cranky
catvalente has written a heartbreaking essay about sexism in geek and science fiction/fantasy culture. You should read it, because it is relevant. Also because it is heartbreaking and true. Having been one of those female fantasy authors threatened with sexual violence because I dared to own cats who came from a breeder, and not a shelter, I can testify that things get really ugly, really fast, on Captain Internet.And so...
Last weekend at Emerald City, I saw a sign that infuriated me. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. It was a big banner on the front of a self-published* author's booth, reading, "Finally, a book for BOYS that the GIRLS will enjoy reading, too!"
Oh. You mean unlike 90% of the well-regarded "classic" science fiction, fantasy, and young adult genre novels out there? And 98% of the horror? And 99% of the military science fiction? And, let's face it, the majority of anything that's not a romance, a story about princesses, or a horse book? As a girl who grew up reading Bradbury, King, Wyndham, Anthony, Asprin, Piper, Foster, Knight, Shakespeare, Poe, De Lint, Baum, superhero comics, and horror comics, I cry thee foul.
And no, this is not a case of me carefully editing out the female authors of my childhood. After wracking my brain, the only ones I could come up with who even managed to compete for my affections—who were writing stories with girls, rather than girl stories, and were thus worth reading in my twelve-year-old estimation—were McCaffrey, Kagan, Tiptree (who wrote as a man), Pini (whose writing still gets credited to her husband by about half the people I talk to), Jones, Duane, and McKinley.
I discovered more female authors as I got older. Emma Bull. Pamela Dean. Jody Lynn Nye. Women who were writing stories with girls, not girl stories; women who were building the foundations of a new genre, filled with interesting, clever, intuitive characters who yes, sometimes happened to have the same plumbing I did. And sometimes they didn't, and that was okay, too. But—and this is where we loop back to the beginning—it didn't matter. If I wanted to read, I needed to read books about boys. Books that were probably intended by their authors as being for boys. If I wanted to enjoy reading, I needed to enjoy books for boys.
If this has changed at all, that change has happened in the last eight to ten years, beginning with the publication of Twilight. People were writing books for girls before that, but there's always a trigger event, and Bella Swan making millions of dollars for her author (and publisher) was the trigger for a veritable flood of "girl books" hitting the shelves. These were books with female leads, with women on the covers, with a stronger romance subplot than had necessarily been required in YA before people figured out that hey, girls read, and maybe some of them will read more if you offer them female characters to read about.
Since then, the number of "girl books" has exploded, and while some of them are girl stories, some of them are also stories with girls. Some of these books are romances. Some of them are not. Some of them are medical thrillers, adventures, war stories, epic fantasies, distopian futures, cyberpunk, steampunk, mythpunk, modern day, anything you can think of. Because they are stories. And yet somehow, the fact that they have girls on the cover makes them not worth reading. The fact that the main characters have to squat when they pee makes them untenable to half the population. The fact that their authors grew up being told that real science fiction, fantasy, horror, and adventure starred men doing manly things in a manly way, and yet grew up to write books about women doing the same things, does not prove that literature can be a gender neutral experience where story matters more than anything else; it proves that we need more books for BOYS that GIRLS will enjoy, too. It means that the girls keep on coming second, that we keep being the deviation, and not the norm.
I do dislike the fact that right now, sexy girls pout at me from the covers of almost every book in the YA section, because I know that culturally, we discourage boys from reading those books, and damn, they are missing out. But I also dislike the fact that I'm expected to be totally a-okay with teenage girls reading books covered in muscular men with giant guns, while sneering at teenage boys reading books with thoughtful-looking women on the covers. We say "don't judge a book by its cover" like it's a Commandment, and then we turn around and tell boys not to read books with girls on them, or books with pink on them, or anything that doesn't look macho enough.
