An appropriate apology?
British Fantasy Society admits 'lazy sexism' over male-only horror book
The British Fantasy Society put out a collection of interviews with 16 horror writers which included not one woman:
Authors and commentators were shocked to discover that the BritishFantasy Society's In Conversation: A Writer's Perspective; Volume One:Horror, edited by author James Cooper and out later this year, onlyfeatured interviews with male writers such as Ramsey Campbell andGraham Joyce."There are a lot of women who write horror and lovethe genre. Our contribution to the industry deserves as muchrecognition as our male colleagues. That we were treated as if wedidn't even exist was a shocking experience. Ann Radcliffe wrote herfirst Gothic novel in 1789 and Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1818,after all," said writer Maura McHugh. McHugh drew attention to the situation late last week on her blog Splinister, where she said there were "no excuses" for the omission.
The society was...actually contrite!
The society indicated they will be aware of this in the future. Because they hadn't really been paying attention up until now (grr).The British Fantasy Society has now apologised for the omission,with its chair, Guy Adams, saying it was "disgustingly simple for a mannot to notice these things, a blindness to the importance of correctgender representation that I feel embarrassed to have fallen into".
"Ican only apologise and hope that the discussion has made other editorsand publishers realise that this kind of lazy sexism is unacceptableand to watch their own lists in future," he said in an apology posted on the BFS website. [link mine, not in the original]
Adams suggested that they print a new collection of interviews with women horror writers.
The point is, though, that this can still happen so easily. How could anyone not have noticed?
And I wonder if having a "interviews with women in horror" book would just increase the ghettoization of women writers. How many people would just not read the book thinking "I'm not a chick, I don't need to look at it"?
It's buying into the idea of "male as default."
Categories: literature, male as default
Tags: literature male as default
It's frustrating because it's so unthinking, so automatic to exclude women that they don't even notice they've done it! I do appreciate that they have copped to it and apologised, although let's face it, they don't really deserve any actual praise for that, i.e. for actually being decent human beings. I manage to remember that women are part of the human race/community of readers/community of writers ALL THE TIME, and nobody thanks me. But it's better than them telling us we can't write/aren't interested in this sort of thing. However, the damage is done - as you rightly point out, an anthology of women's stories is only going to be marginalised and sidelined. I can only hope that this experience has raised their consciousness and brought to their attention that women exist in the world as more than just their personal entertainment/sex fodder and housework drones.
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Heh, yeah, and while they didn't actually say they deserve a cookie for apologizing, I'm sure there's lots of people out there who think that they apologized and that should be the end of it!
With luck, the editors will notice next time someone just "forgets" about women.
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