It's all about a 'level playing field'. Apparently...
The reaction to the 2013 Miles Franklin shortlist would be fine if that was all there was to it: the best five books according the judges were these five books, let’s get on with it. But that’s not the case. It’s the ‘first ever all-women’. Ignore the fact that the men who’ve been on it have been writing for—and read primarily by—women for years, so that the award itself has been irrelevant to more and more men every year, probably since David Foster. But an all-women shortlist isn't un-level, since there have been four all-men ones in the past, reductively referred to as ‘sausagefests’ (making this one a crackcarnivale?). So the playing field is not this one shortlist, it is the amount of shortlists that your sex-team gets to dominate. And, if we get to the point that there is a fifth all-women shortlist, then the playing field will shift again to accommodate that.
The reaction to the 2013 Miles Franklin shortlist would be fine if that was all there was to it: the best five books according the judges were these five books, let’s get on with it. But that’s not the case. It’s the ‘first ever all-women’. Ignore the fact that the men who’ve been on it have been writing for—and read primarily by—women for years, so that the award itself has been irrelevant to more and more men every year, probably since David Foster. But an all-women shortlist isn't un-level, since there have been four all-men ones in the past, reductively referred to as ‘sausagefests’ (making this one a crackcarnivale?). So the playing field is not this one shortlist, it is the amount of shortlists that your sex-team gets to dominate. And, if we get to the point that there is a fifth all-women shortlist, then the playing field will shift again to accommodate that.
Unfortunately, it would seem, the Stella prize invention was
premature: They didn't give the Miles Frank team time to adjust…
This is not all about a ‘level playing field’ for both sexes. It’s about creating a heavily graded playing field, and then teaching men to lean as hard as they can to one side before they look at it.
Like it has in other areas of writing and publishing, women dominate fiction writing, publishing and reading, so those playing field angles are all dealt with and level (again, as you long as you lean far enough). So we move on to some area where we can accommodate that, and find something, anything we can use to further ‘level the playing field’. So it comes down to: statistics collected on how many women writers are reviewed in major periodicals compared to men; and—look out you dwindling few men who still actually read any fiction—how many women authors and/or women-authors’-stories-about-women men read compared to …well … I suppose, anything else. Once these are dealt with, and ‘leveled’, then there’s sure to be something else.
Like it has in other areas of writing and publishing, women dominate fiction writing, publishing and reading, so those playing field angles are all dealt with and level (again, as you long as you lean far enough). So we move on to some area where we can accommodate that, and find something, anything we can use to further ‘level the playing field’. So it comes down to: statistics collected on how many women writers are reviewed in major periodicals compared to men; and—look out you dwindling few men who still actually read any fiction—how many women authors and/or women-authors’-stories-about-women men read compared to …well … I suppose, anything else. Once these are dealt with, and ‘leveled’, then there’s sure to be something else.
It’s quite
obviously, once you strip back the rhetoric and look at what is actually being
done, about Total War, in a very Machiavellian sense. The playing field is not
level until Total Domination occurs, until there is not one single tenuous
statistic that can be teased out that does not favour your sex-team. It’s the
same in higher education. Once you dominate overall, start looking at
individual faculties. Once you dominate all the faculties…
…you just keep going.
But the whole time you say that you’re all about equality of
opportunity.
Like the Roman Empire. Legions are notoriously difficult to
disband. And if you don’t disband them, because it’s so difficult and hard and
quite a fight and you may look foolish and reactionary and unprogressive, then
they go ahead and create the war for them to fight in.
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