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San Francisco, 6:39 AM
Sun Nov 22
10 posts in the last 24 hours
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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
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
09/12/09
09/11/09
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09/12/09
09/11/09
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09/11/09
Still, I agree she should be here.
09/11/09
None of them had built-in backup singers, after all.
09/11/09
what?!
yahoo!
09/11/09
09/11/09
09/11/09
Garrison Dean in 3, 2....
09/11/09
Talk about a bevy of dream dates! Whew! It makes me want to drink more electrolytes just thinking about it! Oh, sorry...that was more information than you needed!
09/11/09
09/11/09
09/11/09
Oh here she comes
Watch out boy she'll eat you up
Oh here she comes
Shes a maneater
09/11/09
Have you noticed (of course you have) that ladies keep devouring men, bodies and/or souls, and/or drinking their blood... but that men don't go out for a picnic of their better halves that often?
There are plenty of (suspiciously Freudian) explanations on why men are so scared of girls finding them crunchy, but I'll skip the psychanalysis and only sulk: who will write this anthology of ladies-eating fiction?
(And no, Sylar doesn't count.)
09/11/09