If a man speaks in the forest and there’s no woman around to hear him, is he still wrong?*

Warning. This post may contain sudden shifts, depending on which way my mood swings go and how long it takes me to write it.

It all started (for me) at Sarah Weinman’s blog. The news that elsewhere in the blogsphere, the ITW – which gives out it’s first awards to thriller writers next week – was being accused of sexism.

The reason? In their first year, only men have been nominated in each of the award categories.

The timing was interesting, because of a recent discussion on Val McDermid’s forum about whether men or women are better crime writers. Now, I reference this for two reasons: Val is – in my opinion – one of the best out there, male or female, and she also references that men traditionally will not read books by women.

I didn’t want to blog on this topic. I’ve done the “do men do it better” discussion before, and admitted that, when it comes to my bookshelves, it looks like they do.

To be honest, I think women are harder on other women. It’s a father-and-son, mother-and-daughter thing – we sometimes have an easier time just letting the other gender “be” but we expect things from those who’ve got the same biological equipment as ourselves. Don’t ask me why that is, but I see that in relationships all the time.

The reason I didn’t want to blog on this was because, initially, I didn’t want to discuss this at all. I wanted to stay out of it. Call me a wuss, but can anyone win this argument?

No.

The nomination lists were decided by a jury. Each category has the names of judges posted on the website, and there are female judges in every category.

The thing is, this is the first year these awards are being given out. The First Year. To accuse the ITW of sexism is rash. Unless you were a fly on the judging room wall and know they willfully excluded women, why would you automatically jump on that pony and trot off?

Maybe – just maybe – the judges really voted for who they thought was best. And, shock of horrors, the men came out on top five times over.

Now, I don’t have the stats and documentation in front of me, but via the comments at Sarah’s blog, I understand there have been times in the past when all women have been nominated for other awards.

Is it naïve of me to say May the best PERSON win?

I ask you women honestly. Do you want a woman’s name to be on the nomination ballot just because the writer has a pair of ovaries? Or do you want to see a ballot that honestly represents what the judges deem to be the best books, in each category, regardless of race, religion, skin colour?

Two years from now, if we’re around the bend from the third ITW Awards, and for the third year running it’s all men, there might be some merit to the accusation.

But there also might be some merit to the idea that men just do it better, and that women need to quit whining about it and get to work to prove they’re as capable as the men!

Seriously, is anything really gained by whining?

I’m in a bit of a bad mood on the whole thing, for other reasons. It’s about how women present themselves. I’m not saying I’m perfect – hell no! But here, the Supreme Court has just ruled in a case that the woman is entitled to support because she can’t work to support herself because of the emotional trauma of having her husband cheat on her.

It’s being hailed as a benchmark ruling, a victory for women…

Fuck me, people! Isn’t the percentage of women who haven’t dealt with a cheating spouse since the dawn of time substantially lower than those who have? I mean, Kevin and I have had our ups and downs, sure, but he’s never cheated on me.

Which makes me a bit of an oddity, judging by a lot of people I know.

Look, I’m not saying there aren’t times it’s warranted. But to make blanket statements about this kind of stuff is scary. And I find it a bit troubling that someone would want to play the emotion card to discount the simple reality that everyone has to deal with shit in their lives and, end of the day, we all have to overcome it.

What next? Girls who don’t have to go to school because they’re traumatized over menstruating? Hell, maybe I should get a complete free pass on all personal responsibility and the government should take care of me because my mother’s bipolar and clearly, growing up with that was stressful. I mean, I am a case file with Children’s Aid, which means I was monitored by the government… Maybe they failed me. Hot damn, my ticket to cashing in.

Not.

It’s an aside, yes, but on the marriage and cheating front, do these judges stop to ask what the woman might have done to contribute to her husband’s infidelity? I’m serious. Sure, some men are just dogs and will hump anything that walks by. There are some women who’re that way too, believe it or not.

But I have a lot of guy friends, and I’ve heard the complaints. She put out until we got married. Then she cut me off. That’s a common one. And I have to say that women who use sex for manipulative purposes deserve what they get back on it. For fuck’s sake people, everyone has needs! Marriage isn’t supposed to be society’s answer to emasculation! And don’t even start that I’m exaggerating on this one. I know one woman, who is a complete bitch, who pulls this shit routinely. Cut him off until he proposed. Then again, until he bought the house. Then again, until he agreed to have kids (which from before marriage he’d never wanted).

Am I the only person who wants to grab a woman like that and slap some sense into her? I’d feel the same way if it was a guy. Relationships are about give and take, and it’s about maturity, people. Not a lack of horizontal action until you get what you want.

Talk about selfish, and childish. Grow up!

So, I needed to have a little bit of a rant on this topic. I’m not saying that the results of the ITW Award nominations aren’t interesting. I’m not even saying they aren’t enough to make me raise an eyebrow.

But before I shove some rash judgment down the face of the world that says this is a WPO^ club, I need to see some facts. My instincts are to trust the judges honestly voted for the best books, and that in each category (different judges in each category, btw) the top five books just happened to be written by men.

Would we see the same arguments being made if the top five books had been written by women? I strongly doubt it.

Truthfully, when I saw Sarah’s summary on it, I didn’t feel the need to go read the post that had stirred things up. I’m not even necessarily encouraging you to do that, for a few reasons. One is that, in my opinion, the post is heavy on speculation and short on substantiated facts. The other is that the post’s author has not participated at all in the discussion in the comments section. Now, this is just a personal quirk of mine: If someone posts something highly controversial and then doesn’t interact with the people who raise points, either agreeing or disagreeing, it bugs me. Walk into a room, drop a bomb, and get out before it goes off. I don’t mean that as a personal comment on the author of the post, it’s a general feeling I have about some blogs, which is why I always try to find time to get back to my own posts and respond to comments, at least the day I put the post up. **And there could be a million reasons why the author didn’t participate – dentist’s appointments or whatever – although I did check again this morning.

However, if you’d like to read it, you will find the post HERE. And I’m not trying to sway you on it one way or the other – I believe in people checking out the facts for themselves. But I ended up reading the post when a friend of mine emailed about it, and I have articulated more of my thoughts over there. Feel free – as always – to come back at me on them here.

I don’t expect we’ll all agree on this. But I think that we have to be careful about jumping to conclusions.

And I feel bad that the ITW has had to deal with these accusations year 1. But would we really have preferred the judges stop short, look at the list and say, “Shit! All men! Okay, we have to go back and insert two women here and three women here… Okay, yep, now it’s an even split.”

I think not. Believe me – if I read stories for Spinetingler, I never say “Have to vote for this one because it’s by a guy and I’ve already got five women’s stories picked.”

No fucking way. I don’t even think about the gender. I cut a bit of editing slack if the author is ESL, and that’s it.

Oh, and it’s JT Ellison’s turn over at Killer Year. JT is a fantastic writer, as evidenced here.

Even if she is a woman.

(Ducks and runs…)

And a couple of my friends are nominated for these awards, so I'm particularly choked about the fact that these accusations might be seen as undermining their achievement, like they only got on the list because they're men.

They didn't. They got there because they're fantastic writers and deserve it.

• quote: Jerry Dennis
• ^ With Penis Only