(no subject)

[nolly]

Went to the Mysterious Galaxy holiday party Saturday.

13 authors came to talk about their books.

4 were male, at least one was not white. [1]

Of the 9 women, at least 2 were not white.

Eliminating the authors of straight mystery (no obvious supernatural or fantastic element), memoir (one of Shel Silverstein's best friends) and a cookbook-for-charity, those numbers become 3 men (still at least one not-white), and 6 women (still at least 2 not-white).

Tell me again how the SF/F field is dominated by white men, aas has been claimed? No, really, show me some numbers. Not one anthology among dozens, but the field as a whole. Because I look at the new releases, and I just do not see it.


[1] Sometimes people who look Caucasian to me identify as other-than-Caucasian, and that's fine, but since the subject did not come up explicitly, I can only go by my best guess. Sexuality also did not come up, and that's not something I'm likely to guess with anything like accuracy, so I won't bother trying.

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

When people say "dominated by white men", I don't think they're saying that "almost all SF/F authors are white men." I think it's quite the opposite: I think they're saying that there are a hell of a lot of not-white and/or not-men authors out there who get overlooked by a lot of white-male editors who only think about their friends who are white men when they're considering things like who goes into anthologies.

What's been happening, of course, is that smaller and newer publishers have been sidesteping those editors in order to publish these other authors.

[nolly.livejournal.com]

This is not my experience. I see many new books by female and/or not-white authors coming from major publishers, possibly more than from white men, though I really haven't counted. I believe that the "dominated by white men" assertion was true in the past, but is not, overall, currently true. If 99% of published anthologies have as many or more not-white-male authors as white-male authors, then the 1% in which that is not true is not indicative of the field as a whole. It's possible that if you narrow your definition enough you can make the numbers support other positions, but I think that's doing a disservice to the genre.

(edited to correct a couple of typos)