Also Not an April Fool's joke

[james_davis_nicoll]

Is noticing the the sex of writers nominated for the Hugo a sexist act?

(linked to with the permission of the person whose livejournal account that is)

Comments

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

Not inherently.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. It is. Any definition of sexism under which it isn't is incoherent.

This is precisely what makes the issue such a difficult one. To analyze and discuss the situation, it is unavoidable that one engage in sexist behavior. When actively considering one's own sexism (to keep it simple and avoid accusing anybody else of anything), one must consider things in ways that, in a society without sexism, would be inappropriate, silly, and unproductive. But they're necessary for people dealing with *this* society *today*.

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

I disagree with you, D. It's not the noticing or discussing that is sexist: it's discrimination or fostering of stereotypes that is sexist (cf. Webster's).

I agree, though, that it's impossible to address this sort of issue without also noticing and discussing the relevant attributes of the people in question. (Which is what the troll-person in that thread had such trouble with. Somehow I think that pointing him to Joanna Russ wouldn't help, either.)

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

There have been lots of attempts to define around what I consider the basic problem, but it seems to me that at base, the issue is that caring about the sex of any author is wrong (also for many, many other professions). If it matters whether the author of Ringworld is male or female or whatever, something is wrong, somewhere.

(Some things are wrong, and we have to deal with them, so we have to do things that would be wrong in an ideal world; I suck it up and try to deal.)

The distinction between fostering and opposing for example is amazingly subtle; not so much by accident, but somebody wishing to foster a stereotype could conduct a rather poorly designed campaign to oppose it, for example. So a definition based on that distinction can and will be gamed.

[jwgh]

Is there a distinction to be made in caring about the sex of any (particular) author and caring about the statistical distribution of the sexes in a given profession? [Not to be pointlessly coy, my own view is that there is.]

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think that's a very important distinction.

If I toss a single coin and it comes up heads, that doesn't tell me very much.

But if I toss a hundred coins from the same source, and ninety of them come up heads... well, I can't point at any single coin and say "this one is biased", but I can be pretty much certain that bias is a major problem in this population. Same principle applies here; while the gender of any given author should be irrelevant, looking at collective gender-vs-success data can tell us how far we are from achieving that impartiality.

[azimuth07.livejournal.com]

Excellent analysis -- thanks for this. I was struggling to find the right way to address this without success. I think the fact that the gender ratio seems so unbalanced points to something at work here other than chance. The explanation is probably is far more complex than just claiming that the nominators are sexist. The cause of the imbalance is complex and probably so deeply rooted and pervasive that it would take a lot of sussing out to explain to any degree of satisfaction.

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's one hell of a troll.

I think my favorite part was when the OP made a list of really good books written by women last year and the commenter completely blew her off because he didn't like them. Just because one person doesn't like a book doesn't mean it's a bad book--it's just one person's opinion.

And to answer your question, no, I don't think it's a sexist act. At least not an oppressively sexist act, if that makes sense. We live in a sexist (and racist) society and it's important to look at these lists that come out--because people will use them as reading lists--and raise a flag if they're not truly representative of what's going on. If that makes sense. I'm not good at these sorts of discussions.

[pompe.livejournal.com]

No. Noticing the sex of any creature is not sexist, be that cats, supermodels or SF authors.

Using such statistics to draw poorly founded conclusions might well be sexist, though.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

James, please note that I banned the guy-- otherwise it's a bit unfair that he's getting comments but can't reply. Although some of the comments may agree with him, so maybe he'll be pleased that the non-lurkers are supporting him in email.

[felis-sidus.livejournal.com]

Noticing the sex of the writers nominated isn't sexist. Nominating a writer or voting for a writer on the basis of that person's sex would be sexist. Noticing a person's gender, or any other attribute, is fairly neutral. It's when what we notice causes us to form biased judgements or take prejudicial actions that "ism" comes into play.

[montoya.livejournal.com]

The guy's an asshole, but I honestly can't say that I see the nomination list as particularly sexist. Of the list of woman-authored books someone in that thread posted, the only one that I think is really award-caliber is Walton's Farthing (which I personally would have nominated and voted for to win, if I were a Worldcon-goer), and I think there are plenty of non-gender-related reasons why that would get overlooked, from being too political for some tastes to being less overtly SFnal in feel than the Hugo voters' historic taste.

