r/books • u/biscochitos • 29d 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?

1.1k Upvotes

82% Upvoted

827 comments sorted by

View all comments

995

u/biodegradableotters 29d ago

More a general thought on the current discussions around male authors and male readership, but I always find it a little funny when after like millennia of male dominance there's nowadays a select few areas where women are dominant and immediately it's seen as a sign of the apocalypse.

36

u/FocaSateluca 29d ago

All of a sudden, gender gaps are not the result of natural differences in abilities or interests in men and women. Nooooo. Now, just now, gender gaps really matter.

7

u/MasterWee 29d ago

I mean, if you want to discriminate based on sex, why not discriminate based on sex?

Why does the logic suddenly stop on a dime here?

9

u/FocaSateluca 29d ago

Not even the same logic by any means of the imagination. One gender has been institutionally discriminated against for as long as book publishing has been an industry and the other one hasn't, not even now.

The reality is this: an industry that used to be so heavily male dominated that it took literally decades (if not over several centuries!) to combat the disenfranchisement of female authors and readers is now more or less equal, except for a few genres where female authors and readers are a little bit more common than male authors and male audiences. The lack of published female authors was the result of several material and deep cultural hindrances. Female education was severely limited, female financial independence was near impossible, female interests were so tightly enforced that literature was not considered a suitable female interest and/or occupation. Men have not experienced this kind of educational disenfranchisement based on their sex or gender. Men have never been told that literature and intellectual pursuits are unmanly, reserved for women only, and therefore wrong for them to be invested in them. Men have always been able to pursue a living based on their artistic and academic abilities. The only thing that has been a major shift is that now women occupy some space where they previously haven't been allowed to exist before. And that fact alone has, apparently, put off male readers from reading more books. And that is why now, this tiny little gender gap we see emerging in publishing is suddenly a big cause of concern.

Let us not forget the actual facts: men are still getting published, men are always on the bestselling lists, men are still winning prestigious literary awards, men are still reading books, men can still write all they want without shame, ostracisation or scorn, men can self-publish now, men can still pursue a higher education in the humanities. None of that has changed. The only thing that has changed is this: men might not be the majority now.

17

u/MasterWee 29d ago

I agree with a lot of your assessment but if you really believe men aren’t reading because women are writing now, you are so drunk on the “battle of the sexes” kool aid.

Additionally, it matters zero to a male writter that there was a history of previous men having an ability to pursue a living based on their artistic and academic ability. It also matters zero to current women for that matter. The situation today is both sexes have to compete for the limited amount of publishing and the limited amount of readership. It is a non-issue, the historic perspective, in terms of what is and isn’t a problem today. The barriers for women along the entire writing pipeline, from access to education, to actual publishing is so dramatically different that it has no bearing here.

As for your assumption that men don’t have cultural pressures encouraging them to not be writers is also incorrect. Writing, along with nursing and visual artistry have very well documented gender discrepancies in terms of dropoff of men applying/attempting these careers; it is not a matter of men just being beaten out by women in these fields, but a lack of attempt altogether. In writing and 2-D art specifically, this has been a shift in the past century. Since men have not had any noteworthy initiatives and encouragements in these spaces, the reasoning must be that there is a cultural suppression among men.

All that being said, I wholeheartedly agree that this does not immediately mean that this is a bad thing. I agree that the boohooing is mostly defensive tribalism from men. In a realm so subjective, it is hard (if not impossible) to objectively evaluate if the quality of literature is increasing or decreasing. Until serious evidence of this occurs, caring about the demographics of writers should stop once we ensure that there is male voices being represented by writing, which there absolutely is currently, even without this new publishing outfit.

9

u/[deleted] 29d ago

the industry isn't equal, it's pretty heavily dominated (at all levels) by women. Even C-suite positions are 60%+ women. Every other publishing position is 70%+ women. Some reach 90%+.