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Wed Dec 2
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"We ignored gender..." So, were they completely unaware of the gender of the writers of all the books they considered?
Or are they gender-blind, like Stephen Colbert?
If neither of these things is true, has anyone considered the possibility of an unconscious bias? (You know, the whole reason we need controls and double-blind studies in science to prevent scientists who want to "ignore gender" or whatever other factors from messing up their own results unconsciously?) Didn't a single person involved in making that list ever take PSY100?
What percentage of the people making this totally unbiased list were female? If it was a pretty low percentage, couldn't that have contributed to an unconscious bias? If that percentage was reversed, and a mostly-female group was tasked with choosing the ten best books without considering gender, would they have perhaps chosen some written by women, without consciously thinking about it?
@ParryLost: If everything in the universe has to be analyzed to that degree, why bother doing anything at all? I got a headache just thinking about it. I mean, sure, unconcious stuff drives us all. But if we sat around analyzing everything we do at any given moment to death, we'd spend a lot of time sitting around staring at walls. #books
@queensowntalia: I don't understand your point. So are you saying we should be okay with sexism, with influential people who show obvious biases and then claim to be 100% unbiased, and with a lot of other bad stuff, just because it's tiresome to analyse things instead? O_o I sincerely don't know what you're trying to say: That we should be okay with every bad thing that happens in the world, because if we try to actually think about the world's problems, we'll just end up staring at walls?
What I talked about isn't some minor insignificant effect: It is a fact, proven by (properly designed) psychology experiments, that yes, unconscious biases about gender do affect the way a woman's work is evaluated versus that of a man. And obviously this is important in the real world: You can talk all you want about how these top-ten lists don't mean anything, but it should be obvious that if the world of publishing is filled with people who judge women's writing unfairly -- while claiming to be 100% unbiased, no less, and thus prone to dismissing any criticism -- this is likely to lead to, you know, some problems for women writers as a group. So... why isn't this worth analysing, exactly? #books
@ParryLost: I'm saying why not give them the benefit of the doubt rather than assume they're sexist? I mean, what would you have them do? Set aside their own preferences to make SURE they include women writers specifically so people don't offer that criticism? How can you KNOW they're being sexist? Why should it be obvious the world of publishing is filled with such people? Its convenient to assume so, but how can you prove it? Your proof is, oh, say, this list? its not simply that they happen to like those writers, its instant sexism just because on this particular list they dont have any women?
I'm saying that overanalyzing is bad and leads only to one of two things 1) either hyper sensitivity to the point where the quality of the story becomes totally irrelevant as long as you meet the gender quotas or 2)
an end to any such endeavour at all, because its simply not worth the headache.
Sorry if I'm a little vehement. The subject pissed me off to no end when it came up in a tor.com post some time ago. Uber-PCism to the point where the subject matter itself becomes totally irrelevant really really bothers me. #books
Who frakkin' cares?! It shouldn't matter whether the author is male or female or black or white or yellow or green! What matters is that the books are worthy to be called the best. I'm so frakkin' sick and tired of all this politically correct BS. It's worthless and helps no one. Actually, it helps those that might be undeserving because it gives them an unfair advantage. Rather than the best reigning supreme, it's, "Who we feel we should pick so that everyone feels included."
@anomaly_kid: I'm so frakkin' tired of people who dismiss every complaint about real-world sexism as "politically correct BS". Newsflash: You do not live in an egalitarian utopia. Even people who say they ignore gender probably don't really ignore gender, at least not on a subconscious level. The world would not be a level playing field if we did away with all of what you call "politically correct BS", because history and culture are already biased towards males. There are a lot of good books out there, including many written by women. The fact that you trust a group of people who claim they are capable of fully ignoring gender to choose which books are "worthy to be called the best," and believe that if they didn't think a single book written by a female qualifies, then this must be the objective truth, shows that you really shouldn't be one to call other people idiots. #books
@ParryLost: You're an idiot. I don't "trust" any group that chooses books. But that you think they chose books solely because they were written by men makes you the shortsighted one in this instance. You need to get a clue. They chose the books because they were good books. You really believe they thought, "Throw out the ones written by women. We don't want to consider those ones. Because there's noooo way a woman could EVER write a decent sci-fi book."
