Things I have been thinking about.
Aug. 27th, 2009 06:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
supermouseCarol made me this wonderful, wonderful necklace, all brightly coloured metal beads clustered on a silver chain, which would be perfect even *without* the silver spoon charms strung on at intervals. The necklace jingles, I love the colours and the spoons made me giggle very much.
I have Chorley cakes. They're like Eccles cakes but more buttery and with less fruit. I live about ten yards from Chorley but have never seen them for sale here. These are from a garage in Tonge Moor, the one I used to go to on my dawn walks.
The Asian Women Carnival is asking for submissions for the fourth Carnival. Yayness. The posts are not for or about me or people like me but they never fail to make me think, so I am very much looking forward to the next one, which should be in late October. Truthrages says here I’ve been thinking about various cultural ideas of silence when it comes to Asian women, the ways that our words and voices are so often unheard or discounted. I’ve been thinking of the roles that Asian women play in fairytales and myths and in today’s media, and the ways they compare to the roles we play in real life. I've been thinking of the stories and images we Asian women create for ourselves, as compared to those fed to us by others.
This post, "Where are all the men bloggers" had me giggling for a while. It turns around comments I see made in all seriousness every day and aims them at the very people who usually make those remarks. It's satire. I explain this because someone quite dear to me got very upset earlier about it and thinks it needs the disclaimer, so now, you have been warned.
This Mammoth Anthology of sci fi written by white men is old news by now, but I was too ill to point to the discussion at the time. In a book supposedly representing a broad swathe of the science fiction genre, there are 21 stories, *all* by white men.
Ian Osmand's comment sums up the disparity with some easy-to-follow maths:
It seems to me that Mr Di Fillipo argument is that it's perfectly reasonable that, in a random selection of 21 stories, every one of them would be written by a white male.
So, what are the odds?
Let's say that the percentage of stories that are written by white males is X. That means that, by random chance, the odds of at least one story in 21 being written by white males is X^21.
So, if the science fiction field is 97% white males, then there'd be a 50% chance that this would happen just by chance. If the field was 99% white males, then there would be an 80% chance of this happening.
On the other hand, if a quarter of science fiction writers are women or POC, then the odds of every story being written by a white male are about 0.2%
The thing is, there are a *lot* of women science fiction writers out there, and a lot of writers of colour, and a lot of women writers of colour. It's just a lot harder than really it should be to find them.
I have Chorley cakes. They're like Eccles cakes but more buttery and with less fruit. I live about ten yards from Chorley but have never seen them for sale here. These are from a garage in Tonge Moor, the one I used to go to on my dawn walks.
The Asian Women Carnival is asking for submissions for the fourth Carnival. Yayness. The posts are not for or about me or people like me but they never fail to make me think, so I am very much looking forward to the next one, which should be in late October. Truthrages says here I’ve been thinking about various cultural ideas of silence when it comes to Asian women, the ways that our words and voices are so often unheard or discounted. I’ve been thinking of the roles that Asian women play in fairytales and myths and in today’s media, and the ways they compare to the roles we play in real life. I've been thinking of the stories and images we Asian women create for ourselves, as compared to those fed to us by others.
This post, "Where are all the men bloggers" had me giggling for a while. It turns around comments I see made in all seriousness every day and aims them at the very people who usually make those remarks. It's satire. I explain this because someone quite dear to me got very upset earlier about it and thinks it needs the disclaimer, so now, you have been warned.
This Mammoth Anthology of sci fi written by white men is old news by now, but I was too ill to point to the discussion at the time. In a book supposedly representing a broad swathe of the science fiction genre, there are 21 stories, *all* by white men.
Ian Osmand's comment sums up the disparity with some easy-to-follow maths:
It seems to me that Mr Di Fillipo argument is that it's perfectly reasonable that, in a random selection of 21 stories, every one of them would be written by a white male.
So, what are the odds?
Let's say that the percentage of stories that are written by white males is X. That means that, by random chance, the odds of at least one story in 21 being written by white males is X^21.
So, if the science fiction field is 97% white males, then there'd be a 50% chance that this would happen just by chance. If the field was 99% white males, then there would be an 80% chance of this happening.
On the other hand, if a quarter of science fiction writers are women or POC, then the odds of every story being written by a white male are about 0.2%
The thing is, there are a *lot* of women science fiction writers out there, and a lot of writers of colour, and a lot of women writers of colour. It's just a lot harder than really it should be to find them.
