Apparently I Write Like a Girl
– by Bev Vincent
I’m including my picture in this month’s essay. It’s somewhat important to the piece, especially if you don’t know me other than as a name on the screen or on a piece of paper. If you don’t know me from Adam (or Eve), in other words.
In 2007, I was invited to submit to an anthology by an editor with whom I’d worked in the past. The general theme was near and dear to my heart and he was offering pro payment so I was willing to participate. I had a story that I thought would be a match. We spent a few weeks going back and forth, with me performing significant rewrites to satisfy his requests, and ultimately we arrived at a version that both of us were happy with. (Note this fact—it’s also important.) The editor sent me a contract, which we both executed. End of the story, right?
Wrong.
The editor turned the manuscript in to his publisher (you’ve never heard of them, so don’t worry about who it is), and it languished on someone’s desk for months. Finally they got around to it and did something unexpected. They sent the manuscript out to another editor for review.
Now, if I was the original editor, I’d be somewhat miffed by this, having turned in a finished manuscript that I was happy with. A few weeks ago he received a set of editorial comments back from the publisher, which he then had to distribute to his stable of contributors. This is six weeks before the book is supposed to go to the printer, mind you, and over eighteen months after the last time any of the writers have looked at their stories.
If you think all this is unusual, I haven’t gotten to the best part yet. The notes on my story consisted of two full single-spaced pages of text. It was savage. Among the first comments this editor (and I do not know who he or she is) offered: “It’s quite a challenge for a writer of one sex to explore writing from the perspective of the opposite sex. Bev Vincent has not done a convincing job.”
The protagonist in my story is a man.
I’ll sit here for a few seconds while that sinks in.
Me, the guy who’s pictured above, failed to do a convincing job of writing from the perspective of a man.
I’ve heard female writers talk about gender bias in the industry before, but it’s always been an abstract concept to me. Not something I’ve ever experienced. Oh, sure, people often think I’m female based on my name—it’s a common enough mistake, which I’ve had to deal with all my life. I like to tell the story about how I was almost assigned to the women’s dorm at university. However, I’ve never before had an editor criticize my writing based on a false assumption concerning my gender. Or make blatantly biased statements about the male perspective. Read on.
The editor says: “The story seems far too personal, introspective and emotional for a man . . . It is hard to imagine a fellow from a place like [the setting] uttering the following line.” The editor then provides three sentences from my story as examples. He or she continues, “And I can’t think of many guys from [setting] who call home every Sunday afternoon to talk to their family” [Emphasis his or hers]. Another brilliant insight: “Most men don’t think deeply about the dewy greenness of nature.” The ultimate conclusion: “She [sic] needs to write more convincing [sic] from a man’s perspective.”
I pause here to note that this was the most autobiographical story I’ve ever written, and all the things that the editor complained about were my real observations and my real thoughts cast into the mind of a fictional character participating in fictional events. I did, in fact, call home every Sunday afternoon to talk to my parents, while they were still alive.
To compound his or her arrogance, the editor claims that my prose is “overly elegant,” which is presumably his or her way of saying that a man would never write or think in elegant terms. Guess that means I write like a girl.
He or she goes on about other matters, but by this point I’ve lost all faith in anything this editor has to say. Some of the other criticisms—the ones not based on assumption about my gender—might have been perceptive, insightful and accurate—but it was impossible for me to credit any of it given his or her obvious wrongheadedness concerning a man’s perspective. My perspective.
The editor who invited me to contribute to the anthology tells me that this is a “very well respected editor,” without disclosing his or her identity. He apologized for the “gender confusion” as if it was simply a matter of the editor mistakenly referring to me as “she.” He didn’t seem to get the point that a major part of the critique was based on a faulty and biased impression about the way men think.
I’ve gone back and forth between laughing about this and being outraged. As you might suspect from the tone of this essay, indignation is winning. The original editor asked me to make the changes this unidentified editor requested. All of a sudden, my story had serious flaws that needed to be addressed—even though the acquiring editor had accepted it after revisions in 2007. I could have two weeks to completely rewrite the story.
Usually I’m pretty agreeable when editors request changes, but this time I balked. I reread the story for the first time in over a year and a half and I liked most of what I saw. I told the acquiring editor that I would fix a few clunky sentences if he wanted, but I wasn’t going to re-imagine the story at this other editor’s behest. That wasn’t the story I’d wanted to write . . . and it wasn’t the story he had accepted and contracted. It was the proverbial line in the sand, and neither of us would cross. End result: a 4000-word hole in their manuscript six weeks before publication for them and a pittance of a kill fee for me.
However, this essay isn’t about a contract issue that led me to withdraw a story from publication. For me it was a real eye-opener that a supposedly “well-respected editor” could make such an utter fool of him or herself and still be taken seriously. What I wouldn’t give to know who it is so I could present myself to him or her face-to-face and wait for realization to sink in.
I checked. Undid the zipper and looked, just to be sure. I think I am reasonably qualified to write from a man’s perspective.
First Wow! Proof that fact is stranger than fiction. You now need to send this editor a story with a female protagonist!
That’s…hilarious? Outrageous? Appalling?
