In the meantime, here’re some relevant links, some of which throw the baton to you. If you’re feeling like revolting, now’s the time…

• Block The Bridge, Block The Bill, 9th October: “On Sunday October 9th, join UK Uncut on Westminster Bridge and help block the bill. On one side of Westminster Bridge is Parliament. On 7th September, MPs in the Commons voted for the end of the NHS as we know it. On the opposite side of the bridge is St Thomas’ Hospital, one of Britain’s oldest medical institutions. If the bill passes, hospitals like St Thomas’ will be sold to private corporations, the staff put on private payrolls and beds given over to private patients. Despite the government’s lies, this bill represents the wholesale privatization of the NHS and, with it, the destruction of the dream of comprehensive healthcare provided equally to all. We will not let a coalition of millionaire politicians and private health lobbyists destroy our NHS. Be on Westminster Bridge for 1pm on October 9th and together let’s block this bill from getting to our hospitals.”

  I work at one of the hospitals UKUncut are talking about. It looks no better from the inside. We’re having our birthday party < 48 hours before (you're totally invited! see below!), but I will be hauling myself out of bed for this. Readers, join Team BadRep as we revolt against both Torygeddon and our inevitable shared hangover in one giant last stand.

• TUC March For The Alternative: 2nd October
• All Out: our new favourite campaign. “We are organizing online and on the ground to build a world where every person can live freely and be embraced for who they are. Gay, lesbian, bi, transgender or straight, we need you to go All Out to build this historic movement for equality.” The page on Alice N’Kom, Cameroonian attorney and activist, is particularly inspiring: “I’m 66, and in ten years of defending LGBT people in Cameroon, it has never been this bad.”
• WomanKind Worldwide’s Overseas Aid Mythbuster: “Print off this page, put it in your bag and next time you hear someone complain about the UK giving money overseas challenge them with the facts.”
• Say Yes to Gay YA: authors Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith on young adult fiction and sexuality: “The overwhelming white straightness of the YA sf and fantasy sections may have little to do with what authors are writing, or even with what editors accept. Perhaps solid manuscripts with LGBTQ protagonists rarely get into mainstream editors’ hands at all, because they are been rejected by agents before the editors see them. How many published novels with a straight white heroine and a lesbian or black or disabled best friend once had those roles reversed, before an agent demanded a change? This does not make for better novels. Nor does it make for a better world.”
• COME TO OUR BIRTHDAY PARTY ON OCTOBER 7! We wanna meet you! Find out more and RSVP here!

Her name is Tiitu Takalo. You might not know it yet, but she’s your new favourite illustrator. You’re welcome.

So much stuff is available to English-speaking markets that I reckon the vast majority of us here in BadRep Country have a lot of inertia about discovering non-English language media, from the music of Rammstein through to subtitled films, even.¹ It’s a shame. We’re missing out. And though I’m not currently able to read Tiitu’s books in the obvious sense, her art is that kickass that I just don’t care. I’m willing to muddle through. Muddling is how a great deal of important learning Gets Done. And if you’re interested in feminist art and media from places outside the UK/US over a language barrier, then comic books are, for obvious reasons, an excellent place to have a go at climbing over said language barrier.

If you’re a regular reader you’ll know that at least three of Team BadRep, me included, are budding illustrators ourselves, so I was fascinated to hear how Tiitu approaches her work.

When did you first realise you were a feminist?
“I think I have always been a feminist. Or all the conflicts with the rest of the world have made me one. It started when I was a child. My mother was a career woman in the metal industry. Most of her co-workers and colleagues were men. She drove the car and also fixed it herself and one of her hobbies was carpentry. And my father did cooking, and he did our carpets by hand – I don’t know the word for it, in Finnish it’s same as knitting, knitting carpets – and he still does that as a hobby. He also did some sewing. And my parents never told us (me and my sister) that we couldn’t do something because we were girls, or that we should behave a certain way based on our gender. I never heard anything like “nice girls do not act like that”. Before I went to school I didn’t know that our family was somehow different. I didn’t know that people think there are some jobs for women and others for men. I didn’t know that men and women are not equal in this world.

