Two articles caught my eye today, one notionally light-hearted, the other definitely not.  One was overtly about sex equality and prejudice, the other was not.  And yet...  

Equality and prejudice are big topics, so I’d just like to limit myself to comparing these two articles.

First up we have this article on why Hermione outshines all the boys in Harry Potter, in every aspect, yet gets no recognition.  (Originally posted by Joy Engel  (http://joyengel.tumblr.com/archive)

Witty, smart, well-reasoned and with an interesting subtextual conclusion that even in fiction the girls have to work harder, achieve more, look better, and make bigger sacrifices.  All just to get to second – or third - fiddle.  So what’s going on with JKR?   Was this a deliberate decision or a subconscious assumption?  Writer Gaie Sebold says it all in a private forum:

“I do wonder if she just picked up on the cultural mores that I picked up as a young girl reading fantasy fiction (at least in the era when I was first reading it) where the heroes are all young boys.  There just weren't any 12-year-old heroines, at least not that I remember, and not in fantasy. Hell, I had a young adolescent male hero in my first novel.  I just went to what I'd internalised as the default state, I think.  These days if I choose a male MC for a story I'm doing it very consciously.

"Or maybe she very clearly saw the market, and made her hero a young boy, because of the perception (and I have no idea how true it is, I just know marketing departments think it's true) that girls will read things with both male and female MCs, but boys will only read boy MC's. So she went for the more widely saleable version, and sneaked in a strong interesting female character under the wire?”

On the other hand, we have this from the BBC about an extradition to Peru to faces massacre charges.

Take a look at the article – do you see it?  Maybe you missed it, but it’s definitely there. 

Wikipedia regularly gets criticised for accuracy and bias, yet here they get it right.  Compare the BBC’s

“Hurtado is accused of commanding a patrol that killed the civilians, who included women and children.”

With Wikipedia’s 

“The number of unarmed men, women and children killed has been variously reported …”

Reading these two articles I wondered which is worse, being perpetually side-lined and ignored, whatever your achievements, or being regarded as so unimportant your violent death doesn’t warrant a mention?

OK, you could argue that the men are there by implication, but this swings both ways.  When would writing:

“… a patrol that killed the civilians, who included men and children.” 

ever be considered acceptable.

Realistically you can’t compare these two articles.  In this context they’re both illustrations of the culture they belong to.  My point is this - Prejudice isn’t a river that flows in one direction, it’s a creeping pool that spreads everywhere.  Beating it isn’t a win for me over you, it’s a victory for us, and until we really understand that as a culture it won’t happen.    

Or, if you want to be controversial: 

JK Rowling - Telling it Like It Is, or, Traitor to Her Own Sex?  Discuss.

I've been following the thoughtful posts and commentary following Niall Harrison's article in Strange Horizons on the various inequalities women writers endure in genre fiction from  Juliet McKenna, Kari Sperring  and Aliette de Bodard,  It's all interesting, puzzling, irritating, and necessary to know and try to understand.  It's made me wonder what do those statistics actually mean beyond the obvious, and what is the impact on sales?  I think it's pretty safe to say there will be a big impact on these female writer's careers - reviews are important for reputation and word of mouth.

One thing Aliette wrote about was "the pervasive notion that the things men do are Important; and the things women do are not" and it brought me up cold because it reminded me about a BBC report  I read recently about the fighting in Libya.    The full article is here but it's quite long so to avoid wading here's the salient bit:-

" An old woman, in her late 70s at least, I'm told, entered the bank (in Tripoli) to collect her 500 Libyan dollars ($410; £253) in state aid announced a couple of weeks ago. There were two long queues - one for men and one for women. She stood in the men's queue.

The men urged her to move to the women's section. "Why?" she challenged.

A man told her: "Ya haja [a term of respect for an elderly woman] this line is for men, women is the other one".

She loudly replied: "No. All the men are in Benghazi."

Whether or not this particular event really happened it's powerful stuff, it means something and it resonates deep inside.  There's a bit of me that cheered her on, another bit that appreciated the sanguine humour, the acidity of her attitude and the resultant humiliation of the men.  

So, I laughed a painful laugh, she was putting the men in their place, calling them out.   This is exactly the kind of real-world moment that would transpose almost unchanged into fiction.  It's powerful stuff, it means something.  After a while I started to wonder what IS that exactly? 

Layers on layers.

She didn't call the women out.  Why was that, exactly?  Why do I feel that would not work in any culture anywhere in the world?
Why is it inconceivable for a man to stand in the woman's queue and say the equivalent thing and get the same effect?

Swings and roundabouts.

I think there is something very deep-rooted going on here, under personal attitudes, under culture, possibly all the way down to instinct and reflex.  In times of trouble, in times of chaos, men form themselves into bands and women do not.  Why is that?  In terms of physicality and biological role it's obvious, but like so many 'natural' things like infant mortality, disease and hunger we have overcome them. 

