3 ms·

The article indicates that she likely ghostwrote a piece published under her husband's name during the period when many feel she "wasn't writing." I am reminded

The article indicates that she likely ghostwrote a piece published under her husband's name during the period when many feel she "wasn't writing." I am reminded of the plot for the biopic Collette about a French writer whose initial success was from works published under her husband's name. In the biopic Out of Africa, Karen Blixen is portrayed as learning to tell stories orally to her nieces and later her guests. The man who later becomes her lover gifts her a pen and tells her both "we pay our storytellers here" and "write them down sometime." Blixen was a socialite who was able to access family money by marrying her "lover's brother." When they divorced, she was sterile from syphilis contracted from her unfaithful husband who slept around casually and probably couldn't use marriage and family inheritance a second time as a means to support herself. She also published some of her works under a male name. And I read a piece called Homme de Plume on Jezebel that told the story of a woman writer submitting her work to publishers under a male name and getting much more positive feedback for the exact same manuscript. So gender discrimination is certainly real, but I'm a woman and I don't see getting a sex change operation to fix my issues. Some women downplay their gender by using initials, like JK Rowling. But the thing that interests me is the pieces I might control in some way on my end. Both Penelope Fitzgerald and Karen Blixen appear to have had no ambition initially. They both appear to have been content to try to make life work financially by being wives, the role society expected of them, and it seems likely they only sought to develop a career as paid writers when it became clear they couldn't make life work via that means. I think women get generally inculcated from birth with the idea that a "successful" woman living The Good Life is a woman who married well and had kids and put her husband's career and children's welfare first. Career women tend to get vilified as bad mothers and seem to divorce frequently, possibly because if a woman has sufficient income she doesn't need to try to make a bad marriage work. So I think women tend to lack mental models men seem to be inculcated with and this seems to be a separate issue from the much more readily recognized issue of gender discrimination. No clue how to fix it. It doesn't seem to be part of the public discourse and seems unlikely to ever become so.

dhosek 2y ago
I think it is part of the public discourse, you just may not have encountered it. I recently had cause to recommend some examples of science fiction books that had good world-building that would be useful models for another writer. The two that sprang to mind that I gave the writer, it turned out, were both by female writers (although another non-fiction book I suggested was by a male writer). Part of my onboarding training at my current job was about avoiding unconscious biases by being aware of them. It does feel a little counter-intuitive that women get discriminated against in publishing given that I think the majority of workers in publishing are women (although the gender balance is reversed as you move up the ladder). I’m querying a novel right now and 85% of the agents on my query list are women. Of course, ultimately what matters is the views of the people writing the checks.
- DoreenMichele 2y ago
  This is what I think is not really being talked about: So I think women tend to lack mental models men seem to be inculcated with and this seems to be a separate issue from the much more readily recognized issue of gender discrimination. And you don't talk about it either. You talk about things like subconscious bias in other people. Bias in other people gets talked about a great deal. It certainly is a real issue but I don't think it fully explains the issue and I think bias and stereotypes have some basis in reality, which people don't like hearing. Most people "bet the odds" when interacting socially. If bosses tend to be white males, white males get assumed to be the boss instead of the woman or person of color who really is in charge. It makes "minorities" -- i.e. the people subjected to bias -- really crazy but lots of people actively justify navigating the world this way as the convenient and logical answer and feel that "only an idiot" would waste their time on checking if this is the 10 or 20 percent of the time or whatever that it's not true. The thing we don't discuss is the degree to which women get effectively brainwashed and trained from birth to assume her man's career comes first, she will do the cooking and cleaning, etc. It's so invisible you are telling me "it gets discussed" and not noticing that what you think I'm talking about isn't my point at all. Real world bias exists which actively discriminates against women in all kinds of careers. But there is a more insidious force which convinces women to think and act in ways which undermine their careers and we tend to be older before we have put some of that behind us.
  - dhosek 2y ago
    Interesting insight. If I understand correctly, the core of your point was, “I think women tend to lack mental models men seem to be inculcated with” and now I’m wondering what I can do to help my daughter avoid this.
    - DoreenMichele 2y ago
      If you are the dad, spend time with her. Everything I have read suggests "daddy's girls" do better career wise. Holds true in my family. My sister was "daddy's girl" and ended up with a serious career. I didn't get the same attention because he was in Vietnam when I was little and I never felt close to him. I always felt like he loved her, not me. It wasn't true. That's just unfortunate happenstance, but my sister got something I didn't. Our educational achievements in high school were extremely similar, including winning the same spiffy scholarship to the same spiffy college. She got a real career. I was a homemaker for two decades.
klyrs 2y ago
> So I think women tend to lack mental models men seem to be inculcated with and this seems to be a separate issue from the much more readily recognized issue of gender discrimination. This is discussed in queer spaces quite a bit. It is my belief that these mental models, as you call them, have a lot to do with how people are treated in their daily lives. Subtleties of language (down to body language) reveal the assumptions that people make about us. Try as we might, it seems impossible to avoid integrating such messaging into our self-image. But this is not a space where I would go into detail on such topics.