“When I was six years old in school I noticed that girls and boys are treated differently. Expectations are different for boys and girls. Even as a child I knew it was not OK. I also noticed that all my friends didn’t share this opinion. They were already brainwashed to think that girls are nice and quiet and tidy, and boys are not, and that this was some kind of natural law.

“I started calling myself a feminist when I met other girls and women who were using that word and were proud to be feminists. Before that, I thought that feminism was a dirty word. (That’s what they want you to think!) And yet, still, I was thinking and acting like a feminist.”

I’m in no doubt that some readers will be asking this, so despite my earlier sentiments on it not being a must-do in any way: are there any plans to translate any of your comics into English? (I really love the look of Kehä (The Ring) as I’m really into boxing, and the blurb reminds me of Girlfight, which is one of my favourite films.)

“Kehä has been published in Sweden, but I don’t have the energy to contact more publishers. There was one small press comic publisher in England which was interested, but nothing happened. I have English translations on a leaflet for Kehä and also for Jää… but it’s sold out in Finnish.”

Who are your heroes and what inspires you?

“I get inspired by other people who do stuff, other zine makers and artists. And it’s inspiring to do things together. Organise a gig, or festivals, or protests, or an art exhibition. I don’t have any heroes or idols. Everyone should try to be one’s own hero.”

What are you working on at the moment?

“I just finished a graphic novel about the history of my hometown, Tampere. It’s a collaboration with a scriptwriter and the Museum of Tampere, so it’s different from what I have done before. Maybe more mainstream. But I like the idea. There are nine stories from different periods. For example the 1850s story is about a 14-year-old girl working in a cotton factory – not the story of the factory owner like it usually is in the history books. The book is also published in English as Foster Sons and Cotton Girls. And now I’m trying to start a new comic project about a community living project I’m involved in.”

We’ve had some artists decide they don’t fancy being interviewed on our site because they didn’t want to be identified with a “feminist” site. Have you ever had difficulty getting work because of your feminist reputation?

“No, I don’t think so. Or I just don’t know if it has been an issue somewhere. In Sweden, where my comics have also been published, it’s actually really cool to be a feminist. They have a really cool feminist comic collective called Dotterbolaget (“daughter company”), and the most popular comic artists in Sweden are women and feminists. I have heard that it’s so fashionable to be a feminist comic artist in Sweden that some male artists who are not feminists are calling themselves feminists in order to be cool or increase the sales of their books.

“We certainly don’t have that problem in Finland. The F-word is still something people don’t want to be associated with. I think it’s important that more people are calling themselves feminists. It is not something to be quiet about. We should be proud and we should be loud! After all, we are making this world a better place for everyone. For women and men and children and sisters and brothers around the globe. Feminism is not just smashing patriarchy: it’s making everyone equal.”

How much do you use digital tools to produce/edit your work (if at all!)? Mine is mainly hand done with barely any digital editing because I like marker pens and am still really getting to grips with digital at all! How is it for you?

“I don’t like computers, and I’d rather spend my time painting with watercolours than staring at a screen. I love to see how the colours blend with water or how ink spreads on the wet paper. It’s like magic! If it’s possible, I don’t do anything with digital tools. I don’t even want to scan my work myself. Someone else can do it better, or even find that interesting. Why should I do it? The answer is, unfortunately, money. When I do my own zines or other publications, I don’t have money to pay anyone to do computer stuff for me.”

You created Hyena Publishing to help get your work out there. Being arty types, we have a fair few friends who are often trying to launch self-published projects, and it’s often a lot of work to stay afloat. What advice would you give to young artists starting out?

