Back in February, I shared my reading totals from 2017. In addition to simply adding up the total, I also analyzed my results in the fashion suggested by my ‘Hello Ladies’ post and compared the number of male authors I’d read with the number of female authors.
So, after the completion of this project, I suppose the big question is – what did I learn?
Reader, I initially feared that I learned nothing. A lot of what I laid out in the original post played out as described. As the Australian journal and website Vida pointed out, (a) women are writing more books than men yet (b) men are receiving a disproportionate share of the attention. My reading list, unresponsive to (a) yet influenced by (b), serves only as another example of how this conclusion might manifest (and, if others ask me for reading recommendations as they tend to do, reinforce) itself.
The more I think about this project, the more I suspect the average reader is simply exposed to men’s work more often than they are exposed to women’s work. I have no data beyond the anecdotal to support my hypothesis. Still, I feel pretty good about my conclusion. In my original post, I noted how publishers generally prefer promoting men’s writing and added that many publications review men’s work disproportionately to how often they review women’s work. For me, it follows that this will lead only to us average readers seeing more of men’s work displayed at the front of the bookstore, more of men’s work featured online, and more of men’s work appear in those annual ‘best of’ lists published by our favorite newspapers, magazines, and poorly read blogs.
This is crucial for those who assume the hypothetical average reader doesn’t use the author’s identity to decide whether to read a given book (excepting, of course, something like a memoir, where the author’s identity is the topic) because the number of books this hypothetical reader is exposed to will determine how many books this person reads. Let’s make up a number – five – and use it to represent the number of books this hypothetical ‘average reader’ will learn of before choosing to read one. If this person, through some of the mechanisms referenced above, is exposed to twenty-five books by men and twenty books by women, this person will read five books by men and four by women.
In short, for those readers who choose to read a book based solely on merit, the reality is simple: what they choose is pulled only from a slightly larger pool of all the books they see. And if what they see is a disproportionately male authorship, what they’ll get are disproportionately male reading lists.
So, that’s all, folks… right? If everyone else just did their jobs without bias, then I can continue doing my already not biased thing without looking like a sexist reader by accident... right?
I’m not so sure, actually. I’m not quite sure it’s as simple as my clapping my hands together, nodding earnestly, and blaming publishers and reviewers, blaming society, blaming history, blaming anyone but myself, really, for how my 2017 reading list turned out. This is too bad since I find society is among the most convenient things to blame for almost all of my problems! You know what it sounds like, reader... It sure ain’t my fault that my reading list has ‘a majority’ – it’s patriarchy’s fault, it’s the book reviewer’s fault, it’s the bookstore’s fault... I don't think such excuses cut it for me anymore.
I wonder if it’s time for me to stop worrying about everyone else and just ask where I come in as a reader. I sit around in a society, sure, and I did read these books within the context of said society, of that there is no doubt, and I know we're all just living in a society, certainly, but... I also chose to read each of the books. And one thing this society gives me above all else is choice over what I read.
So, I think I need to consider my role as the selector, as the reader. I need to ask not what my reading list can do for me but to ask what I can do for my reading list, eh (1)? At some point, I need to take responsibility for my role in how my reading list looks. In 2017, over sixty percent of the authors I read were male. But maybe I should describe it like this - in 2017, the books I chose to read were written by male authors over sixty percent of the time. And although the factors I've discussed at length in this post and in many others influenced these selections, at the end of the day I did choose to read those books and I need to think about what the aggregate statistic reveals about my choices.
Footnotes / ask not what your references can do for you, ask...
1. I guess that reference is a little outdated...
I suppose the more topical way to put it is 'make my reading list great again' but in the context of a post about systemic bias, it really doesn't quite make the grade, you know?
