Under the category of “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished,” I was attacked in a blog for defending Doris Lessing and her 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature against people who denigrated her work.
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I don’t want to publicize this blog, but you can search for “T.K. Kenyon + sexism” on Google and find it.
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The person who wrote the blog emailed me … twice … through an email widgit to ensure that I knew about this particular Google search, linking my name to “sexism.”
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That’s a singularly cruel thing to do. Think about how you would feel if a Google search of your name + “racism” turned up a blog accusing you of that, let alone that the author made sure you knew what she was calling you behind your back.
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I was attacked as a “sexist,” because I noted that Doris Lessing wrote seminal feminist works, and her critics, mostly men, thought that she, a feminist writer, didn’t deserve the Nobel Prize.
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That’s right, I stood up for a person being slammed by sexists, and that makes me a sexist. The woman writing the blog obviously thinks that sexism no longer exists, but it does.
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Anecdotes about sexism abound. I have several. One creative writing professor that I studied with critiqued women’s stories with female characters thusly: if the character was weak, they were “weepy;” if the character was strong and yelled or did anything proactive, they were “strident.”
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Men in this class did not cross-write female characters, it must be noted.
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“Strident” is a term often used to defame Doris Lessing’s protagonists. The term is also used to bash women who are perceived as too strong. In Carolyn G. Heilbrun’s Writing A Woman’s Life, she said that when women tell the truth, we are called strident.
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I am more trained as a scientist than as a writer, at least in number of years in graduate school, so I tend to use statistics more than anecdotes to support opinions.
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Male and female authors publish books in roughly equal numbers. However:
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Percentage of book reviews for male authors vs. female authors for 2006 in major review publications: 56%:44%
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Percentage of book reviews for male authors vs. female authors for Jan-June 2007 in major review publications: 63%:37%
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Percentage of book reviews for male authors vs. female authors for at the New York Times Review of Books (very influential): 72%:28%
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Ratio of male book reviewers to female reviewers at the New York Times Review of Books: 2:1
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Percentage of articles written by men to those written by women in the five “thought leader” magazines: 3:1
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Worse yet, as I read most of those magazines, I can tell you with a quick glace at my stock, that the few women writers write about women, home life, babies, diapers, poems, and very light culture. The heavy stuff like economics is reserved for the boys.
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Percentage of male book buyers to female: 45%:55%
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Women constitute only 17 percent of opinion writers at The New York Times, 10 percent at The Washington Post, 28 percent at U.S. News & World Report, 23 percent at Newsweek and 13 percent at Time. Overall, only 24 percent of nationally syndicated columnists are women.
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No matter what the flailing Uncle Tom-asina thinks about sexism, it’s alive and well in the publishing and book critiquing businesses. Doris Lessing got bashed. I got bashed for defending her from the sexists who denigrated her work because it was too “strident.”
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I’m not surprised.
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TK Kenyon is the author of RABID: A Novel and CALLOUS: A Novel, both well-reviewed by various media outlets.
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1 user commented in " T.K. Kenyon, Sexism, and Strident Women "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a Trackbackah yes stridency.
quite the subject and where to start?
truth be told i have a strong, honest and opinionated voice that certainly was not heard nor appreciated in a family of six males (including my sexist father) when i was growing up….i guess he lead the way passing on what his generation and family had left him. i was endlessly told to shush, shut up and even got hands raised inches from my mouth should i even dare to begin to open it and speak.
since my father died last summer an issue arose and i decided i absolutely had to finally speak from my heart to my remaining siblings about this emotional legacy of my father’s that was generations old, but i knew that i had to work on making my delivery one that could be heard. this meant that i had to learn to deliver the truth in a balanced way, very consciously calming my emotions and balancing the message using both head and heart - also confident and firm that what i was seeking and attempting to deliver was the truth. without a doubt this was bloody hard work because my repressed emotions ran deep and were massively wounded. but somehow my message got through to some of my brothers and was it heard and in turn made a huge change in our dynamics. i was shocked. i have since reflected on what worked. yes strident is a revolting word and one of the all too many put down labels that our patriarchal, sexist and misogynist society feels it has to employ in order to rule with power and keep oppressing the scary and grossly misunderstood spirit of the feminine.
one point about this that cannot be over emphasised here, is that this is NOT a gender issue but one of much too much masculine energy squishing and repelling the feminine which now that it is determined to be heard once and for all, does tend to come out explosively because of those countless layers of oppression. this eruption of potent energy while desperate to be heard, sadly tends to have the opposite effect by triggering all sorts of defence mechanisms and put downs by those who, though they absolutely need to hear it, adamantly refuse to because they feel under attack. if the feminine is to be explored as a counter energy to too much masculine, let’s not have to see the pendulum swing all the way from one side to the other, just because voices need to be heard, but instead those getting in touch with the feminine within themselves might try instead to employ forgiveness and compassion of self first so as to have that pendulum rest in the healing middle ground where no, one, energy is expressed in such a way as to alienate.
we all need to learn a new way, to evolve creatively and each of us could begin by going inside for that attention and forgiveness we think we need externally. what might then be born is a truth expressed with less hurt and anger and delivered in a such a way that can be heard and in such a way that initiates constructive and healing dialogue.
PEACE
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