Wow. Okay. Well, file it perhaps that if I ever do a thing that's found offensive, don't choose that way to bring it up? *g*
There is a power relationship here--well, strictly speaking, there are several--and I don't think it makes sense to try to behave as though there isn't.
Yeah, there are several, but I don't know that any of them are the "moral authority" ones that these discussions set up. The whole reason people wanted women on the cover boils down to "because it's wrong to have men and women not equally represented", right? And the way I see it, framing things as a rejection or acceptance letter constructs the writer of the letter as an agreed-upon authority on morals, the same way we socially agree that the editor is the authority on what's a good story for their magazine. However, both parties in this conversation have not agreed that the letter-writer is the superior authority on morals, so it's seizing a position of power, not filling an agreed one. So that's a much more contentious verbal act than a real rejection letter, which is, no, not inherently condescending or dismissive. But it isn't that because of the agreement of both parties as to what their roles are.
I've shorthanded that taking of power without agreement as "talking down". Because it garners the same reaction. It's snark. This isn't a world where power dynamics are minimal, no, so if one is to get one's point across, I think we have to learn how to work through, around, and over them.
and the tremendous power afforded to the faceless and monolithic "market", which apparently requires that specific consumers be ignored in the face of what publishers believe about how to pitch to the consumerate as a whole.
As I was kind of groping towards in the original post, I don't think the market's a fake thing. This is mostly from the bookseller end of things: watching why some books succeed and some fail, and what starts to come out when, and how it's driven not just by the consumers but what publishers think consumers want, on buying patterns based on what's available rather than what's 100% desired. The market exists, but not monolithic and...well, complex.
And yeah, the market is sexist. We know that. We knew that already, judging by the number of headless-torso-tits-ass covers on books, the leather-catsuit ones, the naked-back ones, the man-titty ones.
What I'm really chewing on right now is which thread to pull and which levers to push to change that, so books which don't slot into those semiotic boxes can do well out there and we don't have to have cover fights anymore.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: More thinky
Date: 2007-09-04 10:25 pm (UTC)Wow. Okay. Well, file it perhaps that if I ever do a thing that's found offensive, don't choose that way to bring it up? *g*
There is a power relationship here--well, strictly speaking, there are several--and I don't think it makes sense to try to behave as though there isn't.
Yeah, there are several, but I don't know that any of them are the "moral authority" ones that these discussions set up. The whole reason people wanted women on the cover boils down to "because it's wrong to have men and women not equally represented", right? And the way I see it, framing things as a rejection or acceptance letter constructs the writer of the letter as an agreed-upon authority on morals, the same way we socially agree that the editor is the authority on what's a good story for their magazine. However, both parties in this conversation have not agreed that the letter-writer is the superior authority on morals, so it's seizing a position of power, not filling an agreed one. So that's a much more contentious verbal act than a real rejection letter, which is, no, not inherently condescending or dismissive. But it isn't that because of the agreement of both parties as to what their roles are.
I've shorthanded that taking of power without agreement as "talking down". Because it garners the same reaction. It's snark. This isn't a world where power dynamics are minimal, no, so if one is to get one's point across, I think we have to learn how to work through, around, and over them.
and the tremendous power afforded to the faceless and monolithic "market", which apparently requires that specific consumers be ignored in the face of what publishers believe about how to pitch to the consumerate as a whole.
As I was kind of groping towards in the original post, I don't think the market's a fake thing. This is mostly from the bookseller end of things: watching why some books succeed and some fail, and what starts to come out when, and how it's driven not just by the consumers but what publishers think consumers want, on buying patterns based on what's available rather than what's 100% desired. The market exists, but not monolithic and...well, complex.
And yeah, the market is sexist. We know that. We knew that already, judging by the number of headless-torso-tits-ass covers on books, the leather-catsuit ones, the naked-back ones, the man-titty ones.
What I'm really chewing on right now is which thread to pull and which levers to push to change that, so books which don't slot into those semiotic boxes can do well out there and we don't have to have cover fights anymore.