One of the interesting things about having lived for some time in Australia and California as well as the UK is that you occasionally notice cultural differences. One appeared to pop up on Twitter this morning. People I followed in the US and Australia (and also New Zealand and the Philippines) were giving the thumbs up to this blog post by Nicola Griffith, whereas the reaction from UK people was more along the lines of, “those boring feminists are at it again.” This immediately reminded me of comments made by Gwyneth Jones and Farah Mendlesohn on the recent Woman’s Hour program, in particular Farah saying, “…the market in the States is far better, the market here is problematic…”.

Now of course my Twitter pals are not necessarily a very representative sample. I don’t think, however, I have a different political mix amongst people I follow in the UK to those I follow elsewhere. And of course the debacle of the feminism panels at Eastercon was fresh in my mind. I do think we could do better in the UK. (And a hat tip here to people like Niall Harrison, Ian Sales and Kev McVeigh who have been doing good work, but why do we have to rely on men to do that work?)

Anyway, regardless of whether there’s an issue with the UK or not, the issues raised by Nicola’s blog post, and the complaints I saw about it on Twitter this morning, still need to be addressed. Of course this is yet another post about invisibility and exclusion. It therefore ties in to a long history of complaints about such problems involving award short lists, anthology ToCs, guest lists for conventions (yes, you, Kapow!) and more recently the number of women reviewers, and number of books by women accorded reviews (overview here).

Is this just women being whiny? Are we finding sexism where none exists? Personally I disagree, because the point here is that sexism is a cultural phenomenon, not just a few random acts by bad people. If you define sexism and only occurring when a man does something prejudiced to a woman then you are likely to find Nicola’s post irrelevant, but unless you get at the root of the issue — what Fay Weldon succinctly described on the BBC Book Review Show as the idea that men are more important than women — then sexist actions will continue to happen. Which is why, every time we see something that suggests men are much more important than women, us uppity feminists make a bit of noise.

Talking of the Book Review Show, the issue of gender balance came up there too. I think we can politely pass over John Mullan’s offhand dismissal that the ladies “were exaggerating”. However, Daisy Goodwin asked why women should care about recognition when they sell more books. It is a good question, but before I answer it let’s look at some of the other complaints raised.

Nicola’s post references Joanna Russ’s famous book, How to Suppress Women’s Writing [buy isbn=”9780292724457″]. In particular she quotes the part where Russ notes the various excuses made for not recognizing the contribution of women to the field:

“She didn’t write it.”
“She wrote it but she wrote only one of it.”
“She wrote it, but she isn’t really an artist (sf writer), and it isn’t really art (sf).”
“She wrote it, but she’s an anomaly.”

There should be a bingo card, and we can add to it some of the reasons I saw given this morning as to why women shouldn’t care about exclusion from things like “best of” lists.

1a. Women shouldn’t complain about exclusion because their books are more popular than men’s.
1b. Women shouldn’t complain because the lists reflect popular taste.

2a. Women shouldn’t complain because it is only critics talking and who cares what they think?
2b. Women shouldn’t complain because it is only fans talking and who cares what they think?

Yes, I did pair those deliberately. That should be sufficient to make the point. Suggestions for further entries on the bingo card are welcome. (And please note that my copy of How to Suppress Women’s Writing is stranded in California. It would not surprise me at all to discover that Russ had mentioned the above excuses as well.)

Back with the point, why does it matter who gets reviewed, who wins awards, who gets anthologized? Because those things will eventually make up his-story. So when people come to look back because, for example, they have been asked to name their all-time favorite SF book, they will only remember the books that history tells them about. The others will be forgotten, and become invisible.

The issue that Nicola was talking about was not one of, “oh, it is not fair, a bunch of sexists have not chosen any books by women”. Rather it was one of, “oh look, women writers have been forgotten again.” And the sad thing is that, because they have been forgotten, people then use their apparent lack of existence to justify the fact that historical lists ignore them.

I should note here that I am not expecting a 50:50 split. Obviously it was harder for women to get published in the past, and it still isn’t easy today. I don’t think that Nicola was expecting a 50:50 split either. She just wasn’t expecting 96:4.

I note also that this isn’t entirely men’s fault. Back in the 70s feminist critics tended to dismiss earlier SF by women because it was too “domestic”. Recent academic work by people like Justine Larbalestier and Lisa Yasek has show that this “domestic” SF was a lot more pointed and satirical than was earlier thought. Justine’s book, Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century [buy isbn=”9780819566768″] provides a good introduction to some early women SF writers.

The main issue here, however, is that complaining isn’t enough. If we want women writers to get recognition we have to do something about it. We have to talk about them, and we have to get them back into print. Nicola’s post, having noted the problem, was very much all about how we needed to do something, not just sit back and complain. And that’s mostly why I was so sad to see it being dismissed as whiny.

So I’m going to be talking to Nicola, and anyone else who is interested, about getting good SF by women back into print. Suggestions of books/authors you’d like to see available again are welcome.

In my time I have met rather a lot of authors, some of whom are very famous. I have even, to my delight, shared a breakfast conversation with Samuel Delany. But one person I have never met is Joanna Russ. Possibly that’s just as well, as I would have been utterly terrified of her. Now, of course, I will never get the opportunity.

I will leave obituaries to people who knew Russ well, such as Timmi Duchamp.

For trans people Russ is less of a heroine. She came up through second wave feminism, which was rampantly transphobic, and parts of The Female Man faithfully reflect the then orthodox view that trans women were “really” men trying to replace women with compliant sex slaves.