I have nothing against women. I have nothing against men or blacks or even people from the middle east. Just because they were born under different circumstances than a white man doesn't mean they should obtain special privileges. Perhaps, oh, I don't know, white men have so much more because they actually work to obtain it. I state the truth of the matter, but I'm sure you'd only call me a sexist/racist. Whatever. Pretend you live in a world where we can all be equal. We don't. We never will. If you want to be taken seriously, if you want to have all that others have then you need to work for it. You need to prove yourself by your actions. You don't get something just because you are who you are. Minorities are always sided with, the preferred choice for job offers, etc. Because why? Everyone's so afraid of being the racist one. It's ridiculous. And who ends up suffering because of it? I do. Even if I'm more qualified, even if I'm ten times better, I still won't get to pass them by because idiot society dictates that those who don't have as much get to have more given to them. Yes, those who don't try to do it all get to have it all. THAT makes sense. I guess that's why Obama's president now though, eh? #books
@anomaly_kid: Honestly this is just insulting to every woman or member of a minority that's had to work twice as hard to get half as far as a white guy. #books
There is just no way to post this sort of thing without sending everyone into a tizzy. Feelings run VERY strong on matters like "best of" lists.
Which are really quite subjective. I'd argue the practice of such lists should be abandoned, but let's face it, they're fun. Not a bad way to seek out new stuff to read, either.
I think people just need to accept everyone's definition of "best of" differs. Don't have a cow because your favorite of favoritest was excluded - heck, make your own list. :) #books
"We wanted the list to reflect what we thought were the top 10 books of the year with no other consideration....We ignored gender and genre and who had the buzz."
so let me get this straight...the group of people picked what they thought were the best 10 books of the year - without basing those choices on anything but the quality of the books...and people are bitching about it?
isn't this what we WANT?!?!
don't we all want things like gender, genre, race, etc etc to not matter?!?!?
@goldfarb: I agree. Unfortunately people inherently see bias in lists like this because their pet special interest group is not represented. I think lists like this are of little value anyhow unless your literary tastes are in line with the list makers' anyway. #books
@goldfarb: The problem is subconscious bias. If things like gender, genre, and race really do not matter, than that's all well and good. But if we only think they don't matter to us when they really do on some level....well, that's the possibility that people are complaining about.
I guess the only way to be sure would be to market books without any author information. Might be a bit too extreme, though. #books
@goldfarb: The point is, they *said* they ignored gender. Unless they are Stephen Colbert, I guarantee you they did not *really* ignore gender, at least not on a subconscious level. Why? Because it is not possible. If you KNOW the gender of the author of a work, it WILL affect your judgement, whether you realise it or not. This has been shown time and time again in psychology experiments -- take the same essay, change the name of the "author" from one gender to the other, and it will affect how people judge it.
Besides, if I gave you a list of ten books all written by women, and told you that these are the best books to come out this year, and I did not consider gender at all, and the fact that all the writers turned out to be female was due to pure chance, deep down, would you really believe me? If not, why do you believe the people behind this list? #books
@ParryLost: I realize that subconsciously gender and the rest are still there etc...I just find it frustrating that they've said basically "we tried to just pick the best books" but they're still being criticized...
I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt because the number of books written by men is probably much higher than those written by women...
damned if you do, damned if you don't...
I would have just put out the list with the statement "Here's our list. Suck It." #books
@goldfarb: So you realise a problem is there, but as long as the people had good intentions, we should ignore it?.. I'm not saying they consciously set out to be sexist, I'm saying that their biases should not be ignored. Instead, every time someone brings them up, they are shouted down -- "it's politically correct B.S.!" or some such. So... because we are giving these people the benefit of the doubt, we should ignore real-life problems that really affect female writers?
You know what really peeved me off, though? The fact that they actually claimed to be completely unbiased, that they actually said, "we ignored gender." They didn't even accept the possibility that their list might have an unconscious bias -- and I think that's an even bigger problem than the list itself, because we already have a hard enough time convincing people that unconscious bias *exists,* and that we don't already live in a perfect egalitarian utopia. #books
@ParryLost: the "real-life problems that really affect female writers" cannot be addressed by a 'Top 10 List'
bias, unconscious or not, exists and will always exist...and it's interesting to me that your focus is on this one aspect of the list - that there are no women - and seems to assume that the reason there are no women on the list is because of gender and not that the people who made the list picked the books they thought were better...isn't it possible that all the books under consideration written by women were simply not as good (in their opinion) than the ones written by men?
that they claimed to be completely unbiased is unfortunate, simply because, as you've pointed out, this is impossible and saying otherwise simply invites the criticism.
who were the Publishers Weekly judges? were they all men? 51% women, 49% men? does it matter?
what were their criteria?
what does the Top 100 Books of 2009 look like (I'm too lazy to look it up and I should really be working right now)?