“Take a small edition of your book or zine. It’s more fun to have sold out than to find 500 copies of unsold books under your bed when you’re cleaning up your place. Try to do something small first. Twenty copies with your home printer or copy machine at your school or workplace.

“Do something together with your friends. It’s more fun and you can split the work and expenses. Do not try to do your best book first. It seems like people have massive ideas for the first book or zine, but they get exhausted by all the work and get nothing done. Don’t think you will get rich by doing zines or even comics. It’s hard work and underpaid.

“Try to contact other self-publishers or small press people. Find out where they are printing and selling and share your knowledge with them too. Go to zine festivals and events. The best thing about being your own publisher is that no one can tell you that your comics aren’t good enough, or that they are too political, feministic, personal or emotional. Do comics you would like to read yourself. Not the comics you think other people want to read!”

Warm thanks to Tiitu for talking to us. Head to tiitutakalo.net and order her books by email – if you ask nicely you might be able to get a translation leaflet…

1. I have never understood this one. It’s BEEN translated! What’s with the anglocentric excuse-making complex? It’s just embarrassing.

Philip Roth is a good writer, but I wouldn’t want to shake hands with him.
– Jacqueline Susann, after reading Portnoy’s Complaint

Last week was a busy week in the book world. Sainsburys found itself anointed Bookseller of the Year to the chagrin of actual booksellers, the beleaguered Waterstones chain was saved from the asset-stripping abyss, and the Man Booker International Prize went to the veteran novelist Philip Roth. The last of these events made the biggest splash in the mainstream press, due to the consequent resignation in protest from the judging panel of Carmen Callil, the redoubtable founder of Virago Press, who – cue shock, horror, and the frantic ordering by booksellers of Roth’s backlist – disparaged Roth as a writer and disputed his worthiness to win.

“Roth digs brilliantly into himself, but little else is there. His self-involvement and self-regard restrict him as a novelist. And so he uses a big canvas to do small things, and yet his small things take up oceanic room. The more I read, the more tedious I found his work, the more I heard the swish of emperor’s clothes.”
– Carmen Callil: Why I quit the Man Booker International panel

The criticism traditionally levelled at the Roth canon is that it mines a deep seam of misogyny. Although Callil was quick to quash any conjecture that her decision to dish Roth was influenced by feminist considerations, emphasising rather her concerns over awarding the prize to yet another North American novelist, this didn’t prevent the Telegraph reporting the affair under the headline ‘Feminist Judge Resigns…’, nor the majority of reports stressing her feminist credentials – or taint, perhaps – as head of Virago. Although Callil argues that her objections to Roth transcend his portrayal of women, much of the subsequent debate centred on the misogynist-or-not nature of Roth’s writing. Several female authors appear for the prosecution towards the end of this piece, while Linda Grant and Karen Stabiner have previously argued for a more nuanced perspective.

What interested me about the whole farrago, apart from the unbecoming glee with which several respondents leapt upon Callil’s admittedly oddly graphic description of her reaction to Roth’s writing (‘[He] goes on and on and on about the same subject in almost every single book. It’s as though he’s sitting on your face and you can’t breathe.‘), was how quickly comments to many of the pieces above dived into questions of whether Roth, with his ‘priapic’ preoccupations and thematic concentration on the ups and downs of male sexuality, was just too ‘male’ a writer for Callil’s tastes and, by extension, for those of female readers as a whole. Robert McCrum in the Observer wrote of Callil:

Her expertise is as an ebullient and pioneering feminist publisher from the 1970s. It’s hardly a surprise that she should find herself unresponsive to Roth’s lifelong subject: the adventures of the ordinary sexual (American) man.

