Misandry in publishing is very real. It’s a women’s game, as I produced evidence with in science fiction, a genre with a false-perception that it’s the only man-controlled wing of publishing, last year. What happened when I called it out? The president of the lone trade guild in science fiction, SFWA, actively tried to destroy my career and life by going around to different friends and acquaintances to tell them not to associate with me. The whisper campaign she started made me lose my cover artist, and made me scramble as an independent author, and led to the harassment I’ve received by Worldcon 76 and people stalking me in real life. Simply asking a question as to fairness as a man will get you this treatment.
And we saw it again last week. Twitter erupted with this hashtag, something one wouldn’t expect to see, shooting into trending topics. What happened?
An author named David Kearns, someone with no following, with only one out of print published work from more than a decade ago, no real presence, no power in the industry, was submitting a novel to an agent, like any normal Jane-blow author. Except he wasn’t a Jane, he was a Joe. And this posed a problem. He went on a rant on twitter, which he didn’t thread, so I’ll post up the highlights.
(Pt.1 ) #Misandryinpublishing I had a bad twitter argument with an associate literary agent this week. She had retweeted a post that (cont.) #500Queries #MSWL #tenqueries
— David Kearns (@Davez_not_here) April 5, 2018
(Pt.2) said male writers could not possibly describe a female main character. I sent one tweet asking her to clarify her stance. My question direct, respectful. She sent back something cryptic and condescending #500Queries #MSWL #tenqueries follow more>> #Misandryinpublishing
— David Kearns (@Davez_not_here) April 5, 2018
(Pt.3) Shakespeare be-damned, we boys are well too stupid to capture all the gorgeous subtleties of a woman. I have pitched to her agency, my main character is a woman so my question wasn’t argument for its sake, I wanted to know if I was wasting my time. #Misandryinpublishing
— David Kearns (@Davez_not_here) April 5, 2018
A woman, a professional with more power than David, was ranting that men couldn’t write descriptions of women properly. As a class. She was demonstrating her complete bias against the male sex in doing her job, something that interferes with these authors’ civil rights. And David called it out.
Like I said, he didn’t have much of a following, so how did this go viral? It wasn’t men being incensed about how they’re treated by female editors/agents/publishers. It was women in the industry who took this and launched an attack.
Professional agents and editors started swearing about him. They shunned him, they said nasty things about him and men. His mere act of questioning what was going on because an agent was TARGETING men, led to absolute crazy behavior in the industry. A couple highlights:
https://twitter.com/RinChupeco/status/982053605422149632
Misogyny: literally kills women.
Misandry: A woman hurt my feelings.#Misandryinpublishing
— TakedownMRAs (@TakedownMRAs) April 5, 2018
There are thousands more like this. Even some men joined in the attack.
https://twitter.com/ryandouglassw/status/982015231936299008
I engaged a few of the professional agents attacking this poor fellow on here, as I am in all situations, a defender of independent publishers, and these agents similarly lost their collective minds on me. How could anyone defend what Dave was saying? He stepped outside the Narrative, which states women have a harder time getting published than men, and he proved a point without much emotion involved. It’s shocking to see how crazy these women — in actual positions of power in the industry — will go just to not allow some random guy (he didn’t tag any of them) not to have his opinion.
This is what happens in the publishing industry every time. Someone says something that’s factual, isn’t part of the establishment’s creed, and they get torched and destroyed. Every time. Artists and authors don’t feel free to produce the art they want, they’re forced to even produce content that appeases this outrage mob. One woman had to rewrite her book entirely because the mob went crazy on her before her book even came out. It delayed the novel for a year, and is out now–and the mob still isn’t happy, still calling her racist, still trying to destroy her career for merely writing a fantasy novel (I’ll review her book on the blog tomorrow).
It’s absolutely crazy the lengths these folk will go to to defend their false Narratives. No one is safe, but if we all speak out together in the way that they do it to us, we can start to make legitimate opinions and discourse something that can occur in the publishing industry again. We need your help to do it. If they can’t concentrate on a target, they can’t create the bully mob. Everyone must speak out so we can all have a voice, a brave voice like David Kearns.
If you like my free speech, you’ll probably like my novel about heroes who go against the grain in their society to try to make a difference. War is coming, and it’s nonsensical, but very few are even willing to question their superiors Can they make a difference before millions die? Find out in The Stars Entwined.
What’s surprising is how many men jump in on the side of the shrieking harridans. No, the mob won’t eat you last, soyboys. No, those female agents won’t represent you. No, they won’t date you. No, other men won’t respect you.
That’s the crazy bit. Up until the harpies turned on him, he was that guy, too! Read the full 30 tweet thread!
