[Partially written on 10/10/10 before life got in the way and other manifestas needed to be written.]

I just got back into Seattle this evening and thus I bring you as much of a first report on the epic that is Sirens Conference as my brain (which is still on mountain time and thus precisely one hour ahead) can handle before collapsing into mush.

First impressions include: OMG PRETTY; an undeniable attraction to shiny, glittery things; sheer gratitude that free caffeine was offered at almost every opportunity; relief that everyone was chill and awesome; and the sense of being welcomed, by the Sirens staff, the Vail Cascade resort staff, and the attendees.

Sirens is a labor of love. It really is. This isn't a huge, sprawling con with hundreds or thousands of attendees; it's still in its infancy, a baby conference trying out its wings for the first (or in this case, second) time. The staff and volunteers worked tirelessly to make sure every person's experience was positive, respectful, and fun. They set the tone for the conference, and it could not have happened without their hard work.

As one of the organizers explained at the keynote, Sirens is a motley combination of various qualities found in different types of cons--it's part academic, part fannish, and part retreat. All three elements (plus more that I probably forgot) contributed to the experience, and although I went primarily for the academic bent, the fannish side of me skipped around in glee at all the pro-female geekery going down, and I felt the retreat aspect all the way down to my bones.

My presentation (on portrayals of women's strength and sexuality in urban fantasy and paranormal romance) went very well. I spoke for about 40 minutes (the longest amount of time that I think I have ever spoken in my life) before we dived into a great discussion. One thing I noticed about all the presentations, panels, and roundtables was that every person in the room simply loved the topic at hand. Everyone was incredibly enthusiastic and wanted to be there. I'll do a break down of some of the programming that I went to in the next post, but for now suffice to say every last bit of it was fabulous, and I came back feeling both relaxed and re-energized. 

“I don’t understand where the programming began. I had been taught that girls do could anything boys could do. Equality of the sexes was a unimpeachable truth. […] I’m a good feminist. I would never apologize for having a different opinion.
“But I did.
“Programming. It is the subtle work of an unequal world that even the best of feminist parenting couldn’t overcome. It is the force that sneaks up on us even as we think that we are getting ahead with the best of the guys. I would never have believed in its existence. But having heard it, amazingly, escape from my own mouth, I am starting to recognize its pattern.” (pg. 183)

"Do you think you would do better? Do you think you would recognize sexism at work immediately?
“Are you sure?” (pg. 184)

ALSO EDITED TO ADD: Please read ephemere's post Patalim first. (Trigger warning for descriptions of violence.)  I just now ran across it and it is so, so much more eloquent and important. I tried to choose a quote that best encapsulates it, but you should really read the whole thing. Go on. This post will still be here when you get back.

my·thol·o·gize

To convert into myth; mythicize.

1. To construct or relate a myth.

2. To interpret or write about myths or mythology. #

megwrites

"Because what's a deathmarch to you, after all? Just a word for you to play with. Because it's not part of your history as a white citizen of the U.S. Because you don't look back and get to say "I don't know what nation any of my ancestors come from because they were rounded up, enslaved, had their names stripped, and became animals to those who bred, sold, and used them like property." Because nobody's ever rounded up your friends and neighbors and family members and shipped them like boxes or cattle to a place where they were intended to be worked to death or killed outright. Because nobody's ever come to you and said "sorry, this home you live in isn't yours, gotta go" and held a gun to you and make you walk from GEORGIA TO OKLAHOMA. Because your home, the place where you reside, has not seen active aggression from a foreign combatant in centuries. Because of course murder and torture and genocide are banal to you. They don't touch or affect you personally or culturally, so why shouldn't you play around with those words.

They don't hurt you after all. So why shouldn't you say "Soup Nazi" or "deathmarch" or any of those things. It isn't like it hurts you, and if it doesn't hurt you, it's obviously not important, is it?" #

It seems the interwebs has suddenly decided to provide me with plenty of fodde-- I mean, food for thought.

Hannah Moskowitz discusses "the boy problem" in YA.

"The problem we're talking about is fairly simple: boys don't read YA. This isn't an issue of "boys don't read"--we're not talking about these boys. We're talking about avid readers, boys who ate up middle grade but go to adult fiction and non-fiction instead of passing through YA, and nobody really knows why."

( this cut has been brought to you by the Society for Shorter Reading Pages (SSRP) )

( just kidding about that society thing )

With this, I think the "there is no YA for boys" myth has been adequately debunked. I also don't think I need to address the fact that why yes, Harry Potter is YA, or that pretending one of the best selling books in the world isn't YA is quite convenient when that series happens to be about a boy and the discussion is about boys in YA.  

Which allows me to move on to what the heart of the boys-in-YA debate is really about, and the underlining belief system of Moskowitz's post: That by writing about girls, by empowering girls, we have somehow managed to disempower boys through a lack of representation or quality of characterization. And in believing this, can we go back to the boys now, please? (Also known as Sarah Palin's so-called feminism.) 