I'm realizing now why I find this kind of this annoying and frustrating...it's because it's petty...not to say that women don't get the shit end of the stick in almost every aspect of our society, but jebuz! to not be included on a top 10 list isn't a social injustice...
I seem to have lost track of my point...
over the past year or so I've been very consciously buying books by women, because I've felt that, though my reading habits are reasonably(?) broad they do tend toward male writers (mostly I think because of the subject matter and my tastes), but I've been bucking that trend, taking more chances. when choosing between two, otherwise identically interesting back cover blurbs, I'll pick the one written by a woman...just to hear a different voice. different, not necessarily better, as the results have been mixed, like always.
oh and based on the linked article, that Linda Lowen person is a loony...
Should "best of" lists be determined by committee? Should every "best of" list have to include x number of books by a given gender, or n number of books appealing to such-and-such a demographic? I may disagree with the books they chose, but the very point of the list is that a given person was asked for their honest opinion, not what they thought people wanted to hear.
Also... of every genre book written by a woman last year, "Boneshaker" was the one that got shafted? Don't get me wrong, it's a good book, but it's about as crunchy, inaccessible, and niche as you can possibly get. All due props to Cherie Priest for not trying to be all-things-to-everyone, like Niffenegger, but I doubt very much Priest thought she would be in the running for the Booker prize, either. #books
i submit that literary women's books and science-fiction novels are excluded from the mainstream "best of" lists for exactly the same reason. namely that the authors of both groups of novels simply don't follow the same thought process as the people making "best of" lists in the literary world. no matter what claims an individual or group of individuals makes of impartiality it's difficult to endorse something they do not understand on merit alone. #books
The photograph here of "Greg Egan" is not me (the SF writer mentioned in the article), it is a professor of electrical engineering who happens to share my name.
I like True Blood (for it's trashiness), the Fringe scene didn't bother me, I like it actually and Torchwood is a show I really like. I would have put all 10 worst scenes from Heroes...show only had about 2 or 3 good episodes last year; they better step.it.up.
@spiritkittykat: Again. These are moments. I recap True Blood when it airs. I love the Southern Vampires but I don't like to think about some lady getting the dirty end of her vampire. Seriously yuck for so many medical reasons I'm not even going to list. Please go look at the 10 Best Moments and you'll see that True Blood is on there twice, because it deserves it for vampire vomit and shame dancing.
I LOVE Jenny. I would love to see her in a "doctors daughter" show. I also really liked "Meat" and the scene in "Fringe" where Peter was playing the piano for his father. Why does everything have to be so high brow?
In fact, Meredith, the more I read this blog, the more I realise that I come here for the cool things that you find and the commenters, not your taste in entertainment.
@Witera33it: It doesn't have to be high brow my friend. If you look back you'll see I praised Walter Bishop in the 10 best moments of TV for his excellent delivery of "just a squirt" joke, which was about him pissing himself. And if that's high brow then I'm a Bunny. It's all about the delivery. That piano hatred was not just shared by me but many, many others. It was lame, and really forced, in my opinion sorry. They already have a crazy cow, Walter spouting off and much, much more. The last thing Fringe needed was a "Play it again Sam," moment. I also really liked "Meat," but hated the acting, it was funny ha ha and not in a good way. Does that mean I'll stop watching TW? Heck no. You gotta sort through everything, it's what makes the sweets sweeter. We talk about the good and the bad here. Plus I love low brow, love it, go ask Rodney McKay. But just because you're delivering a fart baby, doesn't mean you can't do it with talent and style.
@Meredith Woerner: I don't remember the acting being so bad on "Meat," but I was preoccupied waiting for Jack to put the moves on the alien. I'll have to watch it again.
I liked the piano, too, but I'm just a fool for "Fringe." As they say, "Love is blind," or in this case deaf?
I liked the piano scene in Fringe. If I remember it was the scene with the piano playing kid that was missing, so it wasn't like they hauled a piano in for no reason.
