Thanks Judy, Chris and Catherine -
There are a number of women who post to Buffalo Poetics, including Amy
King, who blogs most interestingly on gender. And there's more
participation by women on other lists I'm on.
I only ask because Poetryetc was once a place where women posted,
although their numbers were always fewer than men. When John Kinsella,
Randolph Healy, and various others, including me, managed the list, we
enforced a simple but effective policy that forbade bigotry of any
kind, such as sexism, racism, homophobia, and personal abuse. It was
never perfect, no lists are, but for many years it opened a space
where discussion of many kinds - often impassioned discussion,
sometimes just silly - was possible.
Catherine wrote:
"Trying as all this is, it seems that somewhere in this lack of female
participation in discussions purportedly about poetry (but rarely about
poetry) lurks the answer as to why art communication by women is so
comparatively rare, so rarely called good, so unadvocated. Dunno, it has
been about 14 years of this sort of thing for me, and I'm still trying to
figure it out."
Absolutely spot on. It's the same old arguments over decades.
I think it's both simple and complicated. There's an interesting
discussion going on in the theatre world, in the UK but especially in
Australia, attempting to address an appalling gender gap in the
productions of women writers and directors. (The women having this
discussion are far from shrinking violets, but the same issues,
especially vexed feelings about entitlement, come up). What it's
attempting to address is endemic sexism and the invisibility of
privilege to those who possess it. That's a long and difficult
conversation. And we've all had it, over and over again. In every
sense of that phrase.
xA
--
Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
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