Girl Cooties

Before I begin I want reiterate what I said on Monday: thank you to Gwenda and the rest of the LitBlog Coop. I can't tell you how thrilling it is to be part of a serious discussion of my work. This is like catnip to me (I'm vacillating between not being able to keep away and being overstimulated to the point of falling into a coma).

Originally I'd planned a short rant about voice and gender, but after the thoughtful generosity of the comments here this week that felt a little thin and obvious. So I threw it away. But then there was so much discussion about genre and pigeonholing I decided to resurrect it in modified form. If I can pull it together on time I'm also planning another post later today--perhaps on joy and the body.

I wish I could bring forward the publication of an essay I wrote with Kelley (Eskridge, my partner), "War Machine," that will be out next spring in an academic text called Queer Universes, ed. by Wendy Pearson, Veronica Hollinger, and Joan Gordon. (Go here for Wendy's fabulous primer on queering SF, "Alien Cryptographies.") "War Machine" addresses to some degree this notion of genre and gender typecasting, of norming and othering. It's a subject that's been on my mind my entire publishing career.

Here's a quick rundown of my novels so far:

• Ammonite: a mass market original with an orange jellybean spaceship on the cover. It's far-future SF largely concerned with change, with a side-helping of gender (or sex romp on girlie planet, or biological What If novel, or subgenre throwaway, depending who's talking)
• Slow River: a hardcover then tradepaper from a genre imprint with a vaguely hip cyberpunky cover. Near-future SF about the nature of identity, with a tint of bioremediation (or a novel of sex &industrial sabotage, or a noirish and mesmerising tale of sewage and abuse, or smutty dyke fiction, depending)
• The Blue Place: an  Avon hardcover and Perennial trade paperback.. The first step on the journey of Aud (rhymes with cloud) Torvingen, who sometimes kills people and is trying to work out what it means to be a human in this world (or a novel of suspense, or kick-ass semi-legal gal fiction, or lesbian noir)
• Stay: a very classy-looking Nan A. Talese hardcover--rough front and everything--and Vintage/Black Lizard trade. The second Aud novel, in which she learns just how far removed she's been from common humanity (or an unflinching examination of grief, or brutal take on female violence, or classic noir)
• Always: a big, bright-purple Riverhead hardcover. The third book of Aud, in which she embraces her strengths and frailties (or fist-slamming physicality, or cutting-edge crime fiction, or literary noir)

If you judge simply by imprint and format, I've been creeping up the literary prestige ladder with the aid of the "noir" label. However, it's such a wrong label--if I had to describe my work I'd say it was about change and growth and the physical joy to be found in its interstices, pretty much the opposite of how I understand noir--that most booksellers and readers ignore it. So when Carolyn over at Pinky's Paperhaus asked me the other day, "Where is Always shelved, anyway?" I laughed, and suggested she take her pick: mystery, lesbian & gay, science fiction, new fiction. Never, unfortunately, in all of them--and always in the one you check last. Still, at least it has that Electric-Kool-Aid-Purple cover; if it's in the store, you'll see it, it doesn't matter which genre friends it's hanging with.

And I can guarantee it will be in a genre section, not the Literature shelves. Why? Girl cooties--double girl cooties, triple girl cooties: a girl writing from the POV of a girl who likes girls.

You think I'm kidding?

Well, okay, I was kidding, at first (there might have been beer...). But then, in an admittedly unscientific survey of fiction awards of the last twenty years, I found there's a statistically significant (or vast and overwhelming, depending on how you view these things) difference between the winners of literary and genre prizes. Specifically, I looked at US awards, since 1987, for novels by women writing from the first person POV of another woman. The National Book Award can boast one (5%): In America, by Susan Sontag. The Pulitzer does three times as well (15%) with The Stone Diaries, A Thousand Acres and Beloved. The NBCC claims two (10%)--The Stone Diaries again, and A Thousand Acres. The average, then, for women writing women in the three acknowledged US "literary" awards was 10%. When I scanned the top genre awards--the Edgar, the Nebula, the World Fantasy--the percentage just about doubled. If I add in YA (the Newbery Medal) and Romance (RITA) the numbers go off the charts (I mean so many I stopped counting--see previous admission about this all being rather unscientific).

