Women in SF and a missed opportunity

Yesterday i attended and facilitated an UN Women event on Women in Speculative Fiction. It was a great discussion with three super panelists and a small audience. We talked about how SF has been a male dominated genre and how that is changing - too slow for some perhaps. The two women panelists spoke of how women tend to self-edit a lot and submit stories/manuscripts less often than men. One said that though submissions by men on online journals are higher than those by women the published stories by gender are on par. One of the panelists who is founder editor of the journal LONTAR shared statistics of the percentage of stories by women in the journal. They had dips but on average the stories by women hovered around 45% of the total. Yet published books by women writers of science fiction, epic and high fantasy lag behind books by men. 

Are men better writers? Are they more confident submitting or is something else operating here? Is what they write more commercially viable?

Next we spoke of female characters and how the roles they play are changing. One of the authors on the panel described one of her characters, a werewolf dealing with werewolf issues but also a mother of three. Why should women in SF only be young, curvaceous and leather clad, she said. Many in the audience nodded vigourously. The author also spoke of different kinds of strength not just that which is depicted by sword yielding warriors. A question was raised - women characters in SF have changed but have male characters changed? Depends on what you read, one said - but there seemed to be a consensus that male characters have not changed much. One of the panelists pointed how often readers related easily to stereotypical roles and it was easy to write within those roles and much harder to try to change the stereotypes. Someone in the audience said that it was not enough to have just the women change but men's behaviour towards the women also needed to. 

Mad Max, Fury Road - a feminist film? There was some disagreement around that. One of the panelists said that change in popular culture themes and roles need to come in slowly to be accepted. I felt a slight constriction in my chest and wondered do they really?

Then we moved on to speaking of SF worlds and how SF has been used well to comment on and challenge existing fault lines in society. The setting of a different world allows our minds to reflect on phenomena that we find too painful to face in ours or have normalised in our realities. An interesting question was asked - when writers write politically do they need to be gentle in their writing so as to not turn off readers but create opportunities to introspect? One panelist said if she wanted to write strongly about an issue she would go ahead and do it. One talked about books where the issues have come up very silently (Neil Gaiman - American Gods) or books where the characters and narratives have been so absorbing that the issue though very direct has felt natural (Left Hand of Darkness). 

It was at this point that a question began slowly forming in that constricted chest. I seem to have written this long post just to get to that question - which i still  have trouble articulating clearly. Something feels wrong here - worlds like the one George R.R. Martin has created with a very disturbing form of patriarchy - dystopic - are accepted easily. Despite having a few strong women characters he really does hit you over the head with a culture where men dominate and control and rape culture is normalised. In our current times when we are struggling towards an equal world - is he not also making a 'political' statement? Maybe i have got it wrong but it felt that if i wanted to make a counter statement in fiction about how abhorrent rape culture is i might need to tone my voice down - to be heard, to be commercial enough?  Why is it wrong to have a 'feminist agenda' but not wrong to have a misogynist voice? As i write this i see that perhaps i too am too careful in my own re-write of the hindu myths - i too am approaching the issue too gently.

Writing counter culturally is hard -  i need to push my boundaries. But i wish that this question had formed clearly within me yesterday - a missed opportunity :( for discussion from the panel and audience.

India's daughter

Feelings and thoughts still float like ribbons in a now gentle breeze. Yesterday it was a turbulent storm they fluttered wildly in. For me - the documentary, ‘India’s daughter,’ told the story of two powerful forces at odds with each other in current day India. The force created by Jyoti’s dreams and of her parents support of her dreams. The other a more ancient and terrifying force – that of the patriarchy, the punishers, the rapists, the defence lawyers. The old force threatened by the new must squash it before it claims more space. 

Yes, not a new story but one that needs to be told again and again. Yes, it certainly does not get to the roots of the problem and there is a part of me desperate to find the roots so I can fix the problem. Another part of me knows that though a thousand steps have already been taken on this journey of letting our daughters become women we still have ten thousand more unknown and uncertain steps to take. As for the much criticised title - Without realising it I think Udwin picked a name appropriate for this unfortunate story – Jyoti was brutally forced into the box of being just another daughter of India by those rapists. 

I did have issues with Udwin’s unconsciousness, about her white lens. I did question why an Oxford historian was required to explain India’s rape problem. I did feel her ignorance come through in some of her interview comments - and they hurt. But I am glad she told this story and hope many more do. I do wonder - about the icy, remorselessness of Mukesh’s voice - did he have any moments of doubt, of questioning? Udwin says she had 16 hours of tape shot in Tihar - I wonder what was edited out.

old jeans

Today i finally pulled out an old pair of jeans from my closet and tossed them on the window seat in my bed-room. Before i flung them there i pulled them on. They didn't button. Yet i looked at them longingly yearning to justify pushing them back into my closet. I remembered how they looked and felt on that sunny day a decade ago. I sighed and placed next to them a threadbare, faded, green sweatshirt along with some soft, often washed t-shirts. Keep that one at least a tiny voice pleaded.  

There are things outside and inside that i hang onto. Attached to them are memories and parts of me that i do not fit into anymore but cannot yet bear letting go of. I know that to invite in the new i need to make room in my inner closet. But multiple fears lurk. 

