On not writing about the Miles Franklin Literary Award

Passing over the irony of the fact that the main reason I've been neglecting this blog is that I've been flat out writing a book, missing my first deadline but absolutely determined not to miss my second (and I didn't, either. It seems that it's still possible in your late fifties to work all night; who knew?) -- passing over, as I say, the irony of that, I've been thinking in the wake of the second Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlist in three years to feature novels written exclusively by men about why the very thought of writing another post about this (for if they're gonna keep doin' it then it is up to those of us to whom these things matter to keep callin' 'em on it) (God I love long sentences, I just love them to death) makes me want to lie down in my own bed in the foetal position with the doona over my head and my thumb in my mouth.

The closest I've seen to an answer to this question is provided by theatre critic, poet and novelist Alison Croggon in some online discussion in the wake of her excellent piece on the subject for the ABC's The Drum. Can't find that comment now but it was something to the effect that one way to get rid of pesky feminist critics was to force them to bore themselves to death explaining the same simple points over and over again.

Examples of the simple points in question: What patriarchy is. What 'hegemony' means. Why the idea of 'literary merit' is not an absolute given. How the dominant culture works. Why it's not simply a matter of who has which set of bits. In a word, Feminism 101.

Not only do I not want to bore myself to death going over these things in online arguments with men who think they already know everything, I also don't want to bore myself to death listening to or reading the magisterial pronouncements of people who haven't done the reading. For examples, see the comments thread on Alison Croggon's piece I linked to up there, if you can stomach it, which I bet you can't. And the comments on Jason Steger's piece on the subject in The Age yesterday are much worse again.

The reason one has to explain the same simple points over and over again is that, in general, blokes simply do not listen when women speak, and they do not read what women write. This is circular argument: they will say Oh but that's because what women say isn't good or interesting, and then you say Well that's because you're applying masculine values universally, and they say They're not masculine values, they're universal values, like for example everyone agrees on what literary merit is, and you say Well no we don't, women value some things differently, and they say Oh but what women say isn't good or interesting.

Etc.

I speak from the experience of (a) six years of blogging, in which activity I include reading and commenting on other blogs, (b) 20 years of university teaching and (c) 50+ years of arguing with my father. The exception is (some) male academics in the humanities, especially those under about 50: those who have actually read some of the theory, and into whom some of the theory has sunk. You can practically see the shining light bulbs above these men's heads. I am very fond of all of them.

But as for the rest, I don't know how this is to be got over. Perhaps it isn't. See doona, foetal position, thumb, etc.

Also, in the discussion of this year's Miles F round the online traps, I've been seeing two (in particular) other honourable exceptions to this: The Australian's literary editor Stephen Romei, and novelist and critic James Bradley. So perhaps there is hope.

Great 2010 autobiographies and Christmas presents

Richards.

Kelly.

Hitchens.

But where are the women?

Were they not admitted to the echelons where you can have the sort of life you write this sort of book about? Did they write a book but fail to persuade a publisher? Were they too busy pairing socks?

Askin'.

Code for 'We don't care'

When I first saw this article about Publishers Weekly and its all-male-author Best Books of 2009 (ah yes, it's that time of year again), it took me a minute to work out the title: 'Why Weren't Any Women Invited to Publishers Weekly's Weenie Roast?' I'd always thought 'wienie' as in 'wiener' as in 'frankfurter' was spelt with an 'ie' not an 'ee', and it's not clear whether 'weenie' is used here as a variant or a disparaging pun (though I'd like to think the latter), but either way it is, in this context, American for what we in Australia call a sausage fest. Boys' Own, if you like.

It was only yesterday that I was looking around the nation's various literary-cultural-political mags, blogs and websites and noticing with growing dismay that the general ratio of male to female writers represented -- both the people writing for the journals and blogs and magazines and the people being written about -- seems to have nose-dived*, even just since the beginning of this year, back to the good old days where 'male' meant the norm and 'female' meant some lesser variant; yet again I was reminded of the great Simone de Beauvoir, than whom nobody has ever described this phenomenon better. 'There are two kinds of people: human beings and women.'

And it was only last night that an otherwise apparently intelligent commenter on a literary blog referred disparagingly to 'the worst kind of 80s PC', apparently meaning that all that silly nonsense about considering the presence in the world of female people and black people and gay people that we used to have to bend the knee to is merely a memory of a now-despised fad , like satin jumpsuits and big hair, and it's über-cool in 2009 to have sunk right back into our straight white male supremacist good ole boy ways, as into a comfy yet manly chair, clutching the remote in one hand and a stubby in the other. (I'm sorry, I would have liked to have put that another way.)

And then up will go the passionate cry of 'But never mind all this gender nonsense, isn't it just about literary merit??', and back will echo faintly for the nine millionth time from a chorus of exhausted feminists that 'literary merit' is not an exact science, but is rather assessed by the values of the dominant culture, and if the dominant culture is a sausage fest, then, well, you know.

(Though one must look on the bright side: that list of ten books by blokes may ignore the fact that Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro have both had books out this year, but at least it doesn't include the most overrated writer and sausage fest ornament of the 20th century, Philip Roth.)