It looks to me as though the percentage of by-women-about-women book award winners is in inverse proportion to the perceived literary prestige of the award. After all, the literary gatekeepers regard romance is as being at the bottom of the genre-for-grownups pile, and YA not even worthy of grownups. SF, although it's come up in the world lately (Philip K. Dick has his own Modern Library editions), is still regarded with suspicion, while crime fiction, particularly its special cousin, noir, is almost respectable.

This, I'm guessing, is why my publishers (a different one for each of the Aud novels: coincidence? I think not...) have tried so hard to tag my work "noir." Noir is traditionally written by boys about boys. It doesn't have cooties.

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying men don't like women, I'm saying that the literary gatekeepers (men and women and all those in between and on the edges) don't like books by women about women. But why? Is it something to do with the whole Cartesian dualist mind/body divide in which women are viewed as very much on the body/bad side of the scale rather than the mind/good?  (I've written about this a lot, particularly in Writing from the Body.) Or is it--as lots of people here have suggested this week--the fact that readers find it difficult to cope with women giving violence? (Though receiving it has never seemed to get in the way of literary acceptance.) Maybe I'm wrong. I want to be. The whole notion is so very Second Wave. I want us to be past that.

Yet if we believe this article in the Guardian, we're not. It seems that as recently as 2006, the books that matter to men tend to be largely by and about men, whereas books that matter to women are by and about women and men.

So, are girl book cooties real? If so, how do we get rid of them?

Comments

[Niall]

Specifically, I looked at US awards, since 1987, for novels by women writing from the first person POV of another woman.

Do you have the figures for (a) all first person novels, (b) women writing first-person men, (c) men writing first-person men and (d) men writing first-person women?

[Niall]

Sorry, that was a bit abrupt. What I mean is: can you rule out the possibility that genre awards are more hospitable to first-person narratives in general? (I would be surprised if this is the case, mind ...)

I also wonder what proportion of published novels are first-person or third-person. I know, for example, that only about 20% of the submissions for the Clarke Award last year were written in the first person. Assuming that proportion is consistent, and assuming men and women are equally likely to write first-person narratives and more likely to write about their own gender when they do so, you'd expect to see about 10% of Clarke winners being first-person novels by women and women. Which, I think, is about what we see. (I haven't read all the Clarke winners by women, nor do I have them all to hand to check, so I can't be sure. But it's either just under 10% or a bit higher.)

[Bookdwarf]

It's an interesting observation. I remember when the New York Times came up with their list of the top 25 books ever or whatever it was called, very few women authors ended up on the list. Literature is still a male dominated world and I'm not sure why. I wonder who reads more, women or men?

[Christopher]

Eh, Niall, I think you might be a little too worried about methodology here. Nicola's observations ring true, and for the purposes of this kind of discussion, the "unscientific" approach is sound ground to stand on when beginning a discussion. (I'm reminded of something John Kessel once said about the old "double negative" saw--"Grammar isn't algebra.")

My question for Nicola about this is whether she's ever written anything from a male POV (first, tight third, whatevah). I know none of the novels are...

[Gwenda]

I don't know about reads more, Megan, but I have always heard that women by far buy more of them (something like 70 percent). A friend who served on several awards juries came up with a theory that one of the reasons male authors tend to win more awards -- at least in literary fiction -- is because while juries can agree on which books by men are strong, it's much harder to come to a consensus on the books by women (and especially when they're about women). I'd like to hope (assuming it's right) that this will change over time as "the canon" and what children/teenagers/young adults are exposed to as they form their opinions about what texts _are_ sample from a wider base of material.

Great points, Nicola. I'll also add that the field of children's literature is overwhelmingly populated by women, and so when you consider that, there's actually an increasingly high proportion of male nominees/winners for the major awards. Many people have been talking about why that is, but it's definitely becoming more prevalent as the field gets more respect... which would tend to support your rationale here.

[nicola griffith]

Well, you all get up earlier in the morning than me...

Niall, I thinking of this as a self-service discussion. I went to the awards websites and wikipedia, then to my own library or to amazon or google books to check person and POV etc. It was a pretty tedious exercise which is why I didn't expand it. But I did notice a fair few men-write-women (The Hours) and men-write-men (Motherless Brooklyn) and men-write-um (Middlesex) here and there among the awards. What does it mean? I don't know. I was simply struck by the disparity in percentages between the pure genre awards (the Clarke, I would argue, is more prestigious than many; the awards certainly have tended towards 'hip and cool' rather than down-the-line-SF the last couple of decades).

