hour plus we spent talking, but I will let you know when it is online. And Mary, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to meet such wonderful people.
Marriage, It’s Complicated
The UK government is currently running a public consultation on the subject of equality in marriage law. Last night my friends at Shout Out Bristol were right on topic when they chose to interview a trans couple about the legal difficulties of transitioning when married. (April 12th show if you come to it late, segment begins about 24 minutes in.)
As you may know, the UK currently allows “marriage” for opposite-sex couples, and “civil partnerships” for same-sex couples. Neither type of couple is allowed to have the type of union reserved for the other, although legally the options are very similar. Transitioning while married drives a coach and horses through this ridiculous system. As Nicola and Meg explain on the program, if Nicola wants to be recognized as fully legally female in the UK it would be necessary for the couple to have their marriage annulled. That’s not just a divorce, that’s saying that it never, ever happened, because it would have been illegal.
Some couples, like Nicola and Meg, have elected to preserve their relationship and fore-go the legal recognition of the gender change. Others have spent a lot of money on lawyers exchanging their marriage for a civil partnership. If you are a UK citizen and are responding to the government consultation, please remember these people and ask for something to be done for them.
Some Linkage
There was no bloggery yesterday as I was in London all day. That may turn into a project of some sort, but I won’t know for a while. Now I’m catching up. Here are a few stories of interest.
Locus has launched a Kickstarter project to help digitize the vast collection of SF-related photos and ephemera that the magazine has collected over the years. Jonathan talks about it here. Please help if you can.
Yesterday Niall Harrison posted an analysis of gender breakdowns in SF&F reviewing from 2011. There are a couple of things that particularly interest me about it. Firstly I see that the number of books received by Locus in 2011 from US publishers are split roughly 50:50 between men and women, whereas books received from UK publishers included twice as many books by men than by women. Obviously there are caveats on the data, but that’s such a startling result that it has to be significant. Secondly I’m interested to know what criteria were used to select the venues for inclusion.
Via Monica Roberts I learn that a massive public outcry has forced Miss Universe Canada to change its mind and re-admit Jenna Talackova to the contest. Of course this is a classic example of how trans rights are taken much more seriously if the trans people in question are lucky enough to conform very obviously to the gender binary, but at least one trans woman is getting a chance to live her dream, and one more piece of discrimination has been swept away.
Finally a rather old post (from 2000), but one I only learned about today. It is a survey of stories from abortion clinics about the attitudes of openly anti-abortion women to whom they have provided services. Here’s a taster:
I have done several abortions on women who have regularly picketed my clinics, including a 16 year old schoolgirl who came back to picket the day after her abortion, about three years ago. During her whole stay at the clinic, we felt that she was not quite right, but there were no real warning bells. She insisted that the abortion was her idea and assured us that all was OK. She went through the procedure very smoothly and was discharged with no problems. A quite routine operation. Next morning she was with her mother and several school mates in front of the clinic with the usual anti posters and chants. It appears that she got the abortion she needed and still displayed the appropriate anti views expected of her by her parents, teachers, and peers.
That example was from Australia. There are others from the USA, Canada and The Netherlands.
Being Visible #GirlsLikeUs
Today is the International Trans Day of Visibility. It is held at the opposite end of the year from the Day of Remembrance, and the idea is to have a positive alternative to that dark shadow, a time in which the achievements of trans people can be celebrated. Unfortunately it is often hard to find much to celebrate.
I did my bit yesterday. Two of the stars of My Transsexual Summer, Sarah Savage and Karen Gale, were due to appear at a nightclub in Bristol. Prior to that, Bristol Pride organized a special event in conjunction with TransBristol that would allow local trans people to meet with Sarah and Karen in a more private setting. I went along to do my bit of being a (hopefully) positive role model.
It was a lovely evening, and I met lots of new people. Sadly I didn’t get to chat much to Sarah and Karen, but I’ve met them before and it was more important to let them have time with new people. What I did do was chat to some of the cis folks there. In particular I chatted quite a bit to Peter Main, a gay man who will shortly become the new Lord Mayor of Bristol. Peter is very keen to do something positive for the local LGBT community while he is Mayor, and I was delighted to see him determined to ensure that trans people are included in that.