What if i throw it all away, my inner closet stands bare, summoning in the new, but i find nothing that fits? The work to find the new feels impossible, exhausting, undoable. I don't know where to begin. Shouldn't i just hang on to the old then?

I am scared that i have reached the end. That i have nothing left within to find new 'things'. That i have given it all i possibly can and disappointed though i maybe with what i have it is the limit of what i am. 

And even if there is more i can be i am too tired to cast out the old and start anew. I have put one foot out but the other one feels like solid lead, dragging and afraid to follow.

Can i really do that workshop? It's been so long and i may be terrible at it now. What if everyone laughs or worse no-one does? Ya, what if they sit silently and say nothing at all?

The book sucks. Especially the beginning that i wrote two years ago. It feels so amateurish. I must have grown somewhat to recognise this now since at that time i thought it was wonderful. But oh no, an entire re-write. No... No... No...

And is it really what i want to spend my days writing? Wasn't that just the practice canvass and i need now to find my life's work? But how can i let two years of work just go? I loved it once and still i do. Is there anything more than this which felt so brilliant, joyful and even complete once?

And so it goes. 

But the jeans sit on the window seat. A strong afternoon sunlight filtered through sheer green curtains drops across them. A torn belt loop, frayed wide bottoms, comfortable faded blue denim worn with countless, coloured tops. Goodbye.

a celebratory pause

I find myself in another in-between. 

I finished my memoir. Even took a deep breath and sent off the extract. Feeling curiously detached from both the memories and the outcome now. Feeling a tide of healing flowing over me. Sending it out increases its chances of being read and that's good. Memoir is not my form. I don't love writing it and have a bungling sense of how to do it. But i am glad that i persisted and stayed with it on days that felt dark, still and low. On days i wanted to give up - i kept going and went back to it the next day too. My first finished writing project.

The critic sometimes says - but you could have done that better, written that with more feeling, deleted that. Shush now, i say. I am pleased with meeting the deadline the best way i could and want to enjoy the feeling

When i did the test for my nidan in March i threw myself into it and did the best i could. Then Sensei decided to announce the results the next day and i felt shattered, nervous, unsure. I stressed about it on my last dinner in Koh Samui with my friends and didn't sleep all night. But if i could do that evening over i would have partied and laughed as if i had accomplished what i wanted - because i had. I had pushed through almost thirty hours of training and done a test. Instead of feeling so attached to the outcome i would have celebrated that achievement.

So this time i have sent the writing out with the waves and hope it finds the shore it is meant to - or i receive further guidance on what to do with it - for it is a subject i  want to reveal to the world. Yesterday i laughed and said that if this effort goes nowhere i have a great idea for a fiction novel based on the memoir. My friend and i even sat around drinking wine and creating characters last evening. 

But having said that i also feel a little bit lost. Like i don't quite know how to fill the hours of my day again. I do have several paths i can follow and i probably will but today i am just blank. Questioning my future and myself. Struggling with the haze induced sinus and cough and feeling a fever come on. Hoping it does not interfere with my getting ready for my karate camp in Jaipur on the 5th. 

So far 2014 has been quite a year. 

is this project of visiting a personal past necessary?

Sitting here trying to finish the 3rd draft of my memoir of a time of joyous light followed by great shadow. Well probably this is really the first real draft. The first two were just excavating and finding the 'data' and then sharing it and conversations with a few people from that time so i could find more fragments. Now the pieces are laid out in a linear way and the task seems huge. Its emotional data and that makes it harder.

Sometimes - like today - i wonder why i am doing this. What is the purpose of re-visiting the past like this? Does it not make more sense to look forward to the future? What can the past possibly have for me?

Yet it has made sense to have spent this time on this project. At first i did not even know that this 'past' was lurking in my shadows. Bringing it out to the light has been its own liberation. Talking to others from that time has shown that the problem that i thought was mostly mine was much bigger and sharing with them has further freed me. Each time i've felt lighter and also more convinced that i need to finish this project.

But sitting down daily to things has been exhausting, depressing even. It's not a blank page i sit down to but a set of dense, chaotic memories. The blank page actually is less daunting but choosing images, feelings, stories from a 3-D page stuffed with them is harder for me. Mostly i keep at it because the dream called me to it and the tarot kept me there when i wanted to give up.

My daughter reminded me that writers have a social responsibility - well maybe not all writers or artists do - but i do identify with being one of those. Time and again people willing to share their stories, to visit and find the 'truth' from traumatic pasts have made it easier for others struggling with the same issues. Yet the issues continue, human behaviour seems not to change much and i wonder why bother. 

There is some literature and help out there for victims of therapeutic abuse but there is more yet that stays under. I think sometimes because people don't even realise what has happened to them or feel that yes, it happened but it can't possibly be affecting me so much. And yet research has shown that therapeutic abuse is as devastating as childhood abuse and leaves deep scars.

So is this project really necessary? I can only say maybe. But i am one of those people who do things without having a solid reason, just because they exist. I know i will finish this. But stay with me some of who read this and send me gentle strength to do so.