dhosek 2y ago

I think it is part of the public discourse, you just may not have encountered it. I recently had cause to recommend some examples of science fiction books that had good world-building that would be useful models for another writer. The two that sprang to mind that I gave the writer, it turned out, were both by female writers (although another non-fiction book I suggested was by a male writer). Part of my onboarding training at my current job was about avoiding unconscious biases by being aware of them. It does feel a little counter-intuitive that women get discriminated against in publishing given that I think the majority of workers in publishing are women (although the gender balance is reversed as you move up the ladder). I’m querying a novel right now and 85% of the agents on my query list are women. Of course, ultimately what matters is the views of the people writing the checks.

DoreenMichele 2y ago
This is what I think is not really being talked about: So I think women tend to lack mental models men seem to be inculcated with and this seems to be a separate issue from the much more readily recognized issue of gender discrimination. And you don't talk about it either. You talk about things like subconscious bias in other people. Bias in other people gets talked about a great deal. It certainly is a real issue but I don't think it fully explains the issue and I think bias and stereotypes have some basis in reality, which people don't like hearing. Most people "bet the odds" when interacting socially. If bosses tend to be white males, white males get assumed to be the boss instead of the woman or person of color who really is in charge. It makes "minorities" -- i.e. the people subjected to bias -- really crazy but lots of people actively justify navigating the world this way as the convenient and logical answer and feel that "only an idiot" would waste their time on checking if this is the 10 or 20 percent of the time or whatever that it's not true. The thing we don't discuss is the degree to which women get effectively brainwashed and trained from birth to assume her man's career comes first, she will do the cooking and cleaning, etc. It's so invisible you are telling me "it gets discussed" and not noticing that what you think I'm talking about isn't my point at all. Real world bias exists which actively discriminates against women in all kinds of careers. But there is a more insidious force which convinces women to think and act in ways which undermine their careers and we tend to be older before we have put some of that behind us.
- dhosek 2y ago
  Interesting insight. If I understand correctly, the core of your point was, “I think women tend to lack mental models men seem to be inculcated with” and now I’m wondering what I can do to help my daughter avoid this.
  - DoreenMichele 2y ago
    If you are the dad, spend time with her. Everything I have read suggests "daddy's girls" do better career wise. Holds true in my family. My sister was "daddy's girl" and ended up with a serious career. I didn't get the same attention because he was in Vietnam when I was little and I never felt close to him. I always felt like he loved her, not me. It wasn't true. That's just unfortunate happenstance, but my sister got something I didn't. Our educational achievements in high school were extremely similar, including winning the same spiffy scholarship to the same spiffy college. She got a real career. I was a homemaker for two decades.

klyrs 2y ago

> So I think women tend to lack mental models men seem to be inculcated with and this seems to be a separate issue from the much more readily recognized issue of gender discrimination. This is discussed in queer spaces quite a bit. It is my belief that these mental models, as you call them, have a lot to do with how people are treated in their daily lives. Subtleties of language (down to body language) reveal the assumptions that people make about us. Try as we might, it seems impossible to avoid integrating such messaging into our self-image. But this is not a space where I would go into detail on such topics.