I think it's insulting, unnecessarily provocative, and unhelpful to any cause, to impute sexist motives to the nominators when there's very little reason to suspect that they exist.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I think for the five novels it's a perfectly reasonable list, and hey, 20% female, and I wasn't expecting Farthing to be nominated for exactly the reasons you cite, but thank you. The sexist thing I think is when you look beyond the novel list and see that for the entire 20 fiction nominees there's still only the one female... which does look a little odd.

[montoya.livejournal.com]

Fair point. I ignore the short fiction lists because I'm woefully unread, so have no idea what sort of stuff is potentially getting ignored there.

(palm thuds against forehead)

[the-blue-fenix.livejournal.com]

The main thing that had struck me about the nominee list this year is "Wow! Naomi Novik got her first book _evah_ nominated for a Hugo, how often does that happen? And damn well deserved, too." I devoured her first three books (all she has out to date) within 72 hours of reading the one that's nominated.

If I were going to draw "are the Hugos sexist?" conclusions at all, I'd break down the male/female proportions of nominees vs. the male/female proportions of all authors in the field during the same years, using say "published by a major house/magazine" as a surrogate for all authors. I'd also compare the same years and total field of authors vs. the Nebulas to see if any patterns emerged.

I'd also for comparison want to do similar analysis of awards in the mystery genre. My impression as a mystery reader too is that the proportion of female authors and readers is notably higher than in SF.

I freely admit that's too much work for me. For the original poster you link to, too. Apparently.

Re: (palm thuds against forehead)

[jwgh]

I think I'll expand on this if that's OK.

I just finished reading Butler's Women of Wonder collections, so I guess I have some interest in this?

There are various points along the road from writing a book to being selected as a nominee where bias could conceivably creep in. For instance:

- Whatever support structures exist that result in people writing science fiction books might be biased in favor of men. (I think of the chilling effect on women entering fandom that people have speculated Harlan Ellison's recent behavior might have, and other anecdotes told by women who have attended conventions, for instance.)

- Publishers might be more disposed to buy science fiction books by male authors, or to spend more money promoting them, etc.

- The science fiction-consuming public might be more inclined to buy books by men.

- Reviewers might be more inclined to review books by men, making good books by women less visible and making a general consensus that particular books are really good.

- The folks who nominate works for Hugos might be biased in favor of men.

There are probably other steps along the way where bias might creep in. I'm not saying that any of the above are actually correct; but it seems like that even a small bias in enough steps would result in a lot fewer female Hugo nominees. The Sargent books indicate to me (not that I would have doubted it anyway) that there's high-quality work by men and women out there, and there always has been.

(In general I would expect the points at which there's a lot of winnowing to be done to be the areas where even small unconscious biases can have big results.)

Re: (palm thuds against forehead)

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

Winnowing is certainly one angle; another is biases that affect the actual quality of the work. If Anne and Bob are equally good authors but the boy's club at $PUBLISHER assigns Bob their best editor and gives him more creative freedom*, he has a better chance of producing a masterpiece that gets a Hugo nom.

Effects like this are particularly important out near the tails of the curve, which is what we're looking at when we count the Hugo field.

*Creative freedom doesn't always improve quality, as demonstrated by any number of successful authors who got too much of it. But I think it probably increases the variance in quality, and if you're trying to improve your representation in the high tail, increased variance is generally a good thing. 99 atrocities and one masterpiece will get you more Hugo noms than a hundred unexceptional works.

Speaking of which, it would be interesting to know how strongly women are represented at the bottom of the curve, if there was any non-controversial way of discovering that.

Re: (palm thuds against forehead)

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

- Whatever support structures exist that result in people writing science fiction books might be biased in favor of men.

As someone (possibly James himself?) pointed out a while back, there may be selection effects due to rationality. Writing fiction in general, and *short* fiction in particular, is not economically rational. Lots of people don't write fiction because it doesn't (generally speaking) pay very well. Is this trait more commonly expressed in females than in males?

Re: (palm thuds against forehead)

[jwgh]

I am really very strongly disposed against arguments that require that one sex be more (rational, emotional, smart, virtuous, etc.) than the other.

That aside, I could make economic arguments either way. (To argue it the other way, I would note that women in general are payed less well than men, so in general the opportunity cost for spending time writing science fiction is lower than it is for men.)

Re: (palm thuds against forehead)

[montoya.livejournal.com]

If only there were someone on LiveJournal who likes looking things up and compiling elaborate charts of data, like that one guy, wossname, something Nichols.