And it made Peter seem like less of an asshole. More please!
Can't really say much about the others, but I really liked Jenny. That was one of my favorite episodes in fact. Maybe I'm just easily hooked by certain characters for some reason. But honestly at the end when she came back and flew off I was all "Yeah! Spinoff, please!"
And Jenny was awesome, but I can see where you might be intimidated by an attractive and powerful female character who gets out of tough situations with brains as well as brawn.
Gotta agree with you on the cheerleader though. The writers have utterly destroyed the most interesting character of the series. Not sure if even Fuller can save her now. Hmm.. Save the cheerleader, Save the series?
@cash907: I'm not trying to be catty, I just honestly did not like the character Jenny at all. I went back and explained more if that helps. She was forced upon the audience right away and then taken away. It was similar to killing a kitten to me. She was sweet and cute, to be sure but I didn't really care what happened to her. The resurrection was a bit obvious and tedious. If she had stayed dead or fallen off a cliff maybe it wouldn't have rubbed me the wrong way. It was the whole dying in his arms thing that I did not like, only to have her brought back moments later. Too much.
@cash907: "I can see where you might be intimidated by an attractive and powerful female character who gets out of tough situations with brains as well as brawn."
Wait—now we can use this line of argument on women, too?
@TheWetNoodle: Ah, but we don't know that the actually moved the island. We just know that from where the Oceanic Six were flying, it was no longer visible.
11/13/09
Or are they gender-blind, like Stephen Colbert?
If neither of these things is true, has anyone considered the possibility of an unconscious bias? (You know, the whole reason we need controls and double-blind studies in science to prevent scientists who want to "ignore gender" or whatever other factors from messing up their own results unconsciously?) Didn't a single person involved in making that list ever take PSY100?
What percentage of the people making this totally unbiased list were female? If it was a pretty low percentage, couldn't that have contributed to an unconscious bias? If that percentage was reversed, and a mostly-female group was tasked with choosing the ten best books without considering gender, would they have perhaps chosen some written by women, without consciously thinking about it?
11/13/09
11/13/09
What I talked about isn't some minor insignificant effect: It is a fact, proven by (properly designed) psychology experiments, that yes, unconscious biases about gender do affect the way a woman's work is evaluated versus that of a man. And obviously this is important in the real world: You can talk all you want about how these top-ten lists don't mean anything, but it should be obvious that if the world of publishing is filled with people who judge women's writing unfairly -- while claiming to be 100% unbiased, no less, and thus prone to dismissing any criticism -- this is likely to lead to, you know, some problems for women writers as a group. So... why isn't this worth analysing, exactly? #books
11/13/09
I'm saying that overanalyzing is bad and leads only to one of two things 1) either hyper sensitivity to the point where the quality of the story becomes totally irrelevant as long as you meet the gender quotas or 2)
an end to any such endeavour at all, because its simply not worth the headache.
Sorry if I'm a little vehement. The subject pissed me off to no end when it came up in a tor.com post some time ago. Uber-PCism to the point where the subject matter itself becomes totally irrelevant really really bothers me. #books
11/13/09
ARGH! I HATE IDIOTS! #books
11/13/09
11/13/09
I have nothing against women. I have nothing against men or blacks or even people from the middle east. Just because they were born under different circumstances than a white man doesn't mean they should obtain special privileges. Perhaps, oh, I don't know, white men have so much more because they actually work to obtain it. I state the truth of the matter, but I'm sure you'd only call me a sexist/racist. Whatever. Pretend you live in a world where we can all be equal. We don't. We never will. If you want to be taken seriously, if you want to have all that others have then you need to work for it. You need to prove yourself by your actions. You don't get something just because you are who you are. Minorities are always sided with, the preferred choice for job offers, etc. Because why? Everyone's so afraid of being the racist one. It's ridiculous. And who ends up suffering because of it? I do. Even if I'm more qualified, even if I'm ten times better, I still won't get to pass them by because idiot society dictates that those who don't have as much get to have more given to them. Yes, those who don't try to do it all get to have it all. THAT makes sense. I guess that's why Obama's president now though, eh? #books
11/14/09
11/13/09
Which are really quite subjective. I'd argue the practice of such lists should be abandoned, but let's face it, they're fun. Not a bad way to seek out new stuff to read, either.