Female readers, and especially those with feminist sensibilities, so the argument seems to run, cannot be expected to appreciate or enjoy writing by men which concentrates on the male experience. Any criticisms they might raise of such writing, based on personal evaluations of its quality, technique, or aesthetic appeal, rather than its content, can therefore be instantly dismissed because, well, you were never going to like it anyway, were you. It’s not for you. Apart from anything else, this assertion is unsound: the articles above and elsewhere illustrate that many women do enjoy and appreciate writing by Roth and his contentious ilk – Updike, Amis, Easton Ellis – and it is no less the case that many male readers really don’t. Like the comparable myths about male and female approaches to music and music writing, the suggestion that writers, and readers, can be neatly divided on the basis of gender, and their responses to art explained away accordingly, is as bizarre and unhelpful as it is frustratingly persistent.

Rhian Jones also blogs at Velvet Coalmine

Very quietly, in April, a study was published that found that in American children’s books published between 1900 and 2000, female characters were under-represented by a ratio of 1.6:1. Not much happened. Then, at the beginning of this month, the Guardian wrote it up, and the Daily Mail tried their best to misrepresent it, failing to note the criteria used, representing the research as if it had been conducted in the UK, and generally being, well, a bit Daily Mail about the whole thing.

Two things then happened. The lovely lovely Daily Mail comments section went mad with people declaring (presumably based on the many years of research that each of them had done) that the results were clearly rubbish and anyway a bit of sexism never did me any harm now get in the kitchen and put my tea on. The Guardian‘s commenters largely ignored the piece, or said ‘no shit, Sherlock’ and went back to what they were doing before. So far, so par for the course.

But this lack of inquisitive attention is wrong for two reasons: first, this is a massive undertaking, so, y’know, kudos; secondly, these findings are Important. Important enough to use a capital ‘I’: at a time when children are developing their own gender identities, their literature both represents and defines what is expected of them. We need to know what those expectations are; the expectations that come not from our own choice of books for our children, but from what the literary establishment deems ‘good’ award winners are – rightly or wrongly – arbiters of taste, gatekeepers of acceptability. So when a study comes along that pays particular attention to, amongst other things, a century-worth of Caldecott Medal winners, we should be sitting up and taking notice.

Children’s books, and books in general, are not here-today-gone-tomorrow entities; they persist. In short, voices from both the distant and recent past are telling our children that women are simply not as important as men.

I’m not going to blather on about why it’s important for the message of gender of equality to be strong in the cradle and the classroom, nor why the repression of female characters in children’s fiction reinforces patriarchal gender systems, because if you’re over at BadRep you probably already know (and if you don’t, plenty has been written on the subject before).

I am going to blather on about why on earth this disparity between the genders hasn’t changed very much in a century.

So, let us return to the statistics. Since the early 1970s, studies have repeatedly found girls and women to be under-represented in children’s fiction, and this latest one is no different. It finds that in central roles male characters have a representation of 57 percent, and female characters only 31 percent. Significantly, it notes that “no more than 33 percent of books published in a year contain central characters who are adult women or female animals, whereas adult men and male animals appear in up to 100 percent”. You can get a free PDF of the whole study, by Janice McCabe, Emily Fairchild, and others from universities in Florida and Indiana, here or read the abstract here.

Not only are there fewer female characters in books in the first place, but “reader response research suggests that as children read books with male characters, their preferences for male characters are reinforced, and they will continue reaching for books that feature boys, men, and male animals”. This disparity of gender representation is made even more significant when we learn that boys redefine female protagonists with whom they identify as secondary characters¹ and recast secondary male characters as central when retelling the same stories². Educators, too, make a distinction between the genders when choosing appropriate literature for their classes, opting for stories with male protagonists more frequently than female even when their self-reported politics would suggest they do otherwise. ³

It is worth mentioning at this stage that the numerical representation of the genders and the stereotypicality of the behaviours those genders present are separate issues, and while the latter is fascinating in all sorts of ways, it is a large enough arena of study to warrant a separate post.

Children’s literature is particularly sensitive to sociopolitical forces. It’s probably not surprising, then, that this study finds spikes in the parity of gender representations coinciding with the second – and third – waves of feminism, so the books published in the 1930s-1960s show less gender parity than those published before and after, and more equal representation of the genders in books published after 1970.

