Discrimination and the Ice Cream Backlash
I was making decent progress on the book tonight, when I made the mistake of checking social media. I quickly got caught up reading a complaint by a self-identified older white male author, talking about how his demographic is discriminated against in the genre.
Some of his comments were anecdotal, and not statistically meaningful. I pointed out the 2017 #BlackSpecFic Report from Fireside Magazine, which showed that black authors are still underrepresented in SF/F — though there’s been some improvement over the past several years.
One claim was that white men can’t even get on the Hugo ballot anymore, let alone win. So I pointed out that 2/6 authors on the Best Novel ballot this year are, in fact, white men.
But while it’s demonstrably false to say white men can’t get on the ballot, it’s true that last year’s winners were almost entirely women. I mean, with the exception of Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, and Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form, and several winners who identify as genderqueer. But if you limit it to just the prose categories, then yes — not one man among the winners.
This is pointed to as proof of discrimination. Voters are deciding not based on the quality of the story, but the identity of the author. Because Statistics!
Now, nobody I’ve spoken to has talked about voting for someone because of their race or gender or sexuality. They’re voting for books and stories they love. Maybe you don’t love the stories that won, but I’ve seen people squeeing about the books when they come out. I see how excitedly they’re talking about these stories and sharing them and telling everyone to go read them. That love is real — even if you don’t personally share it.
“But if people aren’t discriminating, why aren’t we seeing the same love for stories written by white men?”
I mean, the current NYT #1 bestsellers are all by men, most-or-all of them white. But let’s stick with just the Hugo awards. Doesn’t the lack of men prove discrimination against us?
Stand back, everyone — I’m going to try metaphor!
#
Imagine you like ice cream. But for your whole life, all you’ve been able to get is vanilla.
Don’t get me wrong — I like vanilla ice cream. There’s nothing wrong with it. I love it in root beer floats or ice cream sundaes or with apple pie or whatever. It’s good stuff.
Then one day, the shops finally start putting out other flavors. Strawberry! Mint chocolate chip! Mackinaw fudge ripple!
After a lifetime of vanilla, what are you going to get?
#
SF/F has been dominated by white male authors for so long. In many ways, it still is. Is it any wonder people have gotten a little tired of the vanilla? That they’re excited about stories written from other perspectives, other cultural backgrounds, with other characters and settings and worldbuilding and default assumptions?
“But authors aren’t ice cream, and white men can write other perspectives and backgrounds and characters too!”
First of all, you’re wrong. I know for a fact that Pat Rothfuss is actually twelve pints of Rocky Road held together with hard-shell chocolate.
And you’re right, white men can write other perspectives, backgrounds, characters, etc. But a lot of the time, they choose not to. And a lot of the time when they do, it’s done…poorly. You get men writing women thinking about how their breasts boob boobily, bosoming in zero gravity.
Even when authors take the time to listen and do the research, there’s a difference between writing based on research and writing based on real, lived experience.
#
It’s not that people hate vanilla ice cream. It’s that we’re finally seeing some push for other flavors, and people are excited about it. Their homes are stuffed with vanilla, and they’re trying to get some variety in their freezers.
Can you blame them?
Don’t worry, the grocery stores still stock plenty of vanilla. Lots of people still enjoy it. But it’s not the only option on the shelf anymore. We have 32 flavors and then some.
As for older white men no longer being wanted or welcomed in the genre? Well, it’s only a single anecdata point, but this 44-year-old white dude has felt nothing but welcome here. I’m all for working to make the genre more broadly welcoming to all.
Lee
August 9, 2018 @ 7:40 pm
When you’re used to domination, any move in the direction of equality feels like oppression.
Morgan Hazelwood
August 9, 2018 @ 8:08 pm
I did a tally of my bookshelves. I have double the number of women than men. Literally. 104 women writers, 52 men.
I feel sad for all those guys who don’t know what great stuff non-white men are writing these days. Longing for more versions of the same stuff they read in their youth.
Ken Schneyer
August 9, 2018 @ 8:21 pm
Only a Michigander would think of Mackinac Fudge Ripple as a flavor.