[nicola griffith]

The only thing I've written from a male POV, Christopher, was a Warhammer story about a boy who falls in love with a girl who, apart from liking girls /grin/ was literally tainted. I've been toying with filing off the Warhammer serial numbers and expanding it into a kind of alternate history history (or a sword-swangin' magic with ponies novel, depending).

The next book I'm thinking of will be third person, an attempt to do both epic and intimate--from the point of view of a woman who likes both women and men. At least that's what I'm toying with.

And the current new book, of course, my box o' memoir, And Now We Are Going to Have a Party: Liner Notes to a Writer's Early Life, is nothing but first person girl. Though the list for Santa I wrote when I was seven makes clear my gender refusal. It begins (I'm paraphrasing): Dear Santa, for Christmas I would like a pretty dress, an automatic rifle, a manicure set, a gun and holster...

[Niall]

"Eh, Niall, I think you might be a little too worried about methodology here."

Quite probably -- I think my train of thought got shunted in that direction by "statistically significant". That said, I'm not immediately convinced that there is a disparity in recognition for women-writing-women greater than the initial disparity that comes with being a woman writer. Looking at the Booker prize, for instance -- five women have won in the past twenty years, and of those three (possibly four, since there's one I don't know and can't find anything online to tell me) won for novels written partly or entirely from a first-person female viewpoint. The ratio seems to be about the same as for male winners.

[Nicola Griffith]

I initially looked at prizes administered in the US (because comparisons between US and UK awards is a whole other story).

But after you comments, Niall, I decided I'd look a bit closer. That resolve lasted about ten minutes--just long enough for me to peer at the last ten years of the Pulitzer Prize: of the nine novels (there was one story collection) five were in 1st person. None were by women about women (three were by and about men--I'm including Middlesex; two were by women about men).

As I say, this is just me talking and pointing--no science, no bold statements parading as fact--but I dunno, it looks lopsided to me. And if I had a list-making mind, I'd bet the Newbery and the RITA would tell a seriously different tale.

So now I wonder if, as Gwenda has suggested, as certain genres become more respectable, women are going to get pushed out. (I could draw parallels here with nursing and teaching. As the pay improved, men started moving into the top spots of a still overwhelmingly female job).

But I don't want to keep rehashing Feminism 101. I want to know if anyone has any ideas about how to change things, or what any of this really means for fiction and its future. After all (sweeping statement alert), women buy most books; I think they read most novels. If we don't get our stories told, we'll have to go away and invent another form, another genre, and then watch it all happen again. Or am I just getting too science fictional here.

Thoughts?

[Niall]

Yeah, that looks a bit more lopsided. If I'm following you, you're arguing that there's a filter (or maybe a set of filters) between books as they are written and books as they are read (mostly by women) that siphons off, or hides, the books by women about women, and asking how we break down the filter. My answer is: hell if I know. I'm part of that filter -- both on a personal level, as someone who talks about books in public, and with my role at Strange Horizons, and as a Clarke judge -- and it's incredibly resilient.

SH, for instance, routinely receives more books for review by men than by women (I had to chase down Flora Segunda, I had to chase down the new Nalo Hopkinson, the new Kathleen Ann Goonan, the new Susan Palwick); and if I send out a list of books for review and ask people to pick the ones they're interested in, the books by women get left for last, and I have fewer women reviewing for me than men; and the women reviewing for me tend to be busier than the men, and review less frequently. I don't understand why these trends point the way they do, but they all tend to reinforce the status quo, which is that the books by men get talked about at greater length and more loudly. Each of the trends can be corrected for, but they have to be corrected for *constantly*, and I'm never as successful at it as I might hope.

Long-term, the only effective solution I can think of is to change the reading habits people acquire as they grow up, so that surveys like that Guardian one you mention eventually become a thing of the past; but I think wiser heads than mine have worried at that problem without much success. Anyway, it's ridiculously late over here, so I'm going to get some sleep and see if inspiration strikes tomorrow.

[Kathryn]

I loved all those books, Nicola. More, please.

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