Take this graph – Ratios of Males to Females, Overall Central Characters, Child Central Characters, and Animal Central Characters across the full set of 5,618 books the study analysed, spanning a century from 1900-2000:

These peaks and troughs in the equality of gender representation paint a worrying picture. When the feminist movement is active, female and male characters do move towards a parity of representation. But when feminism goes off the boil, so does gender equality.

What does this mean for the futures of feminism? Are we destined to keep pushing the message, safe in the knowledge that it will be quickly unlearned if we stop? We cannot rest on our laurels. The third wave feminist movement has, arguably, made feminism more accessible, and this can only be a good thing. But history teaches us that we need to take the waves out of feminism, to keep working, to question inequality whenever we see it mindful that old habits die hard.

“Ending discrimination”, says Kat Banyard in her book The Equality Illusion, “will require a no less than a total transformation of society at every level: international, national, local and individual.” Our children’s books are an indication of this, and a litmus test by which progress can be measured.

You can find more musings on various aspects of kid lit over at my blog TreasuryIslands, including an ongoing series on feminism for beginners with heaps of recommendations. Meanwhile, here are a few of my fabulous feminist favourites.

Totally awesome feminist children’s books:

Princess Pigsty by Cornelia Funke, illustrated by Kerstin Meyer, translated by Chantal Wright
Isabella doesn’t like being a princess. She doesn’t like being waited on, she doesn’t like smiling all day and she doesn’t like her pretty frocks. She’s had enough. Throwing her crown into a pond, she awaits her punishment from the king, but when he sends her to live in a pigsty, the results are far from what he expected…

Captain Abdul’s Pirate School by Colin McNaughton

Pickles is a pupil at pirate school. A reluctant student, Pickles learns how to talk like a pirate, make cannon balls, fight and get up to all the mischief expected of a pirate at sea. Leading a mutiny against the teachers, Pickles shows bravery, cunning and compassion.

Only on the last of the book’s 32 pages is Pickles revealed to be a girl named Maisie.

Katie Morag Delivers the Mail by Dr Mairi Hedderwick

With a little help from her dungaree-wearing, tractor-driving granny, Katie Morag delivers the mixed up post on the Scottish island where she lives. She’s a great young heroine with a seriously badass gran.

Give Us The Vote! by Sue Reid

Based on the true story of Dora Thewlis, 16-year-old suffragette. A Yorkshire mill worker, Thewlis took part in a mission to break into the Houses of Parliament in early 1907. She was arrested and imprisoned, a move which found her on the front page of the tabloids nicknamed ‘the baby suffragette’. Part of the My True Story series, Give Us the Vote! is an excellent lesson in first wave feminism.

Libby earned her feminist stripes interning for the Fawcett Society where she was horrified by most of the stories she heard. An accidental activist, she is a regular contributor to BCN, the UK’s only 100% bisexual publication. Her latest project, TreasuryIslands, is the home of her other passion – children’s literature.

Libby is very proud of her bad reputation.

1. a finding by Elizabeth Segel, whose 1986 work is referenced in the study.
2. Bronwyn Davies noted this in her 2003 book Frogs and snails and feminist tales: Preschool children and gender, and it’s also referenced.
3. Deborah A. Garrahy’s 2001 study “Three Third-Grade Teachers’ Gender-Related Beliefs and Behavior” is worth a look for more on this, in The Elementary School Journal, Vol. 20 No. 1, pp. 81-94.

SF authors: Not clones. - photo by David Kitchenham, taken from morguefile.com

There’s been a lot of controversy in the world of Sci-fi books recently, over attitudes to both women and minorities.

A blogger for Apex Books called Gustavo Bondoni wrote this piece of trolling, misogynist racefail horseshit, ranting against positive discrimination and the “PC” police, etc. He was referring to those people who voiced an opinion on The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF being a mammoth book of only white male authors. No women, no minorities… all white, all men.

