By Nancy Jane Moore
Since Timmi brought up WisCon, I thought this blog would be a good place to explain a little about the panel called "Unfair to Middle Class White Guys."
We on the panel think the title was meant to be ironic. Or even sarcastic. We didn't chose it and frankly we find it a little obnoxious. But we've heard that a few people fear it was intended as a backlash panel for those who don't think the issue of gender balance in publishing is worth talking about.
Rest assured, it's not: We plan to have a serious -- though hopefully not humorless -- discussion of why the magazines end up with more stories by men than women.
And, since they put that word "white" in the title, and since we've heard about some backlash at the awards given by the Carl Brandon Society along the lines of "why isn't there an award for white men" -- see the WisCon Chronicles for details -- we're going to talk about race and science fiction as well.
We don't plan to go in for bashing. Or making stupid jokes. We'd really like to have as honest a conversation as possible about the diversity issues in SF/F publishing.
This panel is at 10:30 on Saturday night (in Senate B) and we'd really like to have a good turnout. I know the panel is opposite some very good parties, but you can party before and after. Come spend a little of your Saturday night talking about important issues!
4 comments:
Why isn't there an award for white men? Why isn't there an award for white men?
Dude.
Just...
Dude.
"There's a cookie over there, and I don't have it! Oppression!"
(Says speaker, who is presiding over pile of 99% of the world's cookies.)
Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. BTW, your most recent post (about when criticism is like getting hit by a landmine) gave me some useful ways to think about how to keep this panel on target.
Oh! Just popped into the blog & saw this. I expressed concern about this panel on my Livejournal (& Eileen Gunn was kind enough to come in & explain)... I think what made me uneasy was that the panel was one of the ones that, due to a glitch, was unfortunately missing a description. So I had no idea it was about diversity in sf/f mags until Eileen came in. I'll be digging around to see if there's a panel report up yet; it sounded like a great discussion, but I didn't make it there during the con.
Johanna
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