In addition I got to meet a young lady who is one of the LGBT liaison officers for Avon & Somerset police. She and her girlfriend, who works on Bristol Pride, had gone along to make contact with trans people so that we knew we had someone we could come to if we were in trouble. The contrast to the way the world was when I transitioned is startling, and heartwarming.
Moving on to other people, by far the most visible trans person around at the moment is Jenna Talackova. This Canadian girl was kicked out of the Miss Universe Canada contest because she is not a “natural born femaleâ€. Beauty pageants are a minefield for trans women. If we compete in them (or indeed take on any other career that relies on our good looks) then we get yelled at by the RadFems for reinforcing the gender binary. But if we don’t share Jenna’s good looks then we get laughed at for failing to live up to social standards of feminine appearance. Just like a woman has to be twice as good as a man to hold down an equivalent job, so a trans woman has to be twice as beautiful as a cis woman to be deemed pretty enough to count as female. The excellent Mercedes Allen does her usual fine job of tiptoeing through the minefield from both a trans and Canadian perspective here.
There are a couple of salient points to be raised about Jenna’s case. As usual, people are making stupid comments about how she is “really a manâ€, but in a very real sense she has never been one. Jenna is one of the lucky younger generation of trans people who are able to start hormone treatment very young. She may have spent part of her life living as a boy, but she never went through puberty as a male. Her adolescence was spent under the influence of estrogen, not testosterone. Then there is this question of being a “natural born womanâ€. Jenna, as far as I know, was born naturally. So was I. I also have a birth certificate attesting that I was born female. That is one of the benefits I acquired under the UK’s Gender Recognition Act. Canada, I guess, does not have a similar law. Perhaps it should.
The best comment on Jenna’s case, however, was this article in the Huffington Post by trans actress, Laverne Cox. She neatly sidesteps the issue of beauty pageants by asking whether trans people are allowed to dream. Jenna’s dream growing up might have been to be a beauty queen, and looking at her she surely deserves to succeed. But growing up trans doesn’t just debar you from such contests, it debars you from all sorts of careers and life choices that cis people take for granted. Recently Roz Kaveney has been writing about an idea called the “cotton ceilingâ€, which denotes the fact that most trans people can’t expect to find love and companionship outside of the trans community because cis people, even those who claim to be trans allies, react with revulsion to the idea that they might actually have sex with trans people, or even be thought by others to be considering such a thing.
I am well aware that I have been very lucky in this respect. I cannot begin to count the ways in which Kevin has made my life immeasurably better. And yet, compared to the dreams I had of my life as a teenager, or even my hopes for continuing my career after I transitioned, my life has been a dismal failure. Even winning a few Hugos, for which I am eternally grateful, hasn’t been much help. Science fiction fans are so despised in the UK that I’m no use to the trans community here as a public role model. I’m more like proof of what sad, pathetic people trans folk are. I’m still somewhat surprised that I have survived this long, and have no expectation of a long and pleasant old age, despite my health being excellent. As Laverne says, as a trans person you get so used to being at the bottom of the social pecking order that you are absurdly grateful for a life that most people would view with horror.
All I can say is that things are getting better, and are doing so at a rate much faster than I ever expected. It may be too late for me, but people like Jenna, Laverne and Janet Mock are doing great work across the Atlantic, and the likes of Paris Lees and CN Lester are having similar success over here. With any luck, by the time the latest generation of trans kids have grown up, there will be no limit to the dreams that they can achieve.
Of course they are not getting better for everyone at the same speed. A case that you may be unaware of is that of CeCe McDonald, who as a black trans woman is absolutely on the bottom rung as far as the US justice system is concerned. Or there’s the case of Alex Kaminski (name changed), a German girl whose estranged father went to court to have her committed to a psychiatric hospital rather than allow her to continue her gender treatment. The court ruled that Alex’s gender identity had been “induced by her motherâ€, who is supportive of her. Thankfully the hospital in question wants nothing to do with this. As Jane Fae explains, the doctors have refused to attempt forced “cure†and have threatened to sue newspapers over their reporting of the case.
