Thinking about it, some things said here kinda of reminds me of when I studied about media perception enforced on us, the reality and other effects.
That the important thing isn't the information by itself, but the act of transforming it in knowledge. Think of information as bricks and knowledge as the building.
But where do we get those bricks? From other people and the media. Mostly the media.
However, the media offer us a kind of "tubular vision" of things. It's like we can only look to a part of reality it allows us to look, and in the way it wants us to interpret it.
The case in question was when the president of Philippines was deposed or something like that. He and his wife were to be judged in the US or in the UK. I don't remember the year.
The interesting part is that the media focused on taking pictures of the closet of the First Lady, giving enormous focus on her immense and incredible collection of shoes. Because of that focus and it being spread over and over, she became known worldwide as a futile woman only worried about shoes.
During her judgment (in which she was absolved) the newspapers sent reporters with the exclusive mission of taking photographs of her feet, so they could publish in their next editions which kind of shoe she was using.
Much to their frustration she used in every single jury session the same kind of shoes.
When she became aware of this fact, she told that Philippines has a vast amount of shoe factories, and every year, she received shoes or complete collections as gifts from them, because all of them wanted to say the First Lady of Philippines used their shoes.
She couldn't even use most of them (she used a pretty big number), but giving or throwing them away could create embarrassments with the government. So she simply stored them.
Despite the story being true, the biggest part of the population still holds the image of her as the media gave it to them for an immense of time: a futile person because she owns a big pile of shoes.
And now we have why SF/F and some other genres have less women authors. And for years, brick by brick, the media simply built a Babel tower and named it's floors "bias, machism, sexism" and plenty of other similar names and urged people to throw tomatoes at it.
I also thought for a time they were right, threw away my bricks and joined the crowd throwing tomatoes at the tower.
But one day you decide to walk somewhere else and see some new houses. Still pretty small, incomparable to the giant tower looming over everyone, but they had some different rooms and floors to explore. And you find out:
- Women works aren't disregarded or talked down as much as the media wants you to believe: They have half or almost half of the major awards, sometimes have most of the nominations and keep winning year after year.
- Some of the most popular genres (and that also make the most money) are dominated by women authors. Men are minority in them and apparently can't appear to what those audiences want as well as their female counterparts.
- Under representation may not be only due to bias, sexism, bigotry and the kind. Information from publishers and other sources show they simply might not have the same level of interest in some genres in the same proportion as their male counterparts.
Equality is beautiful to talk about, to theorize and imagine. It gets all the applauses and cheers. But theory and practice are different realities. When you have 100 submissions on a genre and 17 are from women and 83 are from men (or vice-versa) what one is supposed to do? One cannot talk about agency and them force 33 other women (or men) to write and submit stories so they can reach their magical number to fulfill their view on how the world should work.
- Thinking that women (or men) are under represented in certain genres only because of bias, sexism, bigotry and etc is an extremely biased and unhealthy view on the world.
- Some of the most successful and richest authors are also women. Rowling may even be the richest or the one who sold most books.
And then you return to the tower. You see the cracks in the bases that sustained it's structure for so much time.
The tower shakes.
For some it's an enlightening moment. But for others the change in perspective can be scary. What if the tower falls? What's gonna replace it? It's been there for so long... what's gonna happen when it's gone?
Then they stop throwing away their bricks... but they rush to repair the cracks, covering it with more bricks and even expanding the base even more so the tower doesn't fall.
They are too used at staring with the tower and throwing tomatoes at it, their legs too used at kicking the beaten horse day and night, with rain or sun that they can no longer use them to walk somewhere else and search new paths.
And if someone asks if they shouldn't let the tower collapse, the reaction is instant. They expiate their frustrations at it and believe it does something, they feel hurt and insulted at the suggestion.
The reason is simple: if they, or what they believe (or are led to believe) is hurt or insulted, or if they feel like victims, then they have someone else to blame, and in their view, they are no longer responsible for their failures or poor achievements.
They are no longer responsible for their job performance, for wanting to improve and to be the best they can be, and ultimately that will result in their overall failure (which they will, of course, blame on others), and this feeling is used to justify wrong-doings and to rationalize double standards.
It's also what other ill-intentioned people or demagogues use to get what they want, and ask you for your bricks, saying they know how to build the solution, when they in fact are building their throne above the clouds higher and higher.
No. Let the tower fall.
Let the beaten horse finally rot away.
Create a new building, with new rooms and corridors to explore, that may actually lead somewhere. "Why aren't they writing more in genre X?", "why X has more interest in writing or reading genre Y?", and so forth.
But you have to let the tower fall.
