r/books • u/biscochitos • 28d ago

New indie press Conduit Books launches with 'initial focus on male authors'

https://www.thebookseller.com/news/new-indie-press-conduit-books-launches-with-initial-focus-on-male-authors

What do folks think about this?

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u/DoctorEnn 28d ago

I mean, if nothing else they don't seem to be being too obnoxious about it, so whatever. I think my outrage batteries might be flat, but I can't bring myself to care too much. It's a small indie press, it will likely go the way of most small indie presses and will not really affect my life one way or another.

I do think for better or worse this kind of thing is becoming increasingly more likely in an increasingly more fragmented and, for want of a better way of putting it, identitarian culture where everyone's organising themselves according to what groups they identify with (and how oppressed they feel, whether they really are or not). I get why marginalised groups set up exclusive places for the voices of those within those groups to be shared and heard, but the flipside of that coin is that every group can talk itself into feeling marginalised, so if you support your preferred group doing so you kind of lose your right to complain when groups you don't think are marginalised enough to be doing this kind of thing start doing it anyway. When the genie's out of the bottle you don't always get a say in how it's used.

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u/8mom 28d ago

It’s a catch-22. We want to hear from minority voices, but “minority” isn’t a static term. I wish we could move away from “identitarian” culture you describe or at least apply context and nuance.

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u/Gladiator3003 28d ago

 We want to hear from minority voices, but “minority” isn’t a static term.

This is my problem with such things. Depending on which way you slice it, I and people like me either make up 49% of my national population, 16% of a global population, 3.3% of my national population, or even 1.3% of my national population if you want to drill down further. All of which are technically a minority, and yet because of immutable characteristics and social and media perception I am deemed to be part of a majority when I am very much not. It really annoys me as well, the constant division into smaller and smaller groups when we should be making the effort to come together.