Publishers, Market Forces, and Feminism

[leahbobet]

(Okay, we're pulling out the Alan Moore icon again. Baby, why you make me do that?)

I have had an interesting shot of perspective this afternoon, brought on by coalescent's straw-poll/count of women's names on the front of the upcoming Night Shade Books anthology Eclipse and the response over at jlassen's. The chain of thought goes thusly:

1) "Huh, that is true, there are all boys on that cover."
2) "Oh, that is a Night Shade book, they are good guys and likely not participating in sexism."
3) "Okay, this is upsetting me because good people are being wailed on, and they are clearly becoming upset, and the methods of argument being used here are no-win ones."
4) GVG says "welcome to the club" and thus we get our perspective.

Now, this may just be a flaw in how I've been conducting things with regards to The Revolution. However, I'm putting it out here because I suspect it's a flaw in the discourse, or if not, it's turning into a flaw in the discourse.

I suspect that there is an element in the LJ feminist discourse where we sit around doing the Man Comes Around thing: we take names, decide who to free and who to blame, etc., and everybody won't be treated all the same. I think a chunk of the discussion around making SFF a more egalitarian place on grounds of gender has taken a turn into labelling people as sexist or not-sexist: on our team or the other team, and then it stops there.

Where do I derive this? My copious internal struggle in this case -- dealing with people I know -- versus my lack of said struggle in the case of the F&SF and sexism discussion -- dealing with people I know less well or don't know. I had people in the Good! box and am asked to move them to the Bad! box, which is harder than moving people from the Neutral! box into Good! or Bad! boxes. I think that's what we do. Move people into and out of boxes.

This is a bad thing. Here's why:

Because it trades on personality, and ultimately stunts any real change.

I'm back to the whole placebo activism idea again. I think yelling at people and then feeling better about yourself because you put them in the right box doesn't really accomplish much. Remember, sexism, racism, classism, etc. are systemic issues. If people keep saying it's the market, sure, that could be an excuse for their inaction. I suspect it's not an excuse because of that systematizing of prejudice that's reflected in other aspects of life (why's it one or two guys here if it's systemic elsewhere?) and the really fucked-up ideas we have in publishing of who has power over the whole apparatus.

We all work in the framework of the market. If the market is sexist, business decisions will carry that flavour, because otherwise those companies will go broke. Systemic prejudice doesn't just punish the people with boobs or that one drop of non-white blood. It punishes everyone who lives under it. Everyone has a role. Nobody gets to step out of line.

---

Here's my question then, because this shot of perspective and a small chain of logic have led me to what might be more effective to change the face of SFF. Yes, it's harder. I'm starting to think if it doesn't require some serious fucking thinking and a truckload of work, it might not actually be activism.

How do we change the market?

Comments

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Because as soon as that happens, discussion effectively stops. Or turns into something that's not a discussion.

Yeah, totally. There has to be. I suspect it involves being calm and patient, using analogy, and having examples of better ways to behave on hand. And I think a lot of people don't have the patience or desire for it because there's a degree to which it really is playing teacher, but...y'know, I'm the one who wants a result here. They don't care if I have my result. The way I see it, the onus is sort of on me to behave in the way most likely to achieve my result regardless of whether I have the right to different.

But I'm not sure how to change that, except the old vote-with-the-wallet thing.

Yeah, me neither. I get the feeling that the key part of that equation is changing the publisher perception of reader's tastes. That provides the availability of that choice and a chance for a shift in the market. I'm still trying to work out how that might be done in alliance with publishers as readers of their books, versus in some adversarial political pressure kind of way.

[kythiaranos.livejournal.com]

The way I see it, the onus is sort of on me to behave in the way most likely to achieve my result regardless of whether I have the right to different.

Well, yeah, I guess one of the key questions is whether we want most to be right, or to achieve the ends we want. Personally, I'd rather leave a better world for my daughter than have a gold star on my own forehead.

I wonder if part of the problem is that the dialogue only begins when someone notices something that strikes them as biased or unfair. So there's an automatic attack/defense dynamic set up. But then the question is, how do we establish and maintain a dialogue at other times?

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I want the ends too. Burn me in effigy once a year so long as what I wanted done gets done; I'd count that a win.

But then the question is, how do we establish and maintain a dialogue at other times?

Huh. Good point. That does give it this sort of...troubleshooting air, like there is trouble and then you make it go away and things go back to "normal", when really the problem is in how normal runs. And then it's not long before the people bringing the problem are perceived as being the problem, and down the whole dialogue goes.

I...really don't know. I think one thing that might help is, well, forging professional and amiable relationships in the field, so when something goes wrong it's not like this cloud of strangers coming out of the sky to condemn whatever guy of the week. I think jamiam's suggestion above of actively recognizing things that are helpful and positive -- handing out cookies and kudos -- might help that too, because it means that the issue is still on the table but not in a combative way.

My brain wants to say something involving Broad Universe...well, involving itself more in some corners of publishing: it occurs to me I don't know a lot about what they do in terms of activism besides have a table at cons and try to guilt me into buying self-published books of dubious quality, and that's a problem (both on my end and on their PR end).

*tries to get the brain to storm more*