Michael W Lucas
August 9, 2018 @ 8:39 pm
Thanks for writing this. I saw the post you’re referencing, and was highly disappointed.
I still love me my good old Stroh’s butt-white vanilla, and I’m sure I’ll go back, but this new “orange-pineapple with licorice ribbon” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_tail_ice_cream) is pretty damn tasty for a change.
Jean Marie Ward
August 9, 2018 @ 9:28 pm
Yeah, it pissed me off. I’m dropping that guy’s newsletter. The writing tips aren’t worth the nonsense.
Kim Lightle
August 9, 2018 @ 9:43 pm
When I’m looking at a new author to read, I don’t look at the author’s bio. A lot of times, I don’t even look at their name. Who wrote the book matters not in the least to me. I look at the story. I look at how engaging it is, who the characters are, and how they interact in their world. If the book is interesting, and there’s more to read by that author, then I’ll look at who the author is. The color of the author, or the gender of the author, makes absolutely no difference to my choice of reading material.
Alan
August 9, 2018 @ 10:55 pm
The years the Hugos were dominated by white men, it was because they were better writers. When they’re dominated by people who are not white men, it’s ‘cuz reverse racism/sexism! It’s just basic science.
Jessica
August 10, 2018 @ 12:21 am
Oh statistics, he says? Yes let’s look at some statistics shall we? The Hugos have been presented more-or-less regularly since 1953 (1954 was skipped, for reasons) {Best Novel was also skipped in 1957, also for reasons}.
The most prominent Hugo is Best Novel. This is the one which gets all the press. Since 1953, it has been awarded 68 times (joint awards in 1955, 1966, 1993, 2010 and 2015). Of those 68 winners, only 12 have been women. Ursula Le Guin was the first woman to win Best Novel, in 1970. (4 women have won 2 Hugos, and Lois McMaster Bujold has 4).
All the remaining awards have been given to white men.
So some statistics:
68 awards.
12 women with some repeats totals 19
68-19=49
White men have historically had a 72% chance of winning the Best Novel Hugo. For the first 15 years of its history they had 100%.
A man won most recently in 2015.
Let’s talk again in 2030 and see how many men won since then, shall we?
Alisa Krasnostein
August 10, 2018 @ 3:47 am
But even after he first flush of strawberry and lavender and rosewater icrecream flavours, we won’t ever go back to only eating vanilla. That balance is gone. And so what they are really saying is, I had a better chance of winning an award/being read/making money when we excluded other demographics than this new system that will be based on merit and appealing to a broader diversity of tastes and interests.
Craig Laurance Gidney
August 10, 2018 @ 1:59 pm
“The big 5 are just beating on my door, asking for manuscripts because I’m black and queer,” said the black queer author sarcastically.
Lenora Rose
August 10, 2018 @ 4:03 pm
Kim Lightle: This is a nice ideal.
Except: If you don’t know an author’s background, you don’t know if their portrayal of a Mexican, or an Israeli, or a South African, is at all authentic. (And note, I know white people from all the above, so that’s not just about race.) If you enthusiastically read a book about Zimbabwe and you don’t know the author has ever been there (and neither have you) you have no sense if their view is exoticized, or washed down to be palatable to a Western view.
There are some books I loved once because they showed faraway lands, which I dread to reread because I now have read some books written by people who were born there, or have read essays by people talking about how their homeland or life or experience is treated in fiction written by white Westerners, and thought they reminded me of that book I loved.
And once I started seeing it in those faraway places, I also started seeing it closer to home. How hard it was for me to write a remotely authentic Anishinaabe person from right here where I live (instead of a white woman’s assumptions about what they might be thinking), because I haven’t lived their life.
Am I saying it can’t be done? The opposite, in some ways — but it requires the *assumption* that some voices really are different based on life experience, and looking for those voices consciously. It requires discernment, recognition that the other perspective *is* other, and how it is, which requires seeking out the authentic, even if it’s harder to access than the easier narrative from a familiar perspective. Which means actually looking at the writer’s name and background.
Pretending “All I care about is the story” is a way to *miss* the differences, not to actually find them on your shelf.
