SF and Gender
There’s been a bunch of debates about Gender and SF of late, all of which seem to end up with someone defending themselves with a variation of “I filled all the spots on project X with men because I was choosing on the basis of quality, not gender.” This answer flummoxes me every time it’s trotted out; not because the people who use it are not bad people or knowing oppressors, but just because it often reveals itself as a blind-spot in the approach of someone whose work I’d otherwise respect. And, to be honest, I just don’t get how people can’t question that statement, since SF itself has often been denigrated and ignored using the same excuse. Think about that moment that all SF fans seem to share – that moment where you’re talking to someone who doesn’t read the genre, and you reveal that you do, and their response is a muted “oh” followed by a look that