{"id":4378,"date":"2008-05-02T01:53:43","date_gmt":"2008-05-02T09:13:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/05\/02\/its-all-about-the-girl-cooties\/"},"modified":"2008-05-02T01:53:43","modified_gmt":"2008-05-02T09:13:31","slug":"its-all-about-the-girl-cooties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=4378","title":{"rendered":"It's all about the girl cooties"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posting on the Feminist SF Blog<\/a>, the Angry Black Woman<\/a> quotes people from both sides ((Including quoting a comment I wrote.)) of a debate going on about Podcastle<\/a>, the new fantasy fiction podcast edited by our own Mandolin (in her secret identity as mild-manner fantasy\/sf writer Rachel Swirsky). ((She wears glasses when she’s Rachel, and amazingly no one ever notices<\/em> she’s also the famous superhero The Amazing Mandolin — not even Lois Lane, who is totally in love with Mandolin and never gives Rachel the time of day.))<\/p>\n

Essentially, some posters feel that Mandolin has infected Podcastle with (as ABW says) girl cooties, or maybe it’s feminist cooties. It’s hard to tell what the complaint is<\/em>, because the goal posts shift.<\/p>\n

Is it too many female-centric stories? No, wait, it’s not — because if that was objectionable, surely the critics would also be objecting to the fact that on Escape Pod, 14 of the last 16 stories had male narrators.<\/p>\n

But we’re told it’s not too many stories about women, it’s too many female-empowerment stories in Podcastle. Except that “Come Lady Death” is hardly a female-empowerment story, unless “female empowerment story” is defined as any stories with strong female characters. Nor is four stories really enough of a sample size to say anything.<\/p>\n

Well, it’s not just four stories — this complain is about the stories appearing on Podcastle, Pseudopod (the horror podcast), and Escape Pod, which in a single month did contain several different stories that really did have female empowerment or anti-sexist themes (oh nooooo)! But choosing just a single month, when it’s obvious that choosing any other time period would lead to different results (see “14 out of 16” statistic, above), is just cherry-picking.<\/p>\n

No, wait, it’s that too many stories are too political, and too heavy. But stories like Goosegirl and Come Lady Death aren’t political at all. So the only way this complaint makes sense is if including any stories with sociopolitical themes at all<\/em>, is defined as too many.<\/p>\n

At this point, the football field is scratched up like a tic-tac-toe board by all the shifting goalposts. I can’t help but wonder if ABW isn’t right — if this isn’t really about the girl cooties.<\/p>\n

Earlier on, I left this comment on Podcastle:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s commonplace for podcasts to be organized by male editors, with stories by male writers, about male protagonists, and read by male readers. It\u2019s not uncommon for there to be several such episodes in a row.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing wrong with male writers, editors, readers, or protagonists, of course.<\/p>\n

What is problematic is the double-standard. That the large majority of published stories are by men, published by men, and about men is something we\u2019re used to; it\u2019s invisible, like water for seahorses. But even one or two podcasts that involve multiple female creators will be objected to.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think that’s an accurate take on the situation. ((Although I’d want to hedge “the large majority” to make it clear I’m talking about a particular submarket, not all stories ever written!)) There is, or should be, nothing extraordinary about several stories in a row that involve female creators, female protagonists, or female protagonists whose story involves working to overcome a disadvantage of some sort (i.e., a “female empowerment” story). Even in a situation of total equality, random chance would frequently sort small numbers of such stories together.<\/p>\n

In a reasonable world, there’d be nothing extraordinary about an election in which a white woman and an African American man happen to be major candidates. In a reasonable world, there’d be nothing notable about a podcast happening to have a few stories in a row involving women, or involving women overcoming obstacles, or whatever the complaint is. That these things are notable doesn’t say anything about black candidates, woman candidates, or about how Mandolin is editing Podcaste. They do, however, say something unfortunate about the less-than-reasonable world we live in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Posting on the Feminist SF Blog, the Angry Black Woman quotes people from both sides ((Including quoting a comment I wrote.)) of a debate going on about Podcastle, the new fantasy fiction podcast edited by our own Mandolin (in her … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism-sexism-etc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}