Really, NYT? Really? SIGH.
Apr. 15th, 2011 05:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ashinaeSo Ginia Bellafante of the New York Times posts a review of HBO's Game of Thrones adaptation, in which she says, "While I do not doubt that there are women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s, I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to 'The Hobbit' first."
I keep seeing this fantastic quotation on the great, wide internet: The plural of anecdote is not data.
"The true perversion, though, is the sense you get that all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise. While I do not doubt that there are women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s, I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to 'The Hobbit' first. 'Game of Thrones' is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half. "
First: George R R Martin actually wrote all this illicitness you refer to. In the book the series is based on. No, really. Even the incest! A quick search on google would tell you that.
Second: Hi! I'm a woman. I'm 29 and have been reading fantasy fiction since I was 10--the first time I picked up The Hobbit. Half of my fantasy book collection resides in my tiny apartment. The other half is in my parents' basement. The half of my collection that is in my tiny apartment doesn't fit on my equally tiny coffe table: http://last-dance.com/images/fantasycollection.png. If I'm not reading fantasy, I'm reading children's literature, historical fiction, or science fiction. Those collections aren't as impressive.
I'm a sensible, reasonable sort of human being. I realise that my personal experiences do not reflect the personal experiences of people who are in some way or other like me, even if that only tangible connection is being born with the same sexual organs.
The women I call friends all read fantasy--and I can say that most of them have never picked up a book by Lorrie Martin, Sophie Kinsella, Maeve Binchy, or Helen Fielding, just to read for the sake of reading. On the other hand, they've all read The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, and any other number of fantasy writers, like George R R Martin, Terry Brooks, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Tanya Huff, Naomi Novik, Gail Carriger, David Eddings, Ursula K LeGuin, and NK Jemisin. Some have even put themselves through the Twilight series, largely for laughs.
Because I'm a sensible, reasonable sort of human being, I realise that the experiences of my group of friends do not equal the experiences of other groups of women. This includes--shock and horror--the fact that other women out there probably don't read the same genres and authors that I do! And maybe we're outnumbered, but boy howdy are there ever a lot of women at conventions.
Women like "chick lit". Women like fantasy. Women like poetry. Women like science fiction, history, mystery, horror, romance, true crime, erotica, comedy, geology textbooks, graphic novels, comic books, video games, board games, card games, party games--women like stuff. Same as anybody.
Generalisations suck, no matter what they're about. They make for shoddy journalism. They run the full range from utterly lame to downright offensive. And when it's a woman making a generalisation about other women? Then those generalisations are both utterly lame and at the very least vaguely offensive.
So, hi. We might not be sharing the same air, but you've just met yourself a woman who reads fantasy. If someone points a gun to my head, I'd read Confessions of a Shopaholic to save my life; given a choice, I'll read The Hobbit instead.
(The plural of anecdote? Anecdotes or, for two, anecdota. But never, ever "data".)
Ashinae
Calgary, Canada
I keep seeing this fantastic quotation on the great, wide internet: The plural of anecdote is not data.
"The true perversion, though, is the sense you get that all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise. While I do not doubt that there are women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s, I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to 'The Hobbit' first. 'Game of Thrones' is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half. "
First: George R R Martin actually wrote all this illicitness you refer to. In the book the series is based on. No, really. Even the incest! A quick search on google would tell you that.
Second: Hi! I'm a woman. I'm 29 and have been reading fantasy fiction since I was 10--the first time I picked up The Hobbit. Half of my fantasy book collection resides in my tiny apartment. The other half is in my parents' basement. The half of my collection that is in my tiny apartment doesn't fit on my equally tiny coffe table: http://last-dance.com/images/fantasycollection.png. If I'm not reading fantasy, I'm reading children's literature, historical fiction, or science fiction. Those collections aren't as impressive.
I'm a sensible, reasonable sort of human being. I realise that my personal experiences do not reflect the personal experiences of people who are in some way or other like me, even if that only tangible connection is being born with the same sexual organs.
