Drinkin', yes indeed/ If you don't start drinkin' I'm gonna leave

So, today the Rejectionist posted a drinking game about overblown observations in publishing along gender lines. One thing on the list gets me- that publishing is female dominated.

Now, see this certainly seems true. Admittedly this is personal experience. I haven't met everyone in the business. In my own experience it is true. My master's classes in publishing are overwhelmingly female- easily six to one. If there are even three males in a class of thirty, professors are shocked. In one of my internships, I see the marketing staff regularly. That's about 3-1 female to male. HR? All female. I've never met a male copy editor. Editorial is skewed female but not massively, unless we're talking children's lit.

Somehow I feel like that statement should be removed from her list of phrases that require taking a drink. Does that mean the rest of the statements have merit? Not really. Prepare to drink, generalizers. So, some points the Rejectionist correctly tasks people to task for-

They won't buy my manuscript because they're women- Wow. That is kinda crazy. Good editors are looking for quality and marketability as much as they're looking for what they themselves would want to read. If it has those things, even if they won't touch it they're likely to pass it on to someone they feel would be more willing and more qualified. And if you're pitching a manly book to the feminist press, what did you expect them to say? What have I said about targeting agents and editors who would be right for you? Personally, the whole thing feels fairly self regulating to me. If a successful general publisher puts out twice as many books aimed at a female audience, it's safe to say that women must be reading roughly twice as many different books as men. I don't want to start theorizing about the kinds of books each read, frequency of re-reading, usage of libraries or other such activities because by the Rejectionist's rules, I'd be ordering a lot of full bottles of booze and "making eyes" at the barteneder. I'm neither a drinker nor an extrovert and I can only believe that flashing my cleavage will make matters worse. Never the less, if there aren't more books for guys its because we're not reading, isn't it? Publishers go where the business is. Can't blame the editors for that. And as far as looking for jobs and internships? Heck, I expect it helps me. Big public companies have diversity requirements. If the place is 75% female, that actually weighs in my favor. Score!

YA discriminates again men- Wait, what? It looks to me like it's a whole lot more gender neutral than childrens. I remember I'd always be reading Bruce Coville's My Teacher is an Alien and stuff like that. (almost) All the girls would say "eeewww, alien." They'd read Babysitter's Club and (almost) all the (literate) guys would say "eeewww, babies." In retrospect they had more in common than I thought. Both babies and aliens are vile, foul smelling, drooling, mucus covered beasts, but I digress. YA seems pretty open. Did guys refuse to read Harry Potter? And the other way around as well- YA is sort of a bastion for crazy genre fiction. SF and Fantasy sort of fell into stagnation and YA is bringing it back, and it's bringing girls back into it. Indeed, I've been thinking recently that I need to pay more attention to YA sections. Heard of a series the other day I want to look into. The titles are Leviathan and Behemoth. Alternate history of WWI where the brits have gebnetically altered super-monsters like flying whales and the germans have advanced steampunk mecha. Idiotic in the most awesome of ways. A little bit of the Japanese Giant Robot Spirit there, I think. And as interesting as Japan is, I must say that giant robots are their greatest contribution to humanity. There's always time for Gundam. But does the fact that girls are reading SF discriminate against guys? I don't think so. I've seen some pretty solid YA drama that would appeal to guys a whole lot more than Babysitter's club would have for boys because it's more...I dunno. Visceral. And brutal. Drunks and blow jobs and gangs and stuff. And again, if more are printed with a female audience in mind, logically it's because girls as a whole are reading more. That's not the publishers fault. Speaking of which...

It's women's fault boys who read are ostricized- as a kid who got picked on a lot, I can safely say it had more to do with going from the lightest and second shortest to being the tallest and fattest within a two year span. By fifth grade, I was suddenly a towering, blubbery mountain. Besides, what the hell planet are you on? Publishers and librarians and teachers are always trying to get boys to read more. Either because they love books and want to spread the word, or even just because it's a market with "potential for growth." Heck, the sudden re-emergence of graphic novels is a part of that. For fun, why don't you look up a guy named David Saylor who runs the Graphix imprint at Scholastic. He's had some great interviews and things. And a lot of his motivation is that graphic novels are getting a lot of people who didn't used to read into it. Why would they ever want- whether they're male or female to discourage enormous chunks of the population from buying their products? Or, even worse as this claim would be; discouraging them for enjoying an entire medium? That just doesn't make sense.

I think maybe a couple of her entries on the list are a little too vague, but I understand what she's getting at. It's more or less the same lesson I routinely espouse. Your opinion isn't valid until you've actually considered it. Don't run from facts you see as unpleasant (maybe you think it sucks that it's female dominated) but don't start making wild conclusions based on this. People have a tendency to take hold of the wrong end of the stick and beat wildly about the bush because it's easier than actually thinking about things.