There have been similar arguments recently made  in various arenas, including politics and academia. They say we achieved equality, we finally made it, but in doing so we also disempowered men.* The gender and women's studies programs are too exclusive, they say. We need to study men more! Men are four times more likely to commit suicide, they say, and more women than men are graduating college. Naturally, the people to blame are the women, what with all the time and money spent catching up from that problem with no name thing. Meanwhile the poor men have had their masculinity withered away.

This is called backlash. I tried to find a link that describes it in better detail than I can, but the posts I've read in the past have been lost in the nether. Backlash is when a movement toward equality for a marginalized group gains momentum and the privileged group(s) freak out. This usually takes the form of denying that there's a problem or firmly announcing that the problem has been taken care of, all while doing a little dance in the opposite corner of the room to refocus the attention on who's really suffering.

Yes, boys deserve to have books written about them as much as girls. But it seems to me that we aren't talking so much about whether there are books out there for boys as we are about whether we perceive there to be as many books for boys  in comparison to the surge of books for girls. It also reminds me of how minority groups are often perceived as the numeric majority in a room even when they only represent 30% of its composition. The current ratio of boy to girl books (if we must abide by gender roles here) is closer to being equal than that, but in comparison to all the books written for boys in the past? No. We've come a long way, but it's still an uphill battle. And if there are more girls than boys represented in YA right now, it's because they've never had this kind of significant representation before.

Moskowitz asked, "...how many books about girls do we need before we can consider that a job well done?"

Make no mistake: We're just getting started. Advocating for more books for boys is one thing, but shifting the blame onto girls and women undermines the tentative progress** we have made and neglects to take into account the intersection of social systems of power and the books that we read.



*Although I don't understand how we achieved equality AND disempowered men at the same time.

**And by tentative, I mean entirely relative. See my posts on YA and rape culture.

"In YA fiction today I often encounter secondary characters who are LGBTQ. This is a great development; it means that LGBTQ people are increasingly part of the story. Nina LaCour’s hold still has a particularly awesome secondary queer character in it.

"However, I also find the most stereotyping in secondary characters. I think this is because a secondary character, whether he’s a supporting character or simply a walk-on one, has less space on the page than a main character." #

"Too often we still see the coming out story ignore that most teens today not only have greater familiarity with queer people and issues, and have seen those issues debated in real life and on TV, in the news, etc., but many have already met someone they at least perceive to be queer and have greater access to support and queer culture. And so when someone comes out in their world, or they themselves acknowledge they might be/are queer, it is from a different place and context then it was even ten years ago, and certainly than it was fifteen or more years ago. And the coming out stories written about them need to take these changed realities into account." #

m_stievater (Maggie Stiefvater) on writing gender and YA, bold emphasis mine:

"Okay, so I need to bring this back around to my writing philosophy. And it’s this: yes, I know there are women and men who are wildly different from one another, who fall classically along gender lines. But I also know that there are those who are not that different, the ones who have escaped or resisted a lot of the influences that makes us pink-clad shoppers versus muscle-bound Maxim readers. And when I write, my characters will often be plucked from that latter group. Boys who read poetry and girls who swear and guys who play music and chicks who love cars. I refuse to see the gender gap in YA fiction as a chasm of fixed proportions. I refuse to constantly make sure my girls are acting “girly” and my boys are acting “guyish.” That would mean letting current mores define gender and character for me."

About two months ago I mentioned Sirens Conference and the proposal I was working on for it. Turns out my proposal was accepted! The project is titled Tough Chick: Portrayals of Women's Strength and Sexuality in Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance and if it sounds familiar, that's because it's the MUF/PR series I promised a while back and never finished writing. It will be a multi-angle examination of how women's strength is mediated by their sexuality, with a strong emphasis on applied social cognitive theory (or society-author-text and text-reader-society relationships and how unconscious beliefs based on pervasive societal norms can be transmitted/perceived implicitly).

I'm not 100% certain yet if I'll be able to attend the conference (I'm currently working on funding), but I wanted to share the good news. Holly Black, Terri Windling, and Marie Brennan (who I quote a lot here) are the Guests of Honor this year, and I know that Tamora Pierce will also be attending. If anyone else is attending, let's get in touch!

"So, the young adult literature world has (for some time) been all abuzz with talk about female sexuality. It's a hot topic that's been debated and talked about and explored forever. I have very strong opinions about it, about who gets to regulate it (if anyone at all) and whether or not women have it (because, apparently, some people think that women don't have red hot blood running through their veins. or hormones.). And when you boil it down, my opinion is this: choice and freedom.

[...] As a Muslim, I choose to wear the headscarf, I choose to remain a virgin until I get married and I choose that I will shank any man that thinks I'm going to do different. Similarly, another friend can choose to sleep with her boyfriend, she can choose to wear tight clothes and strut her stuff, and she can choose to laugh in the face of the people who thinks she's wrong for doing so.

I think that as a world we need to stop trying to simultaneously suffocate and liberate our girls and women. Educate them. Let them choose. Don't make girls feel like they're sluts for choosing a sexual life. And don't make girls feel guilty for choosing to pick one sexual partner and stick with them. For not wanting to flaunt her body for you."