The Trouble with Gallery Readings...
Jan. 18th, 2017 08:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouse...is that you walk away with ART.
I ended up buying $40 worth of blank cards before last night's panel discussion/reading even started at the AZ Gallery. I couldn't help it. For one the cards all featured Saint Paul landmarks, and secondly, they were f*cking gorgeous! My pen pals NEED these, you understand. NEED.
Besides, I figure that supporting my hosting venue is never a bad idea.
The panel itself went well, for the most part. Ironically, we were somewhat hijacked by a guy in the audience ("that guy") who wanted all HIS questions answered. So, I guess we were basically a living example of the whole 'things that happen when you bring up feminism on the internet.' Except not QUITE that egregious.
I always feel a little... awkward on these panels because I read a LOT of women who are publishing currently, and so I tend to baulk when people suggest that there's a huge dearth of female voices or that we somehow didn't 'break in' to SF/F until yesterday. I tried temper my comment by pointing out that it seems pretty clear to me that the issue has to do with how are voices are perceived--the whole idea that if women make up 30% of the discussion, they're perceived as dominating. The percentage of women writing SF/F in the past has always stayed under the radar of that threshold. Now that we're reaching PERCEIVED parity, people are squawking that we're taking over.
Which I hope made my, "Yes, but there *is* a published author who wrote about X" a little less annoying. (If you're curious about the context, it was suggested that in science fiction women rarely worry about menstruation, I pointed out that, ACTUALLY, Monica Byrne wrote about it in GIRL IN THE ROAD, and I could also have brought up that you could have called the main theme of BOOK OF THE UNNAMED MIDWIFE by Meg Elison 'what the f*ck are we going to about our periods in the apocalypse?' TBF, the point of % representation still stands, that's two books I could think of out of how many?)
So, it was a good panel, I'd say. Anything that makes *me* think about how I talk about women writers is well worth it, you know?
The reading went well, too. With luck, I drew a few more people into my work.
I ended up buying $40 worth of blank cards before last night's panel discussion/reading even started at the AZ Gallery. I couldn't help it. For one the cards all featured Saint Paul landmarks, and secondly, they were f*cking gorgeous! My pen pals NEED these, you understand. NEED.
Besides, I figure that supporting my hosting venue is never a bad idea.
The panel itself went well, for the most part. Ironically, we were somewhat hijacked by a guy in the audience ("that guy") who wanted all HIS questions answered. So, I guess we were basically a living example of the whole 'things that happen when you bring up feminism on the internet.' Except not QUITE that egregious.
I always feel a little... awkward on these panels because I read a LOT of women who are publishing currently, and so I tend to baulk when people suggest that there's a huge dearth of female voices or that we somehow didn't 'break in' to SF/F until yesterday. I tried temper my comment by pointing out that it seems pretty clear to me that the issue has to do with how are voices are perceived--the whole idea that if women make up 30% of the discussion, they're perceived as dominating. The percentage of women writing SF/F in the past has always stayed under the radar of that threshold. Now that we're reaching PERCEIVED parity, people are squawking that we're taking over.
Which I hope made my, "Yes, but there *is* a published author who wrote about X" a little less annoying. (If you're curious about the context, it was suggested that in science fiction women rarely worry about menstruation, I pointed out that, ACTUALLY, Monica Byrne wrote about it in GIRL IN THE ROAD, and I could also have brought up that you could have called the main theme of BOOK OF THE UNNAMED MIDWIFE by Meg Elison 'what the f*ck are we going to about our periods in the apocalypse?' TBF, the point of % representation still stands, that's two books I could think of out of how many?)
So, it was a good panel, I'd say. Anything that makes *me* think about how I talk about women writers is well worth it, you know?
The reading went well, too. With luck, I drew a few more people into my work.