If I could read Little Fuzzy, you can read Partials. If I could read Myth Adventures, you can read The Chemical Garden. There will always be some stories that appeal to us more than others, but when we start saying "this book is for BOYS but don't worry, GIRLS can read it, too" vs. "icky GIRL BOOK is ICKY and NOT FOR BOYS," we create a division in our literature that doesn't need to be there, and frankly, upsets me.
Let's all just read the books we want to read, regardless of covers or the gender of the main characters, okay? Because otherwise, we're missing out on a lot of really great stories. And that would be a shame.
(*This is relevant only because it implies no editorial oversight. If I were to try using a slogan like this, my editors, and my agent, would politely make me stop.)
April 6 2012, 18:46:57 UTC 5 years ago
April 6 2012, 19:51:47 UTC 5 years ago
April 7 2012, 03:21:50 UTC 5 years ago
Of course, the idea of impressionable boys learning about Edward as a role model of male behavior makes me...unhappy.
April 7 2012, 04:21:29 UTC 5 years ago
Edward, on the other hand... Hm. I don't know if his actual actions (he watches her sleep, which is creepy but "I don't want to fall asleep 'cause I don't want to miss a thing" songs on the radio are this exact same concept; he doesn't want her to, you know, die and be undead; he doesn't want premarital sex) are the Most Awful Role Models Evar. I mean... they could be reading Gor, y'know? (Which, whatever one thinks of its content, suffered greatly in quality when they stopped editing it; one book summarized the last fifteen pages... every five pages or so. I counted. But that is another story.) Or comic books where the Brawny Guy's Girlfriend winds up in the refrigerator.
So... I am conflicted about Twilight, I really am. (I did rather like some fanfic of it that I read, though, so I cannot complain that it exists, because... If not Twilight, then not Luminosity.)
I let my kid read Twilight, after telling her not to imprint on the behavior of the protagonists. Happily, the kid would rather read my fic (which I can discuss in-depth with her, when necessary!) over and over again than read Twilight over and over again. Happy ending!
April 6 2012, 22:37:16 UTC 5 years ago
I know that you also say you don't think this excuses it, but it seems to me that claiming to only having heard of Twilight is itself an excuse. Because it's almost certainly a lie, and most likely what they are reacting to is the whole thing where people see women taking up even just a quarter of the space/time/whathaveyou as dominating the field/discussion/etc.
April 7 2012, 02:42:12 UTC 5 years ago
But then, there are also people, lots of people, who are blissfully unaware that single issue paper comics are still being published. Or that Walking Dead was a comic prior to becoming a TV show.
(My credentials for observing these things include seven years of working at a comic shop in a major tourist destination, and having heard many of these comments. Prior to working there, I worked at other, smaller comic shops, and one anime shop. I had amazing tunnel vision, and was frequently taken aback when someone came in who didn't know what I was selling. I know better now. XD Trivia: the sets of people who are aware of Gaiman's novels and people who are aware of his comics can also fail to overlap.)
April 7 2012, 04:06:42 UTC 5 years ago
So they haven't heard of Neil Gaiman. But surely if they have heard of Twilight they have heard of Percy Jackson, Peter Pan, Eragon, The Hobbit, or Harry Potter.
April 7 2012, 02:44:59 UTC 5 years ago
April 7 2012, 04:08:54 UTC 5 years ago
Yeah, Gaiman was not the best example, but the point still stands. It probably is a reaction to popularity of Twilight, but it's not a rational one or even one grounded in actual amount of exposure of "girl" books versus "boy" books.
April 7 2012, 05:46:27 UTC 5 years ago
I have to say that this post is giving me an ALL THE FEELS moment about YA lit in general, though. So many different topics all wrapped up in one big mixed-up bundle of happiness that YA books, and especially those written by women, are gaining greater public awareness, and sadness that some of the issues surrounding some of those books are -so- problematic.
(p.s. also YAY JENNY. I loved her so much when I was wee.)
April 7 2012, 19:04:59 UTC 5 years ago