One of the people he’s complaining about is the glorious Catherynne M Valente, a fantasy and sci-fi author and editor, whose writing I love a whole lot. (I’ll get the recs out of the way: her World Fantasy Award nominated, Mythopoeic Award winning The Orphan’s Tales and Hugo nominated Palimpsest for starters). The small snag here being that Apex is the company she edits a magazine for, so people asked her opinions of his blogpost.

Now, there’s the old argument that if you’re pulling from the Golden Age of sci-fi, most authors WERE men. But this book isn’t only about that period, and the list of superb female SFF authors is long and mighty. CL Moore, Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ, Octavia Butler, Marge Piercy… (believe me, I could add 20 more names here with no effort). Much more if you include Fantasy as a genre alongside it. There are 3 female SF Grandmasters, and truly great female SF writing goes back a long way (it’s traditional to cite Mary Shelley for Frankenstein).

Besides, you shouldn’t mess with sci-fi nerds, they know math: one commenter on the Mammoth book post worked out that even if 3 out of 4 authors were white males, and the other 1 in 4 category contained *everyone* else, there was still only a 0.2% chance of all 21 stories being written by white guys. This wasn’t a case of “but it’s representative of there being genuinely no minorities in SF writing”. The chance of that being true is something like 0.2% depending on the actual ratios (you have to get up to 95% white males before it even hits 50/50).

So Bondoni wrote his deliberately baiting blogpost, trying to raise some controversy, and Cat Valente posted what she thought of it.

It turns out she’s tired and bored, but with more swearing:

I’m not saying “ignore the bully and he’ll go away.” Nope. Shred away. It’s what he wants, so he can continue to feel persecuted, and very likely keep believing that the mythical PC harpies are why he’s not a star of page and screen. It’s fun to feel persecuted – if you’re persecuted, it usually means you’re right, and at the mercy of wicked souls. It’s not actually fun to be persecuted, but if you can get that feeling while sitting at home with no one oppressing you? Profit.

He’s using us – because he knows he can’t get the internet crowds to look at him any other way, he simply calls us playground names. And that’s what the phrase PC is these days – name calling. No one who actually believes in not intentionally hurting other humans uses that phrase anymore. It’s pretty much solely used to insist that mobs of people who don’t look like the user are constantly beating down his door to force him to be nice. Poor f***ing baby. My heart bleeds for you, sweetheart.

I just wanted to give a little cheer, because I think her whole post is excellent.

Next time, Mr Bondoni, don’t pick a fight with the woman who responded to Elizabeth Moon’s astonishing anti-Muslim rant by dedicating the entire next issue of Apex magazine to only contain stories from Arab and Muslim writers. (That issue comes out soon, and I can’t wait).

Now, we could say that picking arguments over statistics and always demanding equal representation is too aggressive a behaviour, that it doesn’t help feminism or that we’d be better off just leaving losers like Bondoni alone. Cat’s point is that we’re all tired of it, we’ve all seen it before, and the arguments against positive discrimination (if that even applied here, which I don’t think it does) will keep coming from the poor oppressed traditional majority.

But when the comments to the original announcement of the ‘Mammoth book…’ themselves prove precisely why the fight isn’t over yet, I think I can find the energy to keep opposing.

Sci-fi should be a field where we can leave prejudices behind, especially those based on tradition and culture. It is the greatest genre for wiping away the assumptions that the ratio of power between genders should be the same as in the modern day, or that race or religion (or even money) have to divide people the way they do. I love sci-fi for this.

But it also contains its share of famously right-wing intolerant viewpoints, and that’s a reminder that even in this free and imaginative literary space we can’t stop pushing to improve things. I think Cat is right: hearing Bondoni’s arguments yet again is boring, and providing him with the drama he wants is pointless… but taking a stance against his views isn’t. We still hear people complaining about things being “too PC” daily, that fight is a long way from over yet.