More on that Phallic Rocket Ship

[leahbobet]

Came home to some more discussion on the Hugo ballot and gender, which I will link for interested parties:

ellen_kushner provides a note from Geoff Ryman, and some discussion ensues.

Adrienne Martini follows up on her column, addressing an anonymous response to it.


What I find interesting here is that the discussion seems to be getting into the territory of who's allowed to say what to who (or about who). Martini feels that Jed Hartman's post about Hugo numbers and who has a place to complain about the ballot says she's not allowed to say things to SFF, that SFF doesn't want women to talk as evidenced by how our good buddy Harlan (hi, Harlan? Met Truesdale? You'd get along) acted at last year's Hugos. Martini also indicates that the anonymous letter-writer oughtn't to talk, by virtue of being anonymous (which, yes, online does put a dent in one's credibility). There are a few people questioning (I think) if Ryman is allowed to talk and questioning his reading of SFF as a genre. I suspect his genre and my genre are a different place, but I think that stems from who we are and when we started into it, and...well, I'm pretty much cool with that.

What I am interested in and not cool with is this phase of an argument, where we decide who's allowed to talk. I'm not keen on it. We're all allowed to talk, and I think we ought not to assume that the rest of the room is so unable to think critically that any opposing viewpoint will poison their brains and...act as some sort of taint unless we discredit the character of the arguer. It's bad debate, and it's shoddy discourse.

So partly I want to thank you guys in the comments of the last post for not doing that. That was an awesome chat, and even when it skated close to the Appropriation Issue and I went oh god, I don't have the time to moderate that monster everyone was respectful of each other and...well, it was great. Thank you. :)

I suspect that was easier in some ways here, because what was being put forward...well, it's not precisely controversial. It does not require self-examination or action from the reader, so people who don't want to think about an issue can happily go "there, no problem" and return to daily life. It makes me wonder about the difference in tone and the difference in response between this and the whole Harlan episode, for which I picked up some flak (but interestingly, not as much on reflection as I felt at the time).

So yes. This is sort of meandering. But please do read, and think, and comment.

Comments

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

>That was an awesome chat, and even when it skated close to the Appropriation Issue and I went oh god, I don't have the time to moderate that monster everyone was respectful of each other and...well, it was great.

Hee, sorry. I wouldn't have gone there, but I know Chaz and figured we could manage it okay.

(It didn't occur to me until just now that other commenters might have jumped in, though. Dodged a bullet!)

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Hee, okay -- didn't know you guys were acquainted. I must admit my heart stopped for a brief, blinding second, and I loosed my Moderation in its holster. ;p

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

(And thank you for hosting!)

[(Anonymous)]

Strictly looking at the number of female nominees (let's ignore all the other minorities among SF authors for a moment, which is different from what constitutes a minority in the general public and the subject of the fiction which I think is vastly more important), is the number of nominees an acceptable number?

In the general equal-opportunity debate I'm the first to oppose quotas but the numbers behind those types of schemes might be illuminating with regard to the Hugos. I think numbers would allow us, someone coldly, to establish a context for our outrage or lack there of.

What is the ratio of female authors to men? If it's 5 to 1 in 2006 then in strict mathematical terms we're exactly where we should be for our current population (at least in the novel category). If it's 20 to 1 (which anecdotally seems unlikely) then for all the fiction categories we're statistically on track and anyone's opinion can be described as just that.

If it's 4or3 to 1 - which is typical for most years - then this year, if the trend doesn't continue, can be considered like other outliers to be a fluke and you get what is scientifically know as a pisspoor year. Disappointing but no drastic action required.

If we had numbers we could at least reduce the debate to "how are we going to get more women writing and is that even important" or "women are being nominated in numbers far beyond their representation in the population and how to do stop the ravening double-x horde".

As for the Harlan thing it's a little more black and white. You were either offended at what you saw or you weren't and I've heard valid reasons on both sides. But Connie did look... surprised. Either way, that incident is nearly impossible to quantify while the Hugo thing isn't. We can at least establish a jumping off point with just a few numbers.

Does anyone have numbers?

Kell

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I think Jed has numbers and such in that post, and someone else did. I'm...while feeling that the numbers thing is something that should be noted, I don't tend to feel it's the be-all and end-all. My idea of what's adequate representation is, well, complicated.

You might want to hop links and ask them, though?

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks. I've asked for data in those places as well.

I am curious what you think is adequate representation.