Rational intellect is perhaps our greatest ability because that is what helps us transcend our natural heritage - not ignore it or trample it, but accept it, and then make a decision to do, or be, something else.   We need to do things for each other, do new things, stop doing others, give things up and start doing others.  This includes the need to give up the idea that death in one group of people is somehow more or less shocking than another irrespective of when or how that happens, accidental or otherwise, whether they pick up a gun or blow themselves up on a bus.  And that it is in certain circumstances it is the duty of part of the population to put themselves in harm's way whether they like it or not.

I wonder do we really not want that?  Or is it a case that we cannot help think these things about each other?  How do we ever get real equality if this is the layer upon which everything else floats?

So, does all this mean I'd never use an encounter like that in my writing?  Are you joking?  It's powerful stuff.  It means something. 

It resonates deep inside.

The truly gigantic amount of press and internet coverage surrounding Monica Gaudio's allegation that Cook's Source magazine copied her work, and the response from Judith Griggs, the magazine's editor, is truly astonishing.  As the word spreads, and evidence of more plagiarism emerges, and advertisers withdraw from the magazine it looks now that the magazine is doomed, Griggs' reputation destroyed,and the internet has scored a triumphant goal in the interests of truth, justice and copyright enforcement on behalf of everyone everywhere.

On the other hand there have been some commentaries on all this are expressing distaste at the internet equivalent of a baying mob cornering a thief and slinging ropes over a lamppost.  Even in cases that appear as clear cut as this it's interesting - and alarming - to see how fast and furious a reaction can be.  I do wonder how it is that the internet somehow gives people permission to behave in ways they wouldn't otherwise.  I suspect it's a combination of access, relative anonymity, and no doubt a few other things too.  

A good thing?  A bad thing?  Either way these sort of responses are here to stay.  In this particular case I feel most sorry for the innocent advertisers of the magazine now being bombarded with and endless stream of emails and comments demanding they break with Cook's Source.

For once I'm wondering if there's a chance something properly good and useful will emerge from this explosion of ire.  Part of Griggs' self-defence was her assertion that the ' the web is considered “public domain”' and so everything on it is therefore free to use.  After today there have to be a vast number of people who have discovered, or been reminded, that original words, images and other items posted on web sites are in fact copyright to the owner or creator, using them without permission is wrong, and if you do it habitually there's a good chance you will get caught.

That can't be a bad thing.

TEst



A recent conversation got me thinking about all the different things that go into being a writer: motivation, passions and interests.  Big topic, short blog, here goes: 

I came up with the idea there are three types, two pretty obvious and one, to my mind, much less so.  Probably the most obvious are the ‘selfish’ – they’re wrapped up with you own opinion of yourself.  Others are more to do with your imagination and intellect – what fascinates you, and finally there are also things that concern how you relate to other people.

It’s a great idea, obviously it must be, I thought of it!  Exactly.  You need an ego to be a writer, not only to take the rejections and cope with your own mistakes and failings but simply to believe other people will be interested in what you write.  As has been said many times writing is not necessarily an easy life but to be good at anything you need to work hard, no different from any other self-appointed task nobody asked you to do.  You need an ego with a marathon runner’s stamina to keep going and you’ll also need the self confidence to manipulate words and shape them to your will.  And you’ll need to believe you’re good enough, or at least have something that strangers will like, people who might very well wish to be informed or entertained, or make a living from words, but not necessarily by yours.  These inner urges I’ll call reasons of the self.

Then there are the things that drive you to put finger to keyboard: your sheer love of writing, the pleasure of spinning a story, weaving characters, new worlds and places, the sheer joy of invention.  You might also have a burning urge to write about certain things, urgencies that drive you from personal experience, ideology, discovery of obscure events and people you find vital and fascinating.  Or it might simply be a desire to entertain, the only thing you thought you were any good at, the only thing you ever wanted to do.  You could call these reasons of the mind.

Personally, it’s hard to say which of these two come first, it seems to me one begets and informs the other, ego and intellect.  You need something from both of these sets (though to shoot the whole thing in the head I know at least one person who loves to write but isn’t worried about being published).  Then there’s that third thing, and this was the one that really interested me because it’s not something I’ve heard talked about anywhere near as much as the others. 

When you write you write for two groups of people– yourself and your audience.  Obviously you’re deeply interested in yourself, your condition and ideas – it’s a given.  Back in that conversation I came to realise that you have to be interested – even fascinated – in other people: what they do, why they do it and most importantly how they feel about it.  This all needs to go beyond simply developing observational skills, you need to not so much get under as get behind their skins to look out at the world through their eyes and see it and feel it from their point of view, understand why they did what they did and what drove them.  Then you’ll understand how you might feel about it too.   

Why should you want to do this?  So you can do the same for your characters, make them real, make them bleed and weep, cry out in rage and ecstasy.  If you don’t care that much about other people, if your basic nature is solipsistic, if you lack any real urge to know why they are who they are, you won’t be as good a writer as you could be.  Obvious, really.

Conclusion:  Must try harder.