quarantining the girl cooties

[truepenny]

yuki_onna has a good, chewy post about Realms of Fantasy's plan for an All Women-Authors Issue. What she says about it, of course, goes for any minority group: women*, African-Americans, GLBT writers, writers with disabilities, etc. etc. etc. I think there's a point in the process of opening a genre where the Very Special Episode Issue is a good thing, when what you're saying with it is, HEY! There are enough [women/African-Americans/GLBT writers/writers with disabilities/etc.] doing excellent work in our field to fill A WHOLE ISSUE! Maybe we should all be PAYING ATTENTION!

But, returning to the specific circumstances, that's really not where women SF writers are anymore, and hasn't been for, jeez, thirty years. Because, seriously, a whole issue of Realms of Fantasy (or any other magazine) is, what? Six stories? Seven stories? Ten if they're small? I guarantee you there are more than ten women writers doing excellent work in sffh. As Cat says, a Very Special Issue is tokenism. (It also suggests, subliminally, that women writers are fragile flowers and can't compete with men head-to-head, that our stories wouldn't be good enough to fill a whole issue without this special enclave, like we're a rare species of owl or something.) It neither causes nor promises fundamental change in the way a magazine is run or the way an editor makes decisions.

I should say here that I don't know what the motivations are at RoF. For all I know, this is a sincere attempt to cut through the male-dominated bullshit and champion the cause of feminism and women writers. And it's a very attention-getting way of doing it. I'm just not sure it's the best way.

[ETA: as jimhines kindly points out, Douglas Cohen explains some of the editorial thinking in the second comment to the announcement.]

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*Not, of course, that women are a numerical minority. Tra la.

Comments

[callunav.livejournal.com]

I think I agree with everything you're saying, here.

My only side comment is that I like anthologies of women's work, and particularly feminist work, because that way I'm more likely (albeit not by any means guaranteed, heaven knows) to get a concentration of stuff I like in one place. Despite the percentages in publishing, about 90% of the sffh I read is written by women. When I'm looking for new authors, I am much more likely to randomly pull something off the shelf if it has a woman's name on the spine. I do read and like fiction by men, quite often - but I read and like a lot more fiction by women.

This really applies more to major collections than to having a Very Special Issue, though. I don't keep up with any magazines at the moment (though I probably want to change that). Certainly, I think all the implications you bring out are present and significant.

(And I keep on pointing out to people that women are not a minority population. Weirdly, I happen to think that's important.)