Patrick Samphire
August 10, 2018 @ 7:07 pm
I’m frequently discriminated against by other people writing better than me, and it’s not fair!
Dana Lynne
August 10, 2018 @ 9:54 pm
THANK YOU
David
August 10, 2018 @ 10:10 pm
I have a shelf or two of “Books written by women whose last name starts with Mc”.
Fraser
August 11, 2018 @ 5:29 pm
“Except: If you don’t know an author’s background, you don’t know if their portrayal of a Mexican, or an Israeli, or a South African, is at all authentic. (And note, I know white people from all the above, so that’s not just about race.) If you enthusiastically read a book about Zimbabwe and you don’t know the author has ever been there (and neither have you) you have no sense if their view is exoticized, or washed down to be palatable to a Western view.”
Even authors with hands on experience may fudge the reality to make a better story (lots of courtroom fiction does that) so I never know that. I assume Daniel Jose Older’s Shadowshaper books are true to the setting, but I don’t know it for a fact.
Conversely people do research about stuff they don’t know all the time.
Lenora Rose
August 11, 2018 @ 6:25 pm
Fraser: I don’t assume any fiction is true, by definition. But there’s untrue that’s not authentic, and untrue that is.
Take two recent movies I love. CoCo is a movie that spends all its time on some aspects of Mexico, and none on others, fudging the reality as you say. But it’s still a different movie than it would be if written entirely by white men who researched Mexico, instead of being worked on by as many Mexicanx as Pixar could fit in, including the majority of the writing team, directing team, art team…
With Moana, I like that they did have *some* consultation from people from the South Pacific, and did some research, and added in a South Pacific fusion group to the music along with the more standard orchestral stuff and the wittiness from Lin-Manuel Miranda. But it still shows in many ways where they fell back on Western tropes and Disney habits, did not treat all the aspects of the mythology or the people as the people born there would.
But it really mattered WHO was making them. The differences are clear.
(And yes, you will have a writer writing a scene based entirely on book learning, and research, and google street view, but doing their best, and we all get that it happens.
I’m pretty sure Jim hasn’t had to do janitorial work on a spaceship.)
Katherine G. Saideman
August 12, 2018 @ 1:18 pm
So a white male author is complaining that there’s less discrimination in the field and in an award like the Hugos, because he doesn’t think he can get anywhere unless the field goes back to massive discrimination in his favor? Little insecure there in his own storytelling, ain’t he.
Except for awards, fiction authors don’t compete with each other — they help each other sell in the symbiotic market. More flavors means more readers come in and a bigger market for all with more books being published, including for white straight men. And when it comes to awards, more variety of authors being recognized for work people like means more attention towards all fiction authors, including the white straight men.
But it also means that the myth that straight white men are inherently and objectively superior writers goes out the window. And that’s what some of them can’t stand and why they now care about the demographics of who wins the awards when they were perfectly fine with the bigoted results in the past.
The sad thing is, losing that prejudiced part of their identity really isn’t going to hurt them, but you have a hard time convincing some of them of that.
Fraser
August 13, 2018 @ 2:47 pm
Lenora, I’m not sure how much the difference reflected the people working on it or that Coco was a boy rather than a Disney princess. Though you may be right.
But in general I’m closer to Kim than you. If the story looks interesting I’m not going to worry about the author’s bona fides.
JJ
August 13, 2018 @ 6:27 pm
A potential problem with “I choose stories by what looks interesting” is that it can be easy to never stretch or try anything new that way. Like the way a kid loves chicken nuggets or plain spaghetti, so they clamor for that for dinner every day.
I’m not saying you guys are doing that. But people who stick to the same narrow range of authors they’ve always read often use that same claim, and sometimes they use it to imply that’s the only right way, as if ignoring the authors is a laudable sentiment. There’s nothing wrong with purposefully seeking out something from a different point of view, or from a background you aren’t familiar with. It’s okay to care about reading *authors*.