Huh, I wonder how outraged those people would have been if a male agent had said “female writers could not possibly describe a male main character”…
I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t, so I’ma just write the stories and novels I want and let the chips fall. Which means defaulting to a male main character, because that’s mostly what I want to read and grew up reading, so that probably means I’m Doing It Wrong and am a Traitor To The Sisterhood With Internalized Misogyny, but this is my I Don’t Care face.
The male agent would never work again because the industry is controlled by women.
The attack on this writer and men writers in general is downright disgusting and unprofessional – not that we have an abundance of professionalism and basic civility in our culture these days.
But the question of whether a man can write a fictional female character comes up every now and then. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen the reverse of the equation. Apparently all women writers are perfectly adept at creating realistic fictional male characters? How dare J.K. Rowling write Harry Potter! She should have written Hilary Rodham Potter, with a hammer-and-sickle scar on her forehead.
I’ve been around women all my life. My mom is a woman! And so is my sister! I was sort of married to a woman once. As a professional writer I have plenty of real life resources to turn to when I need accurate women’s stuff information – like, do you carry an emergency tampon in your purse? Yes? Thank you, that was helpful. I’ve discussed ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages and many other painful pregnancy issues with women to get their perspective for stories that I’m working on.
Also, a really good psychologist or a red pill alpha male pickup artist quite likely knows more about a woman than a woman knows about herself. Because a tremendous amount of the mind is subconscious. A doctor wants to help her, and a PUA wants to help her out of those pesky clothes.
I’ve also had plenty of interactions and friendships with all sorts of people with different skin color from mine.
If a writer is only allowed to create characters with the same sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation etc. as himself then all novels will pretty soon feature nothing but one character in a room, or perhaps a few characters in a room. But sexuality, romance, family, is all out the window (although gay characters could interact, as long as the writer is gay). The notion of it is absurd. Especially the notion that the sexes can’t write about each other.
Man’s best friend isn’t the dog. The best friend of Man is Woman.
God made us that way.
I’m just a reader and fan of science fiction, not a writer, but this kind of bullying and censoring by too many agents, editors, and publishers is killing the genre. And I absolutely disagree with the false notion that male writers, simply because of being male, cannot adequately portray in interesting ways female characters. I’m certainly NOT interested in buying the kind of books and stories they want to shove down our throats.
Yeah it’s constant in the genre. Pure bullying and nothing else, and then they hide under “professionalism”. It needs to stop!
otomo,
And one way to push back against this bullying and censoring is to refuse to buy the books and stories they sell. And why should you, if you don’t like those stories? Hit them in their purses!
Kinda small group for a mob. Guess I can use some of the civilians as part of the “mob. And where are the pitchforks? It can”t be an angry mob without pitchforks and more torches.
you have all of my support… you are right… the society of literature now is corrupted by sexism against men
Thanks for reading!
So depressing! Every agent and agent-only accepting publisher is calling for ownvoices and BIPOC. Nothing about genre, tropes, settings, hell if you are BIPOC send them anything! I suspect there is social pressure behind all of these actions, there has to be, and this is virtue signaling infused. I would also add that 80/90% of literary agents are women – the very ones calling for more diversity! And every single one of them clearly says they want ownvoices/BIPOC/some random sexual identity. 80/90% of all “new” authors who pop up on the agency lists are women. The men who side with this, I think are trying to survive. Because NOBODY should agree with such a mindset, male,female, whatever color you are.
I am a white male, born in an African country and have been a victim of racism, hate, violence since the day I was born. As in they rape and murder people for being white (even newborns are not safe). These folks born in first world countries rioting and marching (as they are free to do so) against the racist white male know nothing about prejudice and oppression. I have had people close to me murdered just because they are white. But you look at me, see a white male, and draw a bias racist view.
Sickening.
I can now understand why violent revolutionaries appear. You can’t reason with these people (they have no problem destroying your life, job, reputation, simply because of disagreeing) and they are this little faction of a disease that are taking control not by power and number, but by filtering out the rest of the world that does not conform. So it may look like they rule and control, but really they just hijack systems to fit their views.
You poke a cornered animal long enough, it will strike back. This injustice and patheticness needs to be overthrown with an iron fist. They idiots are going to build an army without knowing it: an army made up of people they hate on, and fight against (the villains who to date, have not been evil at all, but the leftist scum will make them so). They are going to hang themselves by their own rope.
Song for the those wanting to vent: Aenima by Tool.
It’s okay! Just ignore the corporations and self pub!
I have worked in publishing for about 2-3 years now. Misandry is absolutely rampant, especially a bourgeois, white misandry. Constant comments on men’s physical appearance, department wide meetings with women saying “ugh MEN” or complaining about their husbands. Really unprofessional and shocking. If it didn’t just support a system of empowering entitled rich white women, I would be more understanding, but it just furthers a marginalization of actually oppressed voices. You should have seen the fire behind the white department head’s eyes when I asked if they were trying to hire a young man of color in the department.
I’m not surprised to hear this at all. Terrible!