Double Standard of Content Work.

Posted by: jennygadget on: June 20, 2014

• In: Criticism
• 9 Comments

Jon Wallace wants us to know that his depiction of Starvie, a female character in his new book, who happens to be a “Pleasure Model….created to do nothing more than have a perfect appearance,” is not at all insulting to women. And that even so, he “promise[s] there are more Real women characters coming [in the following books].”

Isn’t that nice of him?  I think that’s sweet of Jon Wallace to promise us that. So, to return the favor, I’m going to make a promise as well:

I promise to never read any of his books. Ever.

And I extend that promise to any other author who ever says anything similar.

There is so much bullshit and creepiness in Wallace’s recent guest post for Civilian Reader that I could write an entire series of blog posts about it if I wanted to.  But that bit at the end stuck in my mind the most.  Which, is really saying something, I assure you.

Yesterday I spent far too much of my time arguing with boys who just really needed me to understand how hard it was to make the effort to find books by women that are worth reading.

“Funny,” I thought this morning as I read Wallace’s post, “I wasn’t aware that men often ran into women writing novels about male sexbots.  And then writing entire essays full of bullshit excuses as to why this isn’t insulting to half the population on earth.”

I mean here I was, figuring you could pick up just about any random novel and expect to find at least two male characters. With names. Who talk to each other about something other than women and children.  And who aren’t sexbots. Even when it was written by a woman.

Silly me. What was I thinking.

It’s interesting how little women’s work is valued, especially compared to men’s. Where “interesting” means I can’t decide between rolling my eyes AND BURNING EVERYTHING TO THE GROUND.

It’s an attitude that permeates every part of conversations about women’s writing. Not just the writing itself, and how people talk about women’s writing, but every. single. part. Even the work that readers and reviewers do, when they happen to be female.  The work that we do when we try to explain why Wallace words are, yes, quite insulting.

Because of course male reviewers taking the time to send a quick email to request books from publishers that are written by women is “an extra step and extra time.”  But women READING AN ENTIRE SERIES is expected if we want to dare express an opinion on the sexism that’s evident in the basic premise of the thing.

Women are expected to give male authors chance after chance, despite how exhausting AND DEEPLY UNFUN it is to read books that demean our entire gender. Not to mention how they  CREEP US THE FUCK OUT and the emotional work that’s required to deal with that.

We are feminist killjoys when we bring this up.

(Or we are told to go back to Romance, as if the creepiness is inherent in the genre, rather than a result of sexism.)

But men can say:

“[I]f…I’m trying to decide between which of two books I want to read[,] one by a dude, one by a woman, should I select the women-authored book only because it is written by a woman?”

…and still expect to be taken seriously.  As if this scenario makes any sense.  As if it doesn’t rest on the premise that the default is gender binary and male.  As if this isn’t sleight of hand used to deny that people already choose to read certain books over others just because they are written by (straight, white) men and the rest aren’t.  As if it does anything but highlight the fact that some men can’t conceive of reading books by women without envisioning men – themselves – as losing something by making that choice. As if they can’t imagine choosing to read a book by a woman for any reason other than charity.

After all, who would want to do that? Reading is supposed to be fun.

Meanwhile, Wallace “promise[s] there are more Real women characters coming [in the following books].”  We just need to hang in there and give him a chance until then.