However, as Roz Kaveney noted on Twitter, unlike some of her contemporaries, Russ was willing to engage with trans women and try to understand them. As a result, her views about them changed markedly, and she publicly apologized for her earlier antagonism.

One of these days I will re-read The Female Man and write about it. In the meantime, however, here are a couple of things to think about.

While Russ might have been re-cycling the transphobic views of Janice Raymond, to a teenage trans girl the prospect of being given a macho-ness test in school that you could fail and, as a result, be required to live the rest of your life as a woman, does not seem like oppression, it seems like potential relief from torture.

The sex slave thing, of course, comes later. Teenage girls of all sorts are not always that sensible about the future that waits for them in a patriarchal society. What Russ missed, however, is that by the time they are adults the Changed will have no more illusions. Most of them will be ardent feminists.

Yesterday, as Twitter followers will know, I spent the morning at a press conference at the British Library. This summer they are putting on a major free exhibition called “Out of this World: Science Fiction but not as you know it”. You can see their press release here.

The title is a bit cheesy, but there is a reason for it. The BL people have noticed that they have a lot of books that look like science fiction to them but which often get described as “not science fiction” by people who want to enforce ghetto boundaries. The exhibition takes aim at this silliness by presenting a broad view of science fiction, taking in authors such as Thomas More, Mary Shelley, Rudyard Kipling and George Orwell as well as HG Wells, Phil Dick, Sir Arthur and a lot of contemporary authors.

The exhibition is sponsored by Discovery who will be showing a number of science fact and fiction shows over the summer to coincide with the event. The Science Fiction Foundation has been closely involved with providing material, and Andy Sawyer of Liverpool University is the guest curator. People such as John Clute have provided a number of books from their private libraries (and I have an interview with Clute discussing this which will appear in Salon Futura before the exhibition opens).

Which reminds me, dates: May 20th – September 25th.

In addition there will be a number of special events featuring cool people. Here’s the list so far:

• China Miéville (20 May);
• Iain M Banks (31 May);
• David Lodge and Stephen Baxter (8 June);
• Audrey Niffenegger (10 June);
• Michael Moorcock, Brian Aldiss (21 June)

And the one I really want to see but have already committed to be elsewhere that day:

Musicians George Clinton and Nona Hendryx will talk about the science fiction influences on their lavish stage shows and albums, and a remarkable night of futuristic music on 17 June will see The Radio Science Orchestra and Global Communication perform live at the Library.

Of course, this being the British Library, pride of place will go to many wonderful old books, some of which I was lucky enough to see yesterday. I am particularly fond of Francis Godwin’s The Man in the Moone (1638) in which our hero, Domingo Gonsales, takes flight in a strange contraption drawn by geese. Godwin, a graduate of Christchurch, Oxford, held the posts of Bishop of Llandaff and Bishop of Hereford during life. In the book he states he is basing his story on Copernican principles and manages a reasonable guess at the idea of gravity well before Newton worked it all out. Goose-powered space ships might seem quaint to us, but Godwin is clearly a kindred spirit to the likes of Asimov and Clarke.

There’s load of other seriously cool old stuff as well. Hopefully a fair few of you will be able to get to see it.

Twitter followers may have noticed that the presentation yesterday focused almost exclusively on male authors, Shelley being the only woman mentioned. There were also no women presenters featured in Discovery’s trailer. For the really old stuff this is understandable, but that’s no reason to apply the same filters today. The BL people have assured us that there will be some women authors featured in the exhibition (see Niffenegger above, for example). However, next time I get told that an event can’t be sexist because while all of the people out front getting the glory are men, most of the people labouring behind the scenes to make it happen are women, I think I shall hit someone.

There was an interesting exchange on Twitter today sparked by a tweet by Cat Valente. Cat spent yesterday evening going through a slush pile, presumably for Apex Magazine. One one point she tweeted in frustration asking why male SF writers are always writing about prostitutes.

Several answers were offered to that, but the trail I want to follow is one that started when Kev McVeigh suggested that male writers see prostitutes as strong, independent characters. That then led other people (hi Paul, Jona) to note that a prostitute is a much more believable strong, independent character than the “kick ass babe” so beloved of Hollywood and urban fantasy.

Now in one way they are absolutely right, and it is worth noting that the “kick ass babe” is just as much a sexualised character as a prostitute. There’s a definite suggestion here that many male writers can only envisage female power in terms of sexuality. A lithe, athletic girl in a tight-fitting leather costume is not a significant improvement, in feminist terms, on a whore.

The point I wanted to make (and thanks to Kathy Sedia for nudging me into it), is that while this isn’t an improvement, that fact doesn’t absolve male writers from the need to write convincing women characters. It shouldn’t even absolve male writers from the need to write strong women characters.

A lot of my friends express a preference for gritty, realistic fiction, because it is more honest. The real world doesn’t do consolation and happy ever after, let alone sparkly ponies. I have a lot of sympathy with that point of view. But it can also lead you down a very dangerous path. You start by saying you want fiction that reflects the brutal realities of life. That means you need victims, and as women have less power in the world than men they are more often victims. Go too far along that road and before you know it you are writing the sort of fiction that appeals to people whose idea of “entertainment” is reading about women being brutally murdered.

Kudos then to Graham Sleight for mentioning Joanna Russ. The point of speculative fiction is that it allows you to imagine how the world might be different. And feminist speculative fiction therefore allows you to imagine a world in which women are strong characters and occupy positions of power in society, without having to be sexualised. It is a long time since I read an Alyx story, and I don’t have any Russ books here, but I have a sneaking suspicion that she didn’t spend all her time in skin-tight leather costumes.

Writing strong female characters isn’t hard. It just requires a bit of imagination.