Pink vs Blue

I have admitted a great number of curiosities about what motivates people to write what they do. For the record, I think we all know now of certain characteristics it isn’t okay to wonder about, but limiting writers (and readers) to the influence of their gender, apparently, is just fine.

As much as I respect Ali, I found myself thinking that ”Clash of the Scottish Titans” was just keeping what should have by then been a dead issue alive. So I was glad I actually read the comments (which I often don't do, because my blood starts to boil), where he explains it was the discrimination against female writers he wanted to address, although my fear is that was sidetracked by all of the other stuff contained.

However, in the comments Ali posted a link to an old article, and a quick scroll down will bring you to the discussion of Tart Noir. As Ali quotes in the comments, this is a sample of the exchange between himself, Martina Cole and Stella Duffy:

Martina : I can tell you, that one of my readers (a man) actually puts a Stephen King cover on my books as he reads them on the train to work? Surely something's wrong?

Ali : That is a very sad indictment I must admit.

Stella : In fact what we really need to do is to encourage men to read more widely, and not women to change their writing style. Look everyone's talking about the lack of literacy in young men, so any encouragement in getting men to read more widely would certainly help. Look around you here (Stella points to the framed posters that adorn Waterstone's events room), there are 25 posters on these walls and only three and half of which are by women.

But that isn’t the reason I’m declaring gender fair game for discussion when it comes to what influences a writer. Rather, in the midst of an interesting piece Sarah Weinman wrote about Marilyn Stassio’s career there are comments that have their root with Stassio, but open the door to the smoldering topic of gender bias in the crime fiction community. (This quote is sourced via Sarah Weinman’s post on Stassio, and I’ll leave it as such so that anyone interested gets the benefit of her full post.) Check this out:

The publishing industry at this point is skeptical about the broader appeal of these women who are detectives and private investigators. Those in the industry hold that most readers of hard-boiled fiction are men, and the trade does not see them racing to buy books written by and featuring women. They are not so sure that women want to read them either.
''As a rule, women seem not to be as fascinated as men by the overtly violent action of such novels,'' says Joan Kahn, an editor at St. Martin's Press with 30 years' experience acquiring mystery fiction. ''The behavior in these books is too crude and simplistic for most women. 'I punched him, I shot him, I killed him, I dragged his body away.' I am sure that women could write that kind of bloodthirsty prose if they really wanted to. I'm just not convinced that they like to read it.''

Sound familiar? But that’s from 1985.

I have no doubt that there are very real prejudices women find themselves up against in this industry, but I have to say that I find some of the comments about what women prefer to read and write to be just as bad. We still clinging to the idea that women don’t have casual sex either? Man, I’ve known a few people I could fantasize about kicking, punching, shooting and dragging into an alley…

Maybe the reason I’m finding Joan Kahn’s comments harder to take than anything else is because they’re from a woman? Maybe I expect more? Maybe I feel like she's maintaining the gender conditioning and perpetuating that, saying what women are and are not interested in? Or maybe I just feel excluded because, eternal Tomboy that I am, as a child the books I was reading were Jack London’s The Call of the Wild and The Great Brain series and Gordon Korman’s Bruno and Boots books… and I never did read Anne of Green Gables. God, girls were so boring! The guys were out there, exploring the world, having adventures, doing things… That’s what I thought when I was a just a stupid little kid. (And rather hypocritical that I preferred to have my nose stuck in a book than actually go do something myself.)

But I can look back and see a certain amount of gender conditioning at play. I still remember begging to take karate, and being told that was for boys. (What I don’t remember is if my reason was because I was tired of getting beaten up – by girls! – at school. When I was assaulted when I was 14 it was by a group of girls, who incidentally had a reputation for starting street fights.)

What was that quote again? About the punching, kicking? Because it may be as simple for some of us to prefer a certain amount of realism in our fiction (another subject of debate we could have endlessly) and an understanding of the fact that people are violent.

Maybe the real reason I’m not a big fan of cozies is that the avoidance of physical pain and suffering seems so… girly?

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I don’t call myself a feminist. I’m a humanist. I believe in every person having the opportunity to do whatever they’re capable of, regardless of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, eye color or anything else. I’m not interested in putting men above women or women above men. (And I’m not saying all feminists do, it’s just that some do. In the same way that all rights movements run the risk of not being about equality and starting to be about superiority at some point, there are definitely anti-male feminists out there. I just like to distinguish myself from that.)

However, I’ve also made no secret of the fact that I’ve had a tendency to read more books written by men. To, uh, be honest with you, I find guys fascinating. And part of the reason was that I’d tried some books by women that really didn’t work for me. It took a while for me to come up with a system to find the female authors that would appeal to me.

I have been thinking about gender issues a lot lately, in part because what I’m working on has three protagonists – two men and a woman. And while the catalyst character was a guy, the woman runs the risk of overshadowing both of the guys at times. I find her a fascinating character to write. Well, I enjoy writing them all, but as a cop, with Ashlyn I find myself walking the gender lines more. She is, in many respects, harder to write because I want her to have credit for her strengths as a person, while also being a woman.

I think part of the problem with discussing these issues is that it makes it seem like this is pervasive. As though this is ongoing discrimination that women come up against at every single turn. Now, that may be. I’m not saying that isn’t the case. What I am saying is I don’t know if that’s the case. One or two old comments come up, tacked on to a fresh one, and suddenly it’s as though women are getting letters from publishers telling them to stay home and get a new apron. Martina Cole is one of the top sellers in the UK, as is Val McDermid. Despite whatever prejudices women are coming up against, women are still succeeding in this business. And maybe – with problems getting reviews and with purchasers who won’t read books by women in the equation – that means we have to be twice as good as the guys to get there.

I think there are serious, legitimate issues that have to be addressed. Apparently, that’s why Sisters in Crime was started. Perhaps we need to sweep aside the other attention-getting aspects of recent “arguments” and get to the point where we focus on what’s really important here. An analysis of how the industry has (or has not) changed with regards to its attitude to women could be very interesting.

I’m certainly in the camp of lobbying for a change in attitude about what women like to read, though. Shania Twain’s Any Man of Mine is enough to send me over the edge – I hate that kind of attitude, and for some reason that editor’s comments have the same impact on me. In order for women to be fully accepted as equals we can’t have our own double standards, and that’s what it is about Twain’s song that pisses me off.

And that one line in bold sums up Ashlyn’s philosophy to a T.

But there are things I find myself wondering. Lately, I was having a terrible time, dealing with requesting something from other writers. I realized that, in the few times I’ve had to do this, the only people to completely ignore me were all women. I can look back at the blurbs for SC and see that men outnumber the women in terms of the five cover blurbs, and also I had more reviews from men than women… It would be horrendously unfair of me to go on a tirade about women not getting reviews, based on my own experience anyway.

Maybe instead of complaining that we’re discriminated against in the business we need to start putting our money where our mouth is, and showing more support for other women in the industry?

Maybe what we need to do is open a forum of discussion about the very real issues women are currently facing, at every level of the industry. And maybe instead of just talking we need to start finding our own solutions. The worst thing of all about this is that it seems as though, in twenty years, little has changed.