The women I call friends all read fantasy--and I can say that most of them have never picked up a book by Lorrie Martin, Sophie Kinsella, Maeve Binchy, or Helen Fielding, just to read for the sake of reading. On the other hand, they've all read The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, and any other number of fantasy writers, like George R R Martin, Terry Brooks, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Tanya Huff, Naomi Novik, Gail Carriger, David Eddings, Ursula K LeGuin, and NK Jemisin. Some have even put themselves through the Twilight series, largely for laughs.
Because I'm a sensible, reasonable sort of human being, I realise that the experiences of my group of friends do not equal the experiences of other groups of women. This includes--shock and horror--the fact that other women out there probably don't read the same genres and authors that I do! And maybe we're outnumbered, but boy howdy are there ever a lot of women at conventions.
Women like "chick lit". Women like fantasy. Women like poetry. Women like science fiction, history, mystery, horror, romance, true crime, erotica, comedy, geology textbooks, graphic novels, comic books, video games, board games, card games, party games--women like stuff. Same as anybody.
Generalisations suck, no matter what they're about. They make for shoddy journalism. They run the full range from utterly lame to downright offensive. And when it's a woman making a generalisation about other women? Then those generalisations are both utterly lame and at the very least vaguely offensive.
So, hi. We might not be sharing the same air, but you've just met yourself a woman who reads fantasy. If someone points a gun to my head, I'd read Confessions of a Shopaholic to save my life; given a choice, I'll read The Hobbit instead.
(The plural of anecdote? Anecdotes or, for two, anecdota. But never, ever "data".)
Ashinae
Calgary, Canada
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no subject
Date: 2011-04-15 11:28 pm (UTC)Madam, I salute you.
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Date: 2011-04-15 11:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-15 11:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-15 11:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-16 12:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-16 12:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-16 01:00 am (UTC)I can't retract anything I've written now, nor the mistake I made with the author's name. I'm primarily a fantasy reader, followed by a couple of other genres, and tend to not avoid the "fiction" shelves, just sort of wander on by. I got my fill of the fiction section in school.
I'm defensive of being dismissed as a non-entity which I get for being bisexual and a female gamer; to be assumed to not exist because I'd rather read The Hobbit or Harry Potter or His Majesty's Dragon or Pawn of Prophecy over anything else because of one other person's experience is just the same thing. My experience is the exact opposite of the writer of the NYT piece.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-16 02:24 am (UTC)Some random person off the street making a generalisation? Sigh. Someone in some forum on the internets? SIGH. A journalist? AGH. Hackles. Raised.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-16 02:37 am (UTC)So while it's problematic for fantasy fans to dismiss romance/chick lit, or for chick lit fans to dismiss fantasy, or for people who read Tom Clancy novels to think that they are allowed to have any opinion at all... wait. I read Tom Clancy books. Oops. Um, anyway, dismissing of someone else's genre or experience is bad--and I feel like you avoided doing that here.
What I liked about this letter is that I don't think that it did that (apart from the misspell which, well, it's one of those things like when you start picking at someone's grammar. You're guaranteed to make an idiotic mistake that you'd never make at any other time). You gave a list of names that are fairly well known and well regarded authors of books that are aimed at women. I don't think that necessarily makes them "chick lit", or in fact that the term "chick lit" should necessarily be a bad thing. I've probably read 'White Oleander' a good six times, and it doesn't bother me that it probably won't show up on my husband's reading list.
If I was going to be dissing or dismissing the romance genre, I'd go bigger. I'd bring on the V.C. Andrews, or Stephanie Meyer (both of which I've read). My read, which may or may not be what you intended, is that you were using well known names that were genre typical, then contrasting them with the fantasy names that were later in the paragraph. Which is a nice change from the propping up your side by slamming someone else's side that we see so often.
The point I got was that women--people--like all sorts of things. Things like those things over there, by those people, and stuff like these things over here, by these people. And that any time you try and shove all of us women-types (or man-types, or children-types) into a box, you're doomed to failure. And I like that point. So thank you for writing this.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-16 07:09 am (UTC)And seriously, is this woman cracked in the head? Game of Thrones has Sean Bean in it. As the great Stan Lee would write; 'Nuff said.