There’s a constant battle to be waged here. While we definitely appear to be winning, there are always more horror stories waiting around the corner to ambush us. And with the current fashion for right wing politicians here and in the US to take Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale as a blueprint for a political utopia, there is always the worry that yesterday’s victories will be taken away from us. Which is why, despite the fact that it kills my blog stats, I am poking my head above the parapet once again. Thank you for listening.
(The hashtag, by the way, is a Twitter campaign started by Janet Mock to support Jenna and draw attention to other successful and talented trans women.)
Telling your Highs from your Epics
Yesterday the #FeministSF chat on Twitter was looking at Epic Fantasy, in particular whether it is possible to have an Epic Fantasy that isn’t all about war. During the discussion someone asked what the difference is between “Epic Fantasy” and “High Fantasy”. No one had an easy answer at the time, and anyway it isn’t the sort of thing that lends itself easily to 140 characters. However, shortly thereafter I had dinner with Farah Mendlesohn and Edwards James, so I asked them for an opinion.
Before getting on to their responses, I should note that Wikipedia has an entry for High Fantasy. It isn’t very helpful as it starts of by equating High and Epic Fantasy. However, it does provide an alternative definition, which I will return to in due course.
In search of a definitive answer, Edward reached for Gary K. Wolfe’s Critical Terms for Science Fiction and Fantasy. This book dates back to 1986, and Gary admits that it is a bit out of date, but it is an excellent starting point. Gary’s definition references an ur-text: The Fantastic Imagination: An Anthology of High Fantasy, published in 1977. In their introduction the editors, Robert H. Boyer and Kenneth J. Zahorski, describe High Fantasy as fantasy set in a secondary world, as opposed to Low Fantasy which is set in our world.
Edward, Farah and I all agreed that this was a fairly useless definition as it bears no relation to how the term is used today. It is a useful categorization when looking at the structure of fantastic stories, but the term High Fantasy has always seemed to me to be more about the subject matter of the story, not about structural devices. Interestingly, however, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997) also uses this definition. As I am in London at the moment, I will try to make time to talk to Mr. Clute about this.
Anyway, onwards. Farah suggested a political definition. That is, High Fantasy is all about the doings of royalty and the nobility, while Low Fantasy is all about ordinary people. That’s in interesting option, though my immediate thought was of The Lord of the Rings. Clearly there are kings and queens involved, but the central story has very deliberately been made about ordinary people — the Hobbits — who have been caught up in these momentous events.
My own preferred definition, which is cited in the Wikipedia article, is that High Fantasy concerns itself with the battle between Good and Evil, whereas Low Fantasy eschews such moral absolutism. I guess that’s a sort of theological definition.
What, then, of Epic Fantasy. Wolfe and Clute are in agreement here that Epic Fantasy must share some of the attributes of the Epic — that is, a lengthy prose poem dealing with the exploits of great heroes, and often of the foundation of a nation. Both men bemoan the fact that the term has become somewhat debased thanks to the habits of marketing people who have used the word “epic” to mean simply “very good” or even just “very long”. Epic fail, perhaps. Clute in particular is keen to distinguish the Epic from Heroic Fantasy or Sword & Sorcery. That is, many fantasy stories deal with the adventures of great heroes but, unless those characters cast a shadow on history thanks to their involvement in great events, their stories cannot be described as Epic.
It seems fairly obvious to me that while a High Fantasy (regardless of your definition) can be Epic in scale, it is not necessarily so. As to the original question, it seems to me that it would be quite hard to write a story that covers momentous historical events and significant social change without involving conflict of some sort, and at the very least the threat of war by some of those involved. A Feminist version thereof could not hope to avoid the topic of war. All it could do is show that war is neither the first, only or best recourse in such circumstances. I recommended the work of Laurie Marks and Glenda Larke.