On invisibility and cellophane (again - I'll keep raising this issue til it goes away)
I was reading this uncheerful (because true) piece by Judith Tarr, which referred to this equally uncheerful and also true piece by
la_marquise_de_
. I wrote Ms Cellophane/Life through Cellophane because I thought of this phenomenon as 'cellophane.' It travels across our society and hurts so very many people. I have friends who have lost jobs because of it and friends who never had careers because the males around them got all the developmental work. I was one of those people. Once one has been made invisible, the fear of being invisible becomes a ghostly presence in one's life.
Fandom is a hive of bias. We see that on a depressingly regular basis. I'm not going to send you to one post here, for there are many. I'm going to suggest you google the work of Foz Meadows because I like the way Foz explains it. She gets properly angry - and is never, ever resigned. She talks about bias, about invisibility, about how fandom and publishing treat various groups, including women.
Every now and again something happens that reminds us that this invisibility is not inevitable, that fighting it (by the turning-invisible themselves, but also by their friends and colleagues) can work. I'll get to that.
There are so many reasons why I should be invisible. I've been cellophaned so many times in my life. I was rendered invisible by a lecturer during my teaching module on Monday in fact. A splendorous prize-winning teacher corrected specialist knowledge by female students (one of whom was me) but acknowledged and built on the same from male students. Let me make this clear - all the students had PhDs or were completing them - he should not have been correcting our specialist knowledge at all unless it was in the same field as his (it wasn't).
The bottom line is that I have so many invisibility factors working against me that Monday's experience ought to be my norm. I ought to be completely invisible at this moment and for the rest of my life.
But things are changing. It doesn't take a whole community to effect change, it turns out. It just takes a bunch of individuals deciding not to sit on their laurels. It takes enough people (us, here) to lead the way, putting our money where our mouth is.
I was voted as GUFF delegate ahead of three excellent candidates who were all younger, more dynamic and had less potential for invisibility on their side. Thanks to them, despite the reality of a difficult and misogynist society, I get to play on the larger stage for a few weeks.
All we have to do is repeat this set of actions wherever we are, whatever we're doing. It wasn't me who became visible- it was the fans who voted in GUFF who made me visible. How do we do what they did? We should talk. We should see who says what, and confirm that what they think and who they are is important. We should notice our patterns of book buying and recognition and we should adjust them. The Judith Tarrs, the Glenda Larkes, the Kari Sperrings of this world should be interviewed, should be talked about, should be invited to conventions. If we don't see that book on the shelf, we should blog "Why isn't there a book by this author." The market won't self-correct, but we're not neutral players. If we're passive and accepting then what we passively accept is a status quo that we don't actually like.
We should not wait for someone else to do the talking: we should do what those wonderful GUFF voters did, and take one small step ourselves. Each of us. On a regular basis. One easy step every single week.
We all count. It's far easier to effect change if we (as individuals) refuse to be silenced, if we make demands of who we want to read and who we want to see. We should not sit back and say "I'm not political, let someone else do it" or "I'm shy, let someone else do it."
Let's move beyond the numbers game (counting them, being saddened by them, crying shame) and take our own small steps. Those small steps will mean more books by so many of our favourite authors at the least, and at the most, it will mean that the next generation of potential invisibles won't ever have to face this garbage.
How does one eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
la_marquise_de_
. I wrote Ms Cellophane/Life through Cellophane because I thought of this phenomenon as 'cellophane.' It travels across our society and hurts so very many people. I have friends who have lost jobs because of it and friends who never had careers because the males around them got all the developmental work. I was one of those people. Once one has been made invisible, the fear of being invisible becomes a ghostly presence in one's life. Fandom is a hive of bias. We see that on a depressingly regular basis. I'm not going to send you to one post here, for there are many. I'm going to suggest you google the work of Foz Meadows because I like the way Foz explains it. She gets properly angry - and is never, ever resigned. She talks about bias, about invisibility, about how fandom and publishing treat various groups, including women.
Every now and again something happens that reminds us that this invisibility is not inevitable, that fighting it (by the turning-invisible themselves, but also by their friends and colleagues) can work. I'll get to that.
There are so many reasons why I should be invisible. I've been cellophaned so many times in my life. I was rendered invisible by a lecturer during my teaching module on Monday in fact. A splendorous prize-winning teacher corrected specialist knowledge by female students (one of whom was me) but acknowledged and built on the same from male students. Let me make this clear - all the students had PhDs or were completing them - he should not have been correcting our specialist knowledge at all unless it was in the same field as his (it wasn't).
The bottom line is that I have so many invisibility factors working against me that Monday's experience ought to be my norm. I ought to be completely invisible at this moment and for the rest of my life.
But things are changing. It doesn't take a whole community to effect change, it turns out. It just takes a bunch of individuals deciding not to sit on their laurels. It takes enough people (us, here) to lead the way, putting our money where our mouth is.
I was voted as GUFF delegate ahead of three excellent candidates who were all younger, more dynamic and had less potential for invisibility on their side. Thanks to them, despite the reality of a difficult and misogynist society, I get to play on the larger stage for a few weeks.
All we have to do is repeat this set of actions wherever we are, whatever we're doing. It wasn't me who became visible- it was the fans who voted in GUFF who made me visible. How do we do what they did? We should talk. We should see who says what, and confirm that what they think and who they are is important. We should notice our patterns of book buying and recognition and we should adjust them. The Judith Tarrs, the Glenda Larkes, the Kari Sperrings of this world should be interviewed, should be talked about, should be invited to conventions. If we don't see that book on the shelf, we should blog "Why isn't there a book by this author." The market won't self-correct, but we're not neutral players. If we're passive and accepting then what we passively accept is a status quo that we don't actually like.
We should not wait for someone else to do the talking: we should do what those wonderful GUFF voters did, and take one small step ourselves. Each of us. On a regular basis. One easy step every single week.
We all count. It's far easier to effect change if we (as individuals) refuse to be silenced, if we make demands of who we want to read and who we want to see. We should not sit back and say "I'm not political, let someone else do it" or "I'm shy, let someone else do it."
Let's move beyond the numbers game (counting them, being saddened by them, crying shame) and take our own small steps. Those small steps will mean more books by so many of our favourite authors at the least, and at the most, it will mean that the next generation of potential invisibles won't ever have to face this garbage.
How does one eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
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