On Mon, 10 Jan 2000 13:42:34 -0800 (PST)
Deirdre Saoirse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Sat, 8 Jan 2000, Emily Cartier wrote:
> > Yes. See the history of SF. See the history of SFWA. There have *always*
> > been women involved in writing SF, no matter how sexist the publishers
> > and other authors were.
>
> This is a bogus comparison. In fact, Randall Garrett said that no woman
> could write good SF and cited James Triptree Jr. as an example of good SF
> written by a male. Of course, this was BEFORE Alice Sheldon outed herself.
Does the fact that noone knew James Tiptree Jr was female make Alice
Sheldon a male? No. She was there, wrote and got paid. Same with C L
Moore. Both of them did a bit of mentoring to other female authors too
(no I can't name lineages off the top of my head...). Just because these
two venerable ladies existed does not mean that the field of SF was
congenial for the woman author.
It means it kinda sucked rocks. Just like CS can these days. SF had to
change before women came in en masse, and CS probably will have to too.
> > However, until a dedicated effort began to not punish female authors for
> > being female began, the numbers remained low.
>
> Because those who were being published, like James Triptree Jr. and C.L.
> Moore, were not widely known to be female.
Not exactly. There were publishers who wouldn't publish either woman
except under a name that made it seem *possible* that the author was
male. It was a choice of "write as male or not get published". That
setup is why MZB was really violently against psuedonyms. Personally, I
consider it rather punishing that women weren't allowed to write as
women, since men were allowed to write as men.
Emily
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