Personally I can't escape the mathematical ratio as being unbiased and fair, if a bit clumsy on any given year. On a year where men write crap all year long and women don't then the ratio can't account for that, but over time it does which is why you need data from as many years as possible. If fact, over time it be more and more accurate.

Math is awesome that way.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Refer to last post. *g*

I think adequate representation isn't about math or statistics. I think it intersects a lot of things, only one of which is visibility of female authors in their domain. How those female authors are treated as people is aprt of it. Portrayal and acceptance of women's lives, experiences, and social issues as...well, valid human experiences that have weight is part of it. So is a recognition of women's capacity.

And there's more in there, but I'd have to dig through notes to find and adapt it properly.

[(Anonymous)]

I see what you're saying but what we're talking about right now is their representation in awards, specifically the Hugo.

After those things have been accomplished to a satisfactory degree you'll be left with the numbers adjusted up or down on yearly basis due to fads and exterior events. Those other issues won't affect the ratio as they will apply equally to all groups including the malignant scourge that is white men. ;)

Either way it needs to be quantified now and it's a really good place to start to see how far out of wack we are. It may be that we're not, it may be we're already over ratio. I don't know as I don't have the numbers. Past experience tells me that the facts will be surprising and often not in the ways you expect. I'll can't speak to whether the number of female nominees last year is good thing or not because I have no idea what it should be.

Anecdotal surveys are nearly always wrong.

-

As for the realistic portrayal of women in fiction. Except for the well loved and fun reduction of female characters to be-titted props (replace be-titted with peck-tacular male character for the female readers) I can't remember the last time I reada good book by a good writer where the female (male) characters weren't properly represented.

As you've said, the absence of which is what I consider a bad book.

There are exceptions. There are some perfectly good authors, most of them science fiction authors, out there whose characters, male and female, are all as flat as pancakes. These guys and girls (no names) are writing to a different audience and the ideas and plots are the selling points and almost nothing else. They're off the radar because they're not biased either way.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

See, again, I don't think it's an issue of numbers. I think Hugo nomination numbers are an end symptom of all those other things that go on in publishing and fandom and writerdom. In my mind, there is no particular desired ratio or quota or amount that trips the Adequate Representation Bell. And I'm not sure it needs to be quantified. Statistics are good for supporting an argument, but...I don't think they should ever be pointed at as a desireable end result. I just don't think that's the best use for the tool.

[(Anonymous)]

But right now we're shooting in the dark. There's a feeling that women are under represented and anecdotal evidence seems to agree (remember what I said about that) that they're underrepresnted but even the coarsest benchmark hasn't been established.

At very least it would be nice to know as a percentage of the population how are they being represented. I don't know. You don't know. You say one is a symptom of the other but without some basic numbers you're actually just guessing. It may be an informed and even accurate guess but there's now way to be sure.

We don't have to married to the numbers but it's impossible to know how far you have to go, even approximately, if you don't know where you are already.

Are women underrepresented at (for example) the Hugos? 1 doesn't seem like a lot, but the average seems to be 4 which is a lot less than 16 but is four high or low... You see where I'm going here. No matter how many awards women are nominated for we won't know if it's even approaching fair if can't establish a measure. I'm not advocating chasing a numeric goal (god save me from quotas) bit a number will tell us if we're really to high or too low and which direction we should be heading. You're convinced it should be up (so am I but again we have zero verifiable evidence to support that position - avg. of 4 seems a low to me) but it could be up or down an trival amount in which cases it's ok to let it along or it could be widely askew in which case we need to do something about it.

-

You see a side of writerdom that I'm not accessing as I see the race as a bunch of individuals with some small groups but other than thematically (clockwork-punk anyone? Buller... Buller... buller?) no alliances or conspiracies.

Kell

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Kell, I don't have a stats background, and unfortunately, my argument here was mostly that it's more complicated than a headcount. I think you really need to get some of the people who were more pressing that issue in on the idea of setting objective evidence markers. I suspect I'm not the right person for that job.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

Most of the people here, including Leah, are writers, not statisticians. As writers, we write, sometimes discuss writing and awards, but we don't compile or crunch numbers.

If the number aspect of this intrigues you so much, I would suggest that you dig out all the awards and nominations for last year and do the math yourself. :)

Just a thought.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Well, I compile and crunch numbers, but unless we're talking about Mean Length of Utterance or significance of social factors on linguistic factors, I'm rather...well, specialized. *g*

A project to do the math, though, might be a really good one.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

Yup, you are specialized. *g* I kind of knew that when I posted, but the brain moves slowly after midnight.

And I know that the kind of analysis being discussed is way beyond both my skills and interests, which is why I suggested the math project.

