Blatant Sexism or Something Else?

November 3, 2009

Amy King shares this press release condemning the Publisher’s Weekly 2009 Best Books list(s). You can read it and judge for yourself, but it is thought-provoking. I have a couple of thoughts:

1. (and Amy King took great offense to this) There’s a mathematical argument being made that is much less interesting than an argument that could be made involving actual books. Saying “there should be X out of 10” (which is wholly problematic for any method of determing “X”) is much less effective than saying “here are books that should have made the list” or “here’s an alternative list—isn’t that better?”
2. Being disproportionate relative to the population doesn’t necessarily mean being biased. We this reality in evidence all the time—look at sports, voting, what have you. That being said, having no male authors on the Top 10 list is more suspicious than having 27 on the Top 100.
3. By a quick reckoning, my reading over the past year or so has been composed of about 40% female authors (more than 1/3, not as much as 1/2). However, the proportion of female poets is much higher than female authors of fiction or non-fiction.
4. Given my experience composing my own “Fine Fifteen” lists, I simply can’t dismiss the possibility that the PW Top 10’s demographic composition isn’t simply happenstance. I don’t think I’m a sexist (but then all sexists would say that). But I’m absolutely sure that artificially balancing my lists would’ve been dishonest.
5. In the end, I don’t care about creating a mathematical balance. I care about quality. Which is why an argument about a list of books that doesn’t involve proposing alternatives ends up being as shadowy and uninteresting (relatively) as an argument about poetry is when compared to an argument about poems.

Read the press-release and consider it for yourself!

Tags: Publishing, sexism