I think people just need to accept everyone's definition of "best of" differs. Don't have a cow because your favorite of favoritest was excluded - heck, make your own list. :) #books
11/13/09
so let me get this straight...the group of people picked what they thought were the best 10 books of the year - without basing those choices on anything but the quality of the books...and people are bitching about it?
isn't this what we WANT?!?!
don't we all want things like gender, genre, race, etc etc to not matter?!?!?
Hypocrisy, you're dong it right! #books
11/13/09
11/13/09
I guess the only way to be sure would be to market books without any author information. Might be a bit too extreme, though. #books
11/13/09
Besides, if I gave you a list of ten books all written by women, and told you that these are the best books to come out this year, and I did not consider gender at all, and the fact that all the writers turned out to be female was due to pure chance, deep down, would you really believe me? If not, why do you believe the people behind this list? #books
11/13/09
I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt because the number of books written by men is probably much higher than those written by women...
damned if you do, damned if you don't...
I would have just put out the list with the statement "Here's our list. Suck It." #books
11/13/09
You know what really peeved me off, though? The fact that they actually claimed to be completely unbiased, that they actually said, "we ignored gender." They didn't even accept the possibility that their list might have an unconscious bias -- and I think that's an even bigger problem than the list itself, because we already have a hard enough time convincing people that unconscious bias *exists,* and that we don't already live in a perfect egalitarian utopia. #books
11/13/09
bias, unconscious or not, exists and will always exist...and it's interesting to me that your focus is on this one aspect of the list - that there are no women - and seems to assume that the reason there are no women on the list is because of gender and not that the people who made the list picked the books they thought were better...isn't it possible that all the books under consideration written by women were simply not as good (in their opinion) than the ones written by men?
that they claimed to be completely unbiased is unfortunate, simply because, as you've pointed out, this is impossible and saying otherwise simply invites the criticism.
who were the Publishers Weekly judges? were they all men? 51% women, 49% men? does it matter?
what were their criteria?
what does the Top 100 Books of 2009 look like (I'm too lazy to look it up and I should really be working right now)?
I'm realizing now why I find this kind of this annoying and frustrating...it's because it's petty...not to say that women don't get the shit end of the stick in almost every aspect of our society, but jebuz! to not be included on a top 10 list isn't a social injustice...
I seem to have lost track of my point...
over the past year or so I've been very consciously buying books by women, because I've felt that, though my reading habits are reasonably(?) broad they do tend toward male writers (mostly I think because of the subject matter and my tastes), but I've been bucking that trend, taking more chances. when choosing between two, otherwise identically interesting back cover blurbs, I'll pick the one written by a woman...just to hear a different voice. different, not necessarily better, as the results have been mixed, like always.
oh and based on the linked article, that Linda Lowen person is a loony...
11/13/09
Also... of every genre book written by a woman last year, "Boneshaker" was the one that got shafted? Don't get me wrong, it's a good book, but it's about as crunchy, inaccessible, and niche as you can possibly get. All due props to Cherie Priest for not trying to be all-things-to-everyone, like Niffenegger, but I doubt very much Priest thought she would be in the running for the Booker prize, either. #books
11/13/09
08/05/09
12/31/08
12/31/08
12/30/08
12/31/08
12/30/08
In fact, Meredith, the more I read this blog, the more I realise that I come here for the cool things that you find and the commenters, not your taste in entertainment.
12/31/08
12/31/08
I liked the piano, too, but I'm just a fool for "Fringe." As they say, "Love is blind," or in this case deaf?
12/30/08
And it made Peter seem like less of an asshole. More please!
12/31/08
12/31/08
12/30/08
12/31/08
12/30/08
And Jenny was awesome, but I can see where you might be intimidated by an attractive and powerful female character who gets out of tough situations with brains as well as brawn.
Gotta agree with you on the cheerleader though. The writers have utterly destroyed the most interesting character of the series. Not sure if even Fuller can save her now. Hmm.. Save the cheerleader, Save the series?
12/30/08
12/30/08
Wait—now we can use this line of argument on women, too?
12/30/08
12/30/08
12/30/08
The sheer impossibility of that phrase speaks for itself.
12/31/08
Ah, but we don't know that the actually moved the island. We just know that from where the Oceanic Six were flying, it was no longer visible.
12/30/08
12/31/08