I wrote here earlier this year about how gobsmacking it was that the Miles Franklin Literary Award judges didn't notice that they'd come up with an all-male shortlist in a year when there were at least five realistic female contenders for the prize, and apparently this kind of 'human beings and women' thinking is once more rife in the US as well. After pondering last night with such disquiet on the turn things seemed to be taking, I wasn't as surprised as I wish I had been this morning to see a feminist Facebook Friend linking that post about the Publishers Weekly list. Here's that post's hook, a line strongly recommended as the default comeback next time some bloke -- or rogue girl trawling for the boys' approval -- accuses you dismissively of being 'just PC':

So is the flipside here that including women authors on the list would just have been an empty, politically correct gesture? When PW’s editors tell us they’re not worried about ‘political correctness,’ that’s code for ‘your concerns as a feminist aren’t legitimate.’ They know they’re being blatantly sexist, but it looks like they feel good about that.

* It is however a relief to see that the November issue of Australian Book Review, which arrived today and which I just finished reading, does honourably buck this trend a bit: writers/reviewers include an Alison, an Andrea, a Belinda, a Claudia, a Gay, a Jacqueline, a Jane, two Judiths, two Kates, a Kylie, a Melinda, a Rosaleen (the lead article), a Sarah and a Stephanie, while the written-about include an Anna, an Emily, a Jan, a Jeanette, a Jenny, a Jeri, a Mandy and a Ruth.


Cross-posted from Still Life With Cat

Quadrant and Wimminz: lies, damned lies, and statistics

In the wake of the Windschuttle hoax there's been a lot of discussion around the online traps, in the course of which I observed as part of an argument about something else that Quadrant was not a particularly woman-friendly space.

Along with other people who have been familiar with Quadrant for decades, I should have though this observation on a par with 'The sky is blue' or '2+2=4', but of course there was angry reaction from the sorts of people one expects to react angrily to any mention of gender whatever, a phenomenon fascinating in itself.

One of these people worked himself up into such a monumental tis-was that one would think he had been personally insulted, though he has no visible connection with Quadrant apart from reading it. So much so, in fact, that he could have done (as we all so often could in life) with a gentle reminder that this was not all about him.

Then, in the course of a discussion with a far more reasonable chap whose interest is in statistics rather than in defending Quadrant, I discovered that Quadrant does in fact publish more poems and fiction by women than I would have expected, although the same names recur again and again even within single issues, and I retracted accordingly. The reasonable statistics chap used a comparison with Meanjin to make his point, saying that in the respective current issues of Meanjin and Quadrant there were more poems by women in the latter than in the former, which was true.

In the course of this exercise I spent a bit of time at the home pages of the respective magazines, and it gave me an idea: each mag has a 'current issue' page listing all contributors, and it was reasonable to expect that other magazines would as well. So here are some numbers I gathered, as at last night, from the 'current issue' pages of Australian magazines -- monthly, quarterly, bi-annual -- that are partly or wholly literary in content.

In one or two cases there was one name on the page whose gender could not be determined by even the most assiduous Googling -- but no more than one, which is nowhere near enough to skew the order in which the mag titles appear here. Each contributor has been counted only once, though occasionally the same name appears twice or more. Let me repeat that these numbers are based on the contributor names listed in the magazines' own online home pages, on the evening of 12 January 2008 2009.

(*Sighs and reflects that one always does this at least once in the first week or two*.)

Please note that this does not claim to be an exhaustive list of magazines.

The numbers show the ratio MEN:WOMEN. I offer them in a spirit of scientific curiosity, without comment.


ISLAND MAGAZINE 1:2

HEAT MAGAZINE 11:13

SOUTHERLY 9:7

CORDITE POETRY REVIEW 17:13 [update]

OVERLAND 4:3

MEANJIN: 23:16

GRIFFITH REVIEW 3:2

AUSTRALIAN BOOK REVIEW 9:5

THE MONTHLY 2:1

QUADRANT 13:4


Cross-posted from Still Life With Cat

Back from the Bahamas

The Sistahs have been on holidays, where they bathed, from bathing-machines, in voluminous yet child-sized bathing costumes. It was all very good for their lungs. Getting away from their father didn't hurt, either.

Many questions have been asked in their absence, so let us begin to catch up.



MINDY ASKS:Is it still easier to get published if you write under a male moniker or is the playing field level now?



Charlotte says: There are two parts to this question, and they do not necessarily have anything to do with each other. Of course it is easier for a woman to get published than it was in my day, but then everything is easier than it was in my day, and particularly than it was for me.

Anne explains: We were careful to give ourselves names that did not actually indicate that we were of the stronger sex. 'Currer', 'Ellis' and 'Acton' are not gender-specific names; we were merely counting on people opting for maleness as the default position. If people were silly enough to fall for it then that was hardly our fault. We did not mind hoisting people with their own sexist petard, but we did not wish to lie.

Emily adds: Not like that coward soul George Eliot or that pathetic cheat Mrs Henry Wood or that complete sooky la la Henry Handel Richardson, whom I believe was one of yours. Pffft.