Checking through my blogs this morning I noticed a post on Feminist SF that suggested introducing a motion to the Business Meeting that would require all Hugo Award nominees to be women for one year. That, I am sure, would have been kicked out very quickly, but it got me thinking about how we might actually get the Hugos to take more notice of women. In the shower I had a bright idea, and that has since been refined (thank you Tim Illingworth) as follows:
Moved, to amend the WSFS Constitution by inserting the following into the end of Section 3.8:
3.8.n If in the written fiction categories, no selected nominee has a female author or co-author, the highest nominee with a female author or co-author shall also be listed, provided that the nominee would appear on the list required by Section 3.11.4.
Section 3.11.4 is the one which specifies that the top 15 nominees plus whoever gets at least 5% of the vote, must be published within 90 days of the Worldcon.
There are two important things about this idea. Firstly no one loses their nomination as a result. If a ballot contained five men, they would all still get their nominations; they would just be joined by a woman. Secondly we don’t pick just anyone – the female nominee has to be someone who would have been honored anyway by being put on the “runner up” list.
There are, of course, many open questions, the most obvious of which is whether it is the job of the Hugos to provide positive discrimination in this way. I don’t expect it to pass. However, I do think that raising the issue for debate will be useful, and I will be fascinated to see what sort of response the motion gets.
Many thanks to Yonmei for having the idea of doing something in the first place.
*shakes head*
if this is the solution or work-around, it’s the kind of patch that tells you to throw away the software and get totally new software.
or perhaps it’s not the software. maybe the hardware is permanently corrupted.
I was asked to list for a certain purpose a list of 100 most important sf books to be chosen to the public libraries.
I started by picking so many books by women I really would like to see on the list as I remembered and only after that I added the male writers (ridiculous dichotomy, I know).
However, the list turned out to be one I really liked, a good one, the list of names I would add to MY library – and I am a professional librarian assistent from my first profession.
Really strange that kind of changes are needed. Thus I agree with Jeff.
Would it not be better to have more people nominate? I believe the number of people who actually nominate material for the Hugo are an oddly small percentage of the membership.
If the majority of the membership have declined to exercise their voting rights, why should I care what they may complain about – Hugo wise?
GeekGirl
GeekGirl:
You’re absolutely right that getting more of the existing membership to exercise their voting rights would be a Good First Step. Of course, that still won’t stop complaints from the people who think that the purpose of democracy is to produce a result that they personally think is right, and that if the result is anything else but their own personal preference, the entire process is obviously broken.
(Only slightly cynical, I am.)
ONLY slightly, Kevin? 🙂
Sure! If I were really cynical, I’d stop trying to help.
This 3.8.n is, well, sexism. Why not add a resolution that guarantees the top gay, coloured, or Estonian nominee an additional slot on the Hugo ballot ?
What’s wrong with staying with the idea that the nominees be the top five that get nominations ? A special set aside just shows that the set aside item could NOT get their on it’s own actual merits, as measured by the nomination process.
Had this proposal been a set aside for an item written by a man, instead of a woman, well, it would have been clear that this was just sexism at work. This, as with many things, goes the same both ways.
GeekGirl and Mr. Standlee are quite correct, in suggesting that expanding the nominated works base starts with getting more fans to nominate works they view as being Hugo worthy.
“Positive” discrimination is still *discrimination*. An example works like this: “I only hire white guys.”
Andre:
Firstly, the Hugos have embodied positive discrimination for other classes of writers for years, so you suggestion that this is wrong as a matter of principle is way too late.
Secondly, stop being such a cry-baby. When members of disadvantaged groups complain that something is not fair they may have a point. When members of an entrenched power group complain that it is not fair that others want a share of the cake it is just pathetic.
Cheryl; If your claim re “Hugo positive discrimination” were accurate, you could name some, and, anyway, if doing something was a Bad Idea then, doing MORE of it now is just as much a Bad Idea.
Two, those who want a “free-from-having-earned-it” space for one sex, only, are the *real* cry babies. Because they want to *avoid* having to do what everyone else has to: Compete Equally.
Oh, and read “The Myth Of Male Power”, by Dr. Sanford Braver; You have some odd ideas about men’s power.
Andre:
It’s written into the WSFS Constitution at section 3.2.2 (positive discrimination for the entire class of works originally published in languages other than Englis), 3.2.3 (positive discrimination for the entire class of works originally published outside of the USA), and 3.4 (positive discrimination for individual works deemed to have had ‘limited distribution.’)
Kevin: Those are for works that were not readily in the biggest SF market, not works based on the biology of the writer. That’s a big difference.
Once that latter factor comes into it, it is a very slippery slope: “What do you mean, we don’t have ‘enough’ stories on the ballot by left handed lesbian handicapped Inuit writers?”
Who decides how “balanced” a ballot’s contents are, or should be ? I am perfectly happy to leave that up to the voters; That’s democracy.
Also, I utterly reject the notion that women SF writers are a “disadvantaged group”. By the basis of they haven’t won 50% of the Hugos, we can also claim that most NHL hockey teams are “disadvantaged groups”, too; Many haven’t won the Stanley Cup even once, while them selfish Montreal Canadiens have done so 24 times.
No one is owed a spot on a Hugo ballot on the basis of their sex, colour, or other biological reasons. No one should be, either. Most of the writers on your LJ agree with me, too:
http://kevin-standlee.livejournal.com/754540.html
Andre:
So what you are saying is that positive discrimination is OK when it helps people you think deserve help, but no OK otherwise. That sounds perfectly reasonable to me, but it is very different from saying that positive discrimination is wrong per se.
What Cheryl said. What it came down to was that you’ve defined (possibly unconciously) discrimination that you like as “not discrimination.” You implicitly accused Cheryl of not telling the truth by failing to name instances of positive discrimination when you said, “If your claim… were accurate, you could name some.” I don’t speak for Cheryl (nor she for me), but I assume that the existing positive discrimination built into the WSFS Constitution was so obvious to her (it is to me) that she didn’t see the need to footnote it. I provided the footnote. Do you need us to dig up citations of works that have benefited from the existing positive discrimination?
Just because it’s discrimination that you happen to like (I think the existing rules about location and language of publication are good, too) doesn’t mean it isn’t some sort of discrimination.
Incidentally, you appear (I may be wrong) to have made the error of assuming that just because I rose to Cheryl’s defense in pointing out your error that I think that the proposal laid before the Business Meeting was a good one. I did not, and had it come down to my vote (the only time I as Chair can vote), I would have voted against it. However, I would also have voted for consideration of the question to allow the maker one chance to make her point on the record.
Something else that a lot of people seem to not understand is that seconding a proposal does not necessarily mean you support it. It means “I’m willing to hear us debate it.” There are sound reasons for seconding proposals you plan to vote against. Heck, the maker of a motion can vote against his/her own proposal, although s/he is not supposed to argue against it unless amendments have changed the proposal’s nature beyond the maker’s original intentions.