Right this second, the scope of my skills extends to finding my way to bed.

[(Anonymous)]

God but that's insulting and simple-minded.

I'm a writer. That doesn't mean I don't also do numbers. So do a lot of other writers (some to excess). I don't subscribe to that ridiculous notion that just because we're writers we're not good with numbers. I'm good at numbers, so was Asimov, and so are Czerneda, Clarke, Stephenson, Stross, etc. Writers write but a lot of them are also computer programmers, physicists and biologists.

It does intrigue me and having a bit of math background I know that simply having the number of female nominees and the total number of nominees only gives me a percentage of females nominated (numbers I've already done the math on) which isn't instructive in this argument since we need to know the total number of female and male writers who produced nominatable (is this even a word?) work in a given year to establish if the number of female nominees approaches their representation in the population. We need that data for as many year as possible so the effect of outliers are mitigated and we get a more accurate estimation. So far I haven't found those numbers or anyone who can provide them.

Kell

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

Kell,

I wasn't trying to be insulting, honest. It was an honest, well meant suggestion. The numbers and the math aspect of this debate interest you so you should be the one to dig them out and do the statistics.

Granted, the suggestion was made after midnight when I was exhausted and I might have worded it better. But I never meant to insult you.

I am a writer and I don't do math. I don't have a math background and in truth, the kind of number crunching you're talking about makes me want to throw-up. All of which is why I leave it to people like you and the other math whizzes out there. It is not my field, not my thing and the people with interest should be the ones to tackle it.

Maybe contact Broad Universe or some of the people behind WisCon to see if they have some of the data you need.

[(Anonymous)]

I wasn't really insulted for me or your suggestion to do the math (like I haven't done it already ;) ) but that line of yours about "As writers, we write, sometimes discuss writing and awards, but we don't compile or crunch numbers". It smacked (that can't be the right usage) of the whole Barbie, 'math is hard' thing - like, as a group, we're incapable or not inclined or wouldn't enjoy math. That's the kind of talk I expect from poets who legally change their name to Stanza and say things like "I called the plumber because my toilet's chakra was off".

Math isn't your thing. I certainly understand that. Einstein said, "Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater" so I feel your pain even if my frustration occurs with slightly more difficult problems. Just because it isn't your thing it doesn't mean it's not valid or more valid that any other method we have right now.

No worries. Late night/early morning thinking can be sloppy. I talked to a priest and he said if you factor a complex quadratic and do a simple two-trains problem you'll be absolved of your sins and your ascent into a perfectly balanced Heaven will be assured.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

There's no chance of getting a sufficient sample size to isolate any factor from twenty nominations per year. Especially with the Hugos, where there are huge effects to take into account first -- the widely divergent nominating population from year to year and the distribution on which pieces are published in which eligibility periods being two obvious ones.

Wanting to quantify it is a good impulse, but the data we have just isn't sufficient to draw any good conclusions from.

[(Anonymous)]

I think some of those things can be accounted for and some of those factors may shed light on some treads by looking at the numbers from American worldcons vs. foreign.

Assuming we don't have enough information, The Hugos should begin asking for and tracking the sort of data (sex of the voter, age, etc).

[time-shark.livejournal.com]

I actually have doubts that Ellison and Truesdale would get along; it's a pairing roughly equivalent to Clinton and Limbaugh.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Oh, like matter-antimatter?

...hey now. I have a cunning plan. ;)

[time-shark.livejournal.com]

Uh-oh.

*g*

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

Oh no.... what have you done, Mike?

::dives for the shelter::

Who can complain

[elysdir.livejournal.com]

Hi, Leah -- belated thanks for this thought-provoking post (and to all y'all for the comments thread).

At this late date, I just wanted to make one quick side comment (and of course it's all about Me Me Me!): You characterized my post as being about "Hugo numbers and who has a place to complain about the ballot." I agree that it's fairly common for people to imply (intentionally or not) that people who didn't nominate have no right to complain, but fwiw, that wasn't my intent; in my Hugo complaining (http://www.kith.org/journals/jed/2007/03/31/3863.html) entry, I meant to encourage people to participate in the process, rather than to tell people who hadn't participated to shut up. Maybe those two approaches are distinct only in my head, though, and maybe I didn't put enough emphasis on the side I intended.

Re: Who can complain

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Hey, Jed--

Apologies for the misreading, then. :) I do tend to read those kinds of things as "if you want this to be different, get in there" with a flip side of "if you don't want to get in there, well, enough out of you". Could be me as a reader coming into play there.