DragonCon

[Bad Alias]

It's weird to point out that all your panelists are men in this day and age where many object to white men generally. The panel skirts this issue of ever present political correctness/identity politics when discussing "sensitivity readers" in YA fiction. Sensitivity readers are beta readers who "review unpublished manuscripts with the express purpose of spotting cultural inaccuracies, representation issues, bias, stereotypes, or problematic language." Think of them as political officers. See https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThePoliticalOfficer.

Basically, they are incentives for straight white authors to only include straight white characters as they don't even stop controversies over "insensitivity" anyway.

[magnuskn]

Hm, yeah. I found those stories about the YA publishing world pretty upsetting when I heard about them. One controversy was over a novel called "The Black Witch", where the author was accused of all sorts of terrible things because she depicted racism, even if it was in a completely negative way.

Anyway, aside from I guess one sentence from Kevin J. Anderson about him not being wild about those "sensitivity readers" being required by some publishers for some genres, the panel was, as I've stressed already, very informative and really helpful for me. Especially some of the stuff Jim said, but then again he is always awesome and informative on his panels.

[g33k]

Still don't get it. They had some of the most accredited popular authors in SF/Fantasy on and they happened to be male.

And ... ?  I got no problem with what you present in that.

I mean, if you took the 50 top-selling names from fantasy (say, from the Amazon ranking, or NYTimes Books, or any other large pool) and put their names into a hat, and drew a panel's worth of names... sometimes you'd end up with an all-male panel.  Sometimes all-female.  Sometimes both genders.

I got no questions or doubts about any of that.

But on the theme of "words mean something" and with the notion that "titles should convey some substance..."  actually titling the panel specifically as "Male" hits all sorts of problematic notes.

<shrug>

If you don't see what I see in that, then I don't suppose this tangent to the conversation has any real future.
 

[magnuskn]

Since I don't have a fundamental problem with male or female members of the race of humankind, I'm pretty chill about the whole topic.

[Bad Alias]

But on the theme of "words mean something" and with the notion that "titles should convey some substance..."  actually titling the panel specifically as "Male" hits all sorts of problematic notes.

I can only see a few reasons for naming the panel as such. 1. You wanted an all male panel to get a male perspective on something(s). This panel didn't appear to be that. 2. You happened to have all males on the panel and went with the name because you were completely oblivious to the current woke call out culture. 3. You happened to have all males on the panel and went with the name because you were aware of the current woke call out culture and wanted to thumb your nose at it. 4. You also had a "Female Stars of Fantasy/SF" that we didn't see because, obviously, Jim wouldn't have been on it. 5. You wanted an all male panel because ... reasons?

[Lady Inez]

Here's the schedule of events: https://static.coreapps.net/dragoncon19/documents/4f019d71816b2582716609117e2a2a90.pdf

There's no direct "Women Stars of Fantasy/SF" mirror panel that I can see, but there are many "women of..." panels on genre subjects. It's really hard to see the overall atmosphere or agenda of the event as exclusionary given the mix of panel subjects and invited speakers, regardless of the reason for this specific panel's naming. In the interest of assuming good/naive intentions in the absence of evidence to the contrary, I'm going with attempt to be merely descriptive backfired or didn't want to just say "Stars of Fantasy/SF" when, in fact, the panel only had a handful of writers, so qualified the title with something these stars all had in common as possible explanations.

[KurtinStGeorge]

I thought naming the panel "male stars of fantasy" was one of two things.  Either it was a rather lame ironic joke, poking fun; well, trying to poke fun, at current zeitgeist of "wokeness" or SJW concerns; or, it could have been due to availability and scheduling constraints of guest authors, that DragonCon organizers realized that any really well known female authors who were invited to appear, simply wouldn't be available at that day and time. 

I looked at the DragonCon website last weekend and saw that Patricia Briggs was a guest author and that Mercedes Lackey had to cancel her appearance.  (I didn't memorize the guest list.  Those are two authors whose work I know, so I noticed their names.)  Assume for a moment those were the only really well known female fantasy writers who were expected to be at DragonCon this year and Patricia Briggs was set to do a different panel at the same time.  In that case you have to call your panel something, so without really thinking about how it might be perceived, the title "male stars of fantasy" sounded like an accurate description of the panel and nothing more.     

[morriswalters]

Whatever they meant, the outcome was a shout out to the fact there were no women on the panel.  Implying that there are female stars, which of course there are.  But that they weren't represented.

[magnuskn]

"Her-storically Speaking: Meet the Women of War"
"Her-storically Speaking: The Lost Women of History"
"A Woman's Guide to Rebuilding Civilizaton"
"Women in Illustration"
"Awesome Women in Digital Media"

That's just panels from one third into that guide, after which I gave up because DragonCon apparently is a black of hole of a thousand panels. Quite overwhelming.

In any case, is anybody offended by those women-centric panels staffed by (surprise) only women? Of course not. So why would anybody be offended by an all-male panel? Though the panel was clearly not about anything male-related, anyway, except the gender of the participants.

In any case, if somebody here got offended at the title of the panel, please also get equal-opportunity offended at the title of those panels mentioned above. Otherwise, go a little more spare on the hipocrisy.

[GWPfark]

Could be they caught the current statistics on depression and serious increase in male suicide. There has been a major malaise that has really hit 18-30 year old men. The New York Post did an article on it and presented it as a womens problem. I won't go any further into TT areas, but I am thinking maybe it was just a move to make some people feel better.

[Bad Alias]

So why would anybody be offended by an all-male panel?

Are you not aware of the "current zeitgeist of 'wokeness' or SJW concerns," as Kurtin put it? Pointing out that it exists is as far as I'm willing to go on that issue because explaining why the zeitgeist is, is not an appropriate subject for the forum.

[Kindler]

I don't know if anyone was offended by it. I'm not. I couldn't care less. It's just an odd choice in the current climate to tag some panels by gender, but not all of them. I mean, adding "Female," "Male," and "Mixed" tags would, theoretically, circumvent any potential "outrage."

[Bad Alias]

I don't know if anyone was offended by it. I'm not. I couldn't care less. It's just an odd choice in the current climate to tag some panels by gender.

Agreed.

[magnuskn]

Are you not aware of the "current zeitgeist of 'wokeness' or SJW concerns," as Kurtin put it? Pointing out that it exists is as far as I'm willing to go on that issue because explaining why the zeitgeist is, is not an appropriate subject for the forum.

Of course I'm aware of it, but I don't get it in relation to this panel. As I pointed out a few posts above, there were quite a lot of "Women of..." panels and no one bats an eye at those.

Unless it's now socially taboo to have something be labeled "male something" or "Men of", when it's socially acceptable when it correlates to the female gender. And that would be quite the sexist double standard, wouldn't it now? So I hope people are better than that.

[g33k]

  Of course I'm aware of it, but I don't get it in relation to this panel. As I pointed out a few posts above, there were quite a lot of "Women of..." panels and no one bats an eye at those.

Having those panels does indeed make a significant difference to the context of having a "male-" labeled panel.  I hadn't seen that 'til the info came up just a bit upthread.