Fighting Words from Eileen Myles

Is writing just a job. Writing books, writing poems. If it is then the message to women is to go elsewhere. But they can go to hell—these messengers, the collective whoever or whatever that is saying it. I don't believe that this is a job. I think writing is a passion. It's an urge as deep as life itself. It's sex. It's being and becoming. If you write, then writing is how you know. And when someone starts slowly removing women from of the public reflection of this fact they are saying that she doesn't know. Or I don't care if she thinks she knows. She is not a safe bet.  "Being Female", Eileen Myles

After seeing the recent gaping gender discrepancy in the NYTimes Book review for 2010– Women, 283 to men, 524–  Eileen Myles responds by questioning not just gender bias but whether feminism has taken hold after the 70s and what is women's position in publishing as an ever-shrinking door.  She also talks about what it might be like to be loved.

"The culture.  I try to act like its mine.  Its beloved son."   It's something all writers must do to trick themselves into the hard work of writing– how much harder is this mind trick for women when faced with these statistics and all the other negations that come with being female?  But the ones that do manage it– what stories they tell.

Speculative fiction is still dominated by male voices, but the female writer of speculative fiction has a better chance at this daily battle for love– she invents the fresh universe of her work and its laws and loves.  Writing is how you know.