Fraser
August 14, 2018 @ 8:33 am
I’m certainly not implying it’s the way, the truth and the light. Any approach that works for the reader is a good approach. Tempest Bradford’s challenge. Reading all the Hugo and Nebula winners. Reading or rereading the complete works of Andre Norton (or whoever). Regularly picking up authors you’ve never heard of. Reading everything in the genre or subgenre of your choice.
Jo
August 14, 2018 @ 10:52 pm
I’m of the opinion that stories should be selected based on the quality of the story, not the identity of the author. Publishers should, in my opinion, not look at the author’s name or picture or bio or anything. Just read the story. If it’s worth publishing, great.
All this other stuff is just bias and bigotry, and plenty of people have a lot to be ashamed about. I don’t care what’s currently popular. Choosing anyone on the basis of sex, gender, or ethnicity is wrong, no matter which way it’s coming from. It’s always been wrong, and it will always be wrong. And still, there will always be massing trying their damnedest to make it sound okay “this time.”
I recall an old Huffington Post article, I believe it was. In the article, it linked to a test showing sample writing of several authors, and the test was this: could you pick out the sex of the author based on the prose? The results: of course not. Statistically, people may as well have flipped a coin.
Fraser
August 15, 2018 @ 5:55 am
“I’m of the opinion that stories should be selected based on the quality of the story, not the identity of the author.”
Publishing is a business, not just art. Jim Baen once said he’d never turn down a Poul Anderson novel, even if he hated it: it would sell well, and Anderson would come to Baen when he had a masterpiece. That’s not unreasonable.
And it’s not inconsistent with finding diverse books. Publishers are always looking for new authors, not just sticking with established names.
“Publishers should, in my opinion, not look at the author’s name or picture or bio or anything. Just read the story. If it’s worth publishing, great.”
That’s not going to work. If someone gets a Harry Dresden novel, they’re going to know it’s from Jim Butcher. Or that they can’t publish it.
“All this other stuff is just bias and bigotry, and plenty of people have a lot to be ashamed about. I don’t care what’s currently popular. Choosing anyone on the basis of sex, gender, or ethnicity is wrong, no matter which way it’s coming from. It’s always been wrong, and it will always be wrong.”
Ah yes, the “it doesn’t matter that there’s discrimination and bigotry and sexism, any attempt to fix it requires discrimination so it’s terrible and wrong!” No, it’s not wrong
Fraser
August 15, 2018 @ 8:39 am
” In the article, it linked to a test showing sample writing of several authors, and the test was this: could you pick out the sex of the author based on the prose? The results: of course not. Statistically, people may as well have flipped a coin.”
Um, so?
As I’m not heavily into organized fandom, there have been lots of comics creators I had no idea were non-white (Larry Hama, Greg Pak, Billy Graham back in the 1970s). I couldn’t tell from their work, it doesn’t therefore follow that Marvel having nonwhites on their staff was irrelevant
Kat Goodwin
August 15, 2018 @ 4:03 pm
Jo: “I’m of the opinion that stories should be selected based on the quality of the story, not the identity of the author. Publishers should, in my opinion, not look at the author’s name or picture or bio or anything. Just read the story. If it’s worth publishing, great.”
That’s what they do. In fiction, who the author is in terms of social status is unimportant, (unless it’s a celebrity, which is a whole other type of fiction.) They are looking for stories that they think can sell.
But there’s a major problem with that — they are 95% white people. And white people have biases. So they pick stories ABOUT white people, because they can “relate” to those stories, they like those stories, those stories work for them. They pick stories where the language style, structure style, etc. are very much standard white people choices.
Whereas, stories written by POC are likely to contain POC characters who white editors (and agents) have trouble connecting to, and/or which go against their pre-conceived and often bigoted notions of how POC people talk, behave, where they were in time, etc. White people like to pretend that ethnicity, race, gender and other social constructs of our society don’t really exist or “matter” because then they can pretend that the bigoted hierarchies our society run on don’t exist and pretend that they aren’t basing their decisions at all on that hierarchy, on attitudes they’ve learned from living in that hierarchy. But they do base their decisions on those attitudes and biases. Nobody is color-blind, least of all the people who sit at the top of the color ladder and get central place because of it.
