I feel as though
my social media feeds throughout 2014 were mostly filled with discussions
surrounding gender in the industry. It’s been a hot topic in fantasy and
fiction for many years, and will continue to be so for many years to come.
I have become so
disheartened by what I’ve heard over the last several months. More often than
not the posts/blogs/opinions of those most vocally pursuing gender parity were
doing so with a very biased, unbalanced and unequal approach. I’ve mentioned it
before, perhaps on this blog, but having ‘all female’ this and ‘female only’
that, and forcing females into stories and situations, is not the way to ensure
gender parity. It is an attempt to sway the balance the other way.
Perhaps there is
a positive to be seen in such posts, in that they at least alert people to the
fact that there is a disproportionate level of
contributors/characters/spokespersons, and so forth, in the industry, in terms
of gender. But they are not going to win any arguments in the way they are
approaching what is a deeply important subject to many of us.
Just before the
end of the year, there was a thread under discussion on Reddit entitled ‘A Lack
of Female Characters is Always a Choice’, see here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/2qqjvm/a_lack_of_female_characters_is_always_a_choice/
and in the forum posts you will find some of those comments which seem to
contradict the very thing that those campaigning for gender parity say they
want.
On 31st
December 2014 following this thread, Robin Hobb posted about gender on Facebook.
I am not going to re-post it here as the words were not mine, but if this is a
topic that interests you or means something to you, I would urge you to go and
find it – the voice of reason can be found there.
Hobb summed up
pretty much what I have been feeling about this topic over the last year or so,
and more comments like this may help to get discussions on this topic back on
track.
I’m not going to
get into the ins and outs of gender parity here. I have my own opinions on the
subject – balanced and sensible opinions in comparison to much that can be
found online, I think – and I hope to see more balanced and sensible work to
broaden and increase the volume of the female voice in the industry in future.
The essence of
the discussion that sparked all of this was some implying that a book without
female characters is unrealistic and unsuccessful. There are, of course, a
multitude of examples which disprove this theory, and I can also think of many
books oriented completely around females and female perspectives that work just
as well.
After all, life
and nature do not depict an even split of gender or any other of those human
‘boxes’ we have chosen to live within, so perhaps trying to force fiction to be
that way is not the right thing to do – food for thought.
Hobb’s closing
paragraph, which I will repeat here, sums up what I hope authors will continue
to do, so that we don’t lose the best stories and that wonderful magic that
makes fantasy fiction so special because we are trying too hard to force things
in a direction they are not best suited to go.
Hobb wrote: “So if I write a story about three characters, I
acknowledge no requirement to make one female, or one a different color or one
older or one of (choose a random classification.) I'm going to allow in the characters that make the story the
most compelling tale I can imagine and follow them.”
There is a right
and wrong way to approach change, and there is a right and wrong way to try to
effect it. Perhaps 2015 will be the year that those of us with an opinion on
the subject approach it in the right way and make a positive difference.
