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thanateThe world is not living up to my egalitarian upbringing.
This morning's disappointment, part maybe six or seven in an ongoing series, was brought to my attention by this post, from Jim C Hines, who writes light fantasy and interesting journal entries. (er, see also: LOL SF/F bookcovers, although he has actual content as well) The main point is that the Hugo awards are still pretty much a boy's game, even if they haven't posted the "No Girls Allowed" sign, and so a few slip in from time to time. Blah, blah, blah, controversy, extenuating circumstances, whine. Ok, now that we've got that out of our systems...
I think I've mentioned before that I'm not a feminist; in a very real way, my parents were feminists so that I didn't have to be. I just think that people who feel women are in some way not up to whatever standards you're holding people as a whole to are morons. Pick a standard, any standard, and you'll find some people of any gender, race, or other definable group (last name beginning with P...) who aren't up to it, and some who are. Unless of course you're looking for something completely irrelevant, like computer skills among illiterate yak herders, or yak herding skills among IT professionals. One of the more important skills in life is knowing what you are good at and what you aren't, and recognizing when other people are better so you can learn from them or let them get on with it, and none of this has to do with gender or race or eye color or any of the standard identifying factors. You know all this. I know all this. People still make stereotype jokes and talk about things being "gay" all the time.
This is why the real world, including some of my own behavior, comes as a disappointment to me.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
belfebe mentioned after the Democrats finally sorted out their nominations last year (was it only last year?) that the campaign process showed that while it was no longer ok to be seen as racist, it was still ok to be sexist. I didn't quite sort out the wording to say so at the time, but I think the main problem there is that the former is built on a cultural difference, while the latter is misconstruing actual genetic tendencies. As long as it's still ok to say things like "boys will be boys," and "women are better organized than men," there will be people who can't tell the difference between that and "If you can't take the heat, stay in the kitchen." Add to that some of the recent studies that show that gender identification is one of the things most deeply hardwired into our brains, and that in stressful situations (think: combat...) we *do not hear* female voices... It's a hard problem.
Personally, most sorts of stereotype grouping make me deeply uncomfortable. I spent years believing cognitive gender differences were a cultural invention, and I'm still not entirely comfortable being proven (on average) wrong. But it has, finally, come to my attention that if I were giving awards for Great Fiction, about 90 percent of them would go to female authors. I'll get back to you if I ever finish the household library thing, but I'm guessing at least half of the books in the house are female-authored fantasy.
This morning's disappointment, part maybe six or seven in an ongoing series, was brought to my attention by this post, from Jim C Hines, who writes light fantasy and interesting journal entries. (er, see also: LOL SF/F bookcovers, although he has actual content as well) The main point is that the Hugo awards are still pretty much a boy's game, even if they haven't posted the "No Girls Allowed" sign, and so a few slip in from time to time. Blah, blah, blah, controversy, extenuating circumstances, whine. Ok, now that we've got that out of our systems...
I think I've mentioned before that I'm not a feminist; in a very real way, my parents were feminists so that I didn't have to be. I just think that people who feel women are in some way not up to whatever standards you're holding people as a whole to are morons. Pick a standard, any standard, and you'll find some people of any gender, race, or other definable group (last name beginning with P...) who aren't up to it, and some who are. Unless of course you're looking for something completely irrelevant, like computer skills among illiterate yak herders, or yak herding skills among IT professionals. One of the more important skills in life is knowing what you are good at and what you aren't, and recognizing when other people are better so you can learn from them or let them get on with it, and none of this has to do with gender or race or eye color or any of the standard identifying factors. You know all this. I know all this. People still make stereotype jokes and talk about things being "gay" all the time.
This is why the real world, including some of my own behavior, comes as a disappointment to me.
belfebe mentioned after the Democrats finally sorted out their nominations last year (was it only last year?) that the campaign process showed that while it was no longer ok to be seen as racist, it was still ok to be sexist. I didn't quite sort out the wording to say so at the time, but I think the main problem there is that the former is built on a cultural difference, while the latter is misconstruing actual genetic tendencies. As long as it's still ok to say things like "boys will be boys," and "women are better organized than men," there will be people who can't tell the difference between that and "If you can't take the heat, stay in the kitchen." Add to that some of the recent studies that show that gender identification is one of the things most deeply hardwired into our brains, and that in stressful situations (think: combat...) we *do not hear* female voices... It's a hard problem. Personally, most sorts of stereotype grouping make me deeply uncomfortable. I spent years believing cognitive gender differences were a cultural invention, and I'm still not entirely comfortable being proven (on average) wrong. But it has, finally, come to my attention that if I were giving awards for Great Fiction, about 90 percent of them would go to female authors. I'll get back to you if I ever finish the household library thing, but I'm guessing at least half of the books in the house are female-authored fantasy.