And even when white editors do expand their choices, publishers are under a lot of pressure not to do so. Because booksellers are equally white and biased, and worse, tend to ignore actual data (like that educated black women are the biggest book buyers,) in favor of an anecdotal view that their main audience for fiction is white (and often male,) and that those white readers are very bigoted and don’t want POC main characters and/or authors. So publishers will have one “black author work” on their list and treat it like a niche specialty that they can’t have too many of. And that’s how we got white-washed covers where POC main characters are shown as white on book covers and a lot of other crap we’re still dealing with.
So there are two ways to change that — more POC publishing and bookselling hires who will find stories they like by a wider variety of authors, and more POC authors getting published and promoted to break the white power bias and stats and get a wider, growing and healthier field. People are going to keep pushing for those things whether white fans, authors, booksellers and editors, both book and magazine, like it or not. Because a field of snow is not good for anybody and good books and stories are getting erased or blocked based on race. We can’t pretend that’s not happening if we want to change it.
Allison
August 17, 2018 @ 11:58 am
Well, I tend to read and reread stories that speak to me.
And I’ve noticed that, at least for the last decade or so, it’s mostly books by women that speak to me. Most of the books by men, and almost all of the older, “classic” books, just rub me the wrong way. E.g., Robert Heinlein: he’s a great yarn-spinner, but the assumptions he builds his characters on, not to mention the preaching, just rub me the wrong way. In particular, I haven’t read a male author whose women characters seem like real women to me. They seem more like what stereotypical men would like to believe women really are.
And so many of them, especially the older SF books, come from what I’d call a “dominionist” perspective. It’s about the protagonist’s side winning and often conquering the other side. It’s all about conflict and the hero’s might or superior IQ (cf. Charles Murray) defeating the Others, who deserve to lose because they’re not us. It’s all about the hero(-es) and there’s little consideration of collateral damage. (Consider Star Wars, where whole populated planets get bown up and their deaths are just a plot point.) As someone who has felt like “collateral damage” for most of my life (which is I imagine how most marginalized people feel), this leaves me cold.
Not to say that women can’t write cold, dominionist stories (I hate to say it, but Ann Leicke’s “Ancilliary” books feel that way to me), but the chances that a story will deal with the characters’ feelings and appreciate even the non-protagonists’ point of view to my satisfaction are better when the author is a woman.
PT
August 17, 2018 @ 12:21 pm
This is a great analogy. I know I have been reading/listening to/watching more works created by non-straight white dudes, not because I have anything against my people or think they do inferior work but because I’ve had 42 years of it. It’s exciting to see the subtle or huge differences in how different demographic groups express themselves. It’s like being able to eat chocolate ice cream after years of eating vanilla (which, for the record, is the best flavor).
I’m hopeful that sometime in the not-too-distant future there will be much less talk about female/black/asian authors or films/tv featuring non-white, non-male, non-straight leads/stories because they will just be there and be part of the fabric of popular culture. It’s kind of sad that in 2018 the idea of an all-asian (or all black) american movie is so unique and novel that it is a huge deal. Asians shouldn’t have to get excited about the fact that a movie featuring actors that look like them came out. That should just be like a Friday. These things should be so common that we don’t get excited about the mere fact that they exist. I had to explain to my daughter why there were huge lines to see black panther, and it was hard to explain that, beyond the fact that the movie was amazing, the fact that it existed was such a huge deal.
That’s my hope at least – that a lot of this will cease to be a big deal because it will be commonplace. Just like it isn’t a huge deal when a vietnamese or burmese place opens up near me, because there are a lot of them now. I still get excited to eat at a great vietnamese place, but the mere idea that there is a restaurant that sells vietnamese food is no longer such a mind-blowing concept.
Fujimoto
August 23, 2018 @ 11:51 pm
I’m glad to see that article getting scrutinized. I was disappointed seeing that, and the followup article doubled-down on the claims. I expected better of this writer.
Jo
August 26, 2018 @ 4:37 pm
I thought Mr. Farland’s initial article was great, and I thought his follow-up was more than reasonable.