Re: (palm thuds against forehead)

[cofax7]

Something I wanted to note about Novik's book as well--how many of the nominees picked it up and read it only after the news broke about Peter Jackson optioning it for a movie? And the Temeraire novels got a big marketing push from the publisher, unlike any of the other novels on the list. I don't know of any other sff novels by women in the last year that got anywhere near the kind of widespread recommendations that Novik got. (Quality is another factor, given that this is the Hugos...)

And how many novels by women were nominated in the process, and didn't make the cut because they didn't get enough nominations? That would indicate that there were plenty of novels worthy of making the short list, possibly too many, and they split the vote. (I'm trying to be optimistic here...)

[logrusboy.livejournal.com]

One can notice a trait without using that trait as a basis for decision-making. Thus, I argue that noticing someone's sex is not a sexist act. But, oh my goodness me, doesn't it attract the trolls?

[jwgh]

Strange. How was everyone able to correctly deduce that the person making the comment was male?

[montoya.livejournal.com]

Apparently, he is ineluctably masculine.

[chromatomancer.livejournal.com]

"Is noticing the the sex of writers nominated for the Hugo a sexist act?"
Haha -- no. . . . of course not. I noticed it immediately. Generally the people who DON'T notice it have not been encouraged to think about gender. In other words, they do notice it, i.e. they take in the information that the writers are male, but they don't problematize it. I.e. they HAVE made a discrimination. . . their lack of interest in the issue is itself a stand. It is also a stand to say, "oh my, many nominees are male and this is not uncommon. . ." The real question is, is it sexist to say, the nominees are predominantly male and that is a problem? The answer to that, while more complex, is still no and has to do with the history of discrimination and bias. It saddens me deeply that so few women achieve recognition for their contributions. . . the real question is, what's to be done about it? I'm optimistic. . . discussions like these raise the level of awareness that this is even a question. . .so keep the debate going. If I had more time I'd be happy to expound my opinions on this, but others are stepping in admirably. Thanks, --Francesca

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

Generally the people who DON'T notice it have not been encouraged to think about gender. In other words, they do notice it, i.e. they take in the information that the writers are male, but they don't problematize it. I.e. they HAVE made a discrimination. . . their lack of interest in the issue is itself a stand.

I have to disagree. Just because I didn't notice that there was only one woman nominated doesn't mean that I was sitting here jumping for joy for all the men who were nominated. I can't say that I even thought about it until someone pointed it out because my concern was, "Have I read these books?" Secondly, I asked, "Is anyone I know nominated, so that I can congratulate them?" I didn't go through the list with a checklist, saying, "male, male, male, female, male..."

It sounds to me like you're saying, "If you don't think about gender, you must be inherently biased." Blindness != bias.

Heck, I'm a gay man, and I didn't sit here and ask, "How many gay people got nominated this year? Shouldn't there be 10% gay representation on the ballot?" That's just ridiculous, and it never even occurred to me. What's important is the quality of the works that made the ballot.

[supermouse.livejournal.com]

At the point where the representation in nominations is 10% and in general is 50%, you have to wonder what's going on. It looks a lot like bias. And, to be honest, being a woman does mean that you think about gender, a lot, because you get smacked in the face with it so much in day-to-day life. Which is something you can't see when your own gender is 'the default', unless you actively look for it. Not looking for it is accepting the privilege of such a status quo. It says that things are just fine, thank you, and there's no need to notice discrepancies like this because they don't affect you. If you're a female SF writer? Yes, it affects you. Just a little. It's one more little hint that you may have five times the work to do to get noticed because you aren't the 'default' sex.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

An important question is whether it *is* 50%, though. It is in the general population -- but are 50% of SF authors female?

And if there is bias this year, do we blame fandom in general, or that the Worldcon is in Japan this year?

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

1. That would be difficult to determine due to the extreme difficulty of defining sf. (Yes, the Hugo is for speculative fiction, which includes fantasy.) However, I can say with some confidence that male sf authors do not outnumber women twenty to one, which is how this year's Hugo noms break down.

2. I don't think we can blame Japan; men have dominated the awards since they were created: http://rachelmanija.livejournal.com/459591.html?thread=4383303#t4383303

[supermouse.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this. I was wondering myself.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

But those stats show the Hugo M:F ratio as being 2:1 through the 1990s, and 4:1 in the 1980s. So this year's 20:1 would have to be seen as exceptional, not standard, and perhaps needing its own explanation.

