As with last year, the LadyBusiness blog has produced a VIDA-like analysis of reviewing in the SF&F community. The post is here. The numbers are not surprising. It is a valuable service they are providing, though doubtless depressing to actually carry out.
I’m mostly interested in the post because of the discussion of “gender blindness” because it has direct relevance to me, and to a couple of papers I am writing. I’ve seen a lot of feminists suggest that getting rid of gendered behavior would be a good thing. And indeed in The Female Man Russ’s heroines dress in a very drab, utilitarian manner and can’t understand why the manufactured women they encounter in Manland put so much effort into their appearance.
There are complex issues here to do with whether behavior is genuinely a choice, or imposed through a life-long cultural brainwashing process, so I don’t want to present anything simplistic. On the other hand, if things like race-blindness are wrong because people of different ethnicities do have different cultures, then surely gender-blindness is not a worthy goal either.
Cheryl, I look forward to your papers. As someone who hears “you can’t do that because you’re a girl” (and who notices that the rules about things you can’t do seem to be even more rigid for boys these days) when I read the typical work arguing that gendered behavior is innate, I’d really like to get a fresh point of view. I doubt that your essays would be aimed at convincing me that I should get back in the girlie box no matter what I actually want to do with my life.
Dear me no. I’m much more likely to defend your right to identify as a woman despite your not being in the girly box.
Re clothing: see Cavaliers and Dandies.
Indeed.