I'd note that while the Hugo may have officially been for Spec Fic, actually awarding it to fantasy novels struck people as a recent innovation.

I was thinking about possible bias-amplification built into the system. A made-up model: Say 60% of the authors write explodey spaceship fiction and 40% write character and biology fiction. And say 60% of the fans like the first a lot and 40% like the second a lot. It's not at all clear to me that we should expect only 60% of the awards to go to explodey spaceship fiction; the voting is majority rules, not proportional, so the 60% of the voters could easily enthrone their preference most of the time.

[pompe.livejournal.com]

This is a very good point. Maybe you don't even need 60%. Say 30 % write explodey starship stuff, 25% write sword & sorcery, 25% write character & biology stuff and 20% write cybertechnothrillers.

[supermouse.livejournal.com]

That is an important question, and not one I can even guess the answer to. Nor whether being in Japan makes a difference.

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

At the point where the representation in nominations is 10% and in general is 50%, you have to wonder what's going on. It looks a lot like bias.

It may look like it, but I find it hard to believe that fans actively consider the issue of gender when making nominations or voting. I'm not saying that's we're better than the general population - there are plenty of sexist fans when it comes to personal interactions, and I've seen it for myself - but I've never heard anyone saying, "Oh, I can't vote for that - it was written by a woman."

I think that mindstalk's example of explodey-spaceship fiction vs. character-and-biology fiction is an excellent description of what you're up against. For whatever reason, space opera is more popular than character-driven SF, and men tend to write more of the former than women. Sure, there are women who write space opera (Tanya Huff and Lois McMaster Bujold come to mind), but they're in a very small minority.

I would also point out that in the past 15 years, women have won the Best Novel Hugo exactly 50% of the time (there was a tie in 1993). And last year, of the 19 people listed as having won Hugos, 7 of them were women, plus a woman won the Campbell Award. Given the male/female ratio in the genre, that doesn't seem too bad.

And, to be honest, being a woman does mean that you think about gender, a lot, because you get smacked in the face with it so much in day-to-day life. Which is something you can't see when your own gender is 'the default', unless you actively look for it.

Again, though, I'm a member of a minority myself, one that's frequently ignored (and when we aren't, it tends to cause a ruckus, at least in the mainstream media), so I do have an inkling. I can't remember the last time there was an overlap between the Hugo ballot and the Spectrum Awards shortlist - it may have been Rob Sawyer's Hybrids, in 2004. Why isn't there a novel that's shortlisted for the Spectrums on the Hugo ballot every two years? After all, that would be about the correct ratio. Is it because of homophobia in fandom? Possibly - but apart from promoting those works with LGBT-related themes that I happen to think are Hugo-worthy, there's not much else that I can (or should) do.

Now, if you think that there's some vast plan afoot among publishers to keep female authors from seeing print, that would be something worth fighting about. Who made the Hugo ballot and who didn't is largely a question of taste, I think.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I would also point out that in the past 15 years, women have won the Best Novel Hugo exactly 50% of the time (there was a tie in 1993).

If you count from 1991, then six and a half of the sixteen awards went to women but of those six and half awards, four went to the same woman. If Lois McMaster Bujold had decided to go into romance or mystery in the 1980s, the numbers might (or might not) be less equitable.

[supermouse.livejournal.com]

It's never 'some vast plan', though, is it? It's always lots of small, seemingly meaningless decisions and events that only show up in statistics, because every time someone is told 'People only want space opera, why don't you write chick lit if you want to do touchy feely people stories', or 'Women don't understand weaponry' or 'For all the men out there, here are the technical specs on...' (Or, to agree loudly with you, 'That book/film/event was so gay...' where 'gay' is a pejorative), or a panel on women in sci-fi is moderated by a man and twenty minutes is spent discussing a male author, then it's a non-event. It is a very minor thing, very small indeed, but those tiny remarks can add up over time into a big pile of discouragement - which only shows up in figures. No vast plot is needed, only the assumption that women do X and men do Y and that this cannot and should not change. Or that 'male' X is the good or the default, and 'female' X is inferior.

I like the figures you gave on who is winning what, so thank you very much for that. It's reassuring. Especially after reading Jeremy Clarkson for a while. Not sci fi at all, but glaringly sexist and homophobic. It reminds me about why I bother at all about such nebulous things as ratio of gender in awards.