I guess it goes show how very subjective this entire writing business is. It also proves there’s a pecking order; apparently your editor was a rung below this other gal/guy.
Wow.
Apparently, as men and authors, it is a bad idea to nurture our softer side…lesson learned. Now, please escuse me. I shall return quietly to my bloodletting and mayhem as is more accustomed to my gender.
Oh wow.
o_O
Wow! Thanks for writing about that.
Bev, when I first read about this I was baffled. It’s not like you’re a new writer still making horribly obvious mistakes. Good writing should be left alone despite the gender of the author! I wonder… if they knew you were a guy, what the comments would have been like instead. I also feel bad for the first editor who got trumped. Thanks for sharing yet another side of this crazy industry.
I want to say, “Unbelievable!” Unfortunately, it’s not. This sort of thing happens to women authors all the time. And not just from editors.
I once participated in a Women Who Write Horror panel at the World Horror Convention. The room was packed, and the audience was about equal between the number of men and women. When we quizzed audience, more than half of the men in attendance said they wouldn’t buy a horror novel written by a woman, because everyone knows that women can’t write scary or gory stuff.
(I can only theorize why they even attended the panel – my best theory being that women horror authors tend to dress up in vampy and sometimes trampy clothes at these conventions. Been there, done that, not criticizing.)
Your experience sucks, and it shouldn’t happen to anyone. Thank you for sharing it so openly. Shining the light on this sort of behavior is the only way to make it go away.
Many thanks for all your supportive comments. It was an eye-opening experience for me, to say the least.
I’m just going to bet that editor was a woman!
Bev -
I was on a panel at WHC 2008 about gender bias in horror. Each panelist had to bring in a sample from a favorite author and read it to the audience. The audience voted on whether or not they thought a man or woman had written the excerpt. The piece I selected to read was deemed to have been written by a woman. So if it makes you feel any better, you’re in good company…Jack Ketchum writes like a girl, too
Martel
This is appalling but the only surprising thing about it for me is the unprofessional way this was handled.
There is widespread ignorance and stupidity about the possible ways of being a man or a woman. I wish it wasn’t so.
Thank you for this article which makes it clear how absurd the sterotypes are. I’m going to post a link from my blog.
Hi. I got here via fairyhedgehog’s link. I have also been mistaken for a woman because of the name I chose (Bevie is my pen name). I happen to like the name and think it fits me very well. Not had your experience as I have never had a manuscript accepted, but I can easily believe people are like this, even in the professional world. There have been a few who will not talk with me now that they know I am not a woman.
The older I get, the more I realize these stereotypes abound. What’s surprising to me is how unabashed this editor was. Normally these stereotypes are expressed subtly, which makes it that much harder to overcome them.
Wowza. I’m here from fairyhedgehog, too, but I may have to become a regular.
I did recently have similar thoughts about Undiscovered Gyrl by Allison Burnett, who’s a man. Different situation entirely, but the question of gendered writing has been on my mind lately.
Back to the topic at hand: I’m in awe that you were able to actually compose yourself enough to write this article….I’d still be gnashing my teeth and plotting revenge. You are a better man – er, person – than I….
Bizarre. I wonder how that editor would deal with writings by gay men or lesbians or transgenders. It might make their head explode. (Not necessarily a bad thing).
“There is widespread ignorance and stupidity about the possible ways of being a man or a woman. I wish it wasn’t so.”
That’s very well put; I entirely agree.
There are some abominably stupid editors out there (I just hope too many people don’t regard me as one of them), and some of them are indeed held in incomprehensibly high repute despite their incompetence.
What beggars belief in this instance is that the editor should be so extraordinarily arrogant as to assume that, even if s/he believed most men might not have your character’s patterns of behavior, this must imply that no men would behave in these ways. Is the editor so humdingingly stupid as to be unaware that we’re all individuals and that we all have different sets of behaviors?
Not just a lousy editor, in other words, but a lousy observer of the human creature, too.
There is a simple solution. You just need a manly pen name like Rex or Biff. How do you feel about Butch Vincent? Yeah…sounds very tough.
On a serious note, as Martel elluded to, Ketchum does write with great emotional impact. That’s one of the things that makes his work brilliant. If that’s what your story achieved, it sounds like you’re on the right track, despite one editor’s opinion.
It’s amazing how many people think in such rigid terms about male and female behavior, emotional life, and thought processes. I once had a female agent tell me that my male detective was unrealistic because he felt compassion for a murder victim. She actually said, “A manly man doesn’t experience such emotions.” And she knows this… how? I guess all the kind, compassionate men I know are just faking it.
It’s tremendously discouraging to encounter this type of bias in the professionals who determine which books get published.
I was once told my an editor that my male character was flawed (no man would think such and such a way) I always thought it funny that the character was based on a real person I knew. What are these editors thinking? Kudos to you for standing your ground!
Linked here by a friend–
I think one of the things that’s overlooked in writing is how the gender bias goes both ways; I think a lot of people don’t want to acknowledge that, as if for some folks if you admit that gender bias does happen against men, then that somehow lessens the impact against women, as if that were the only bias worth paying attention to. I know that’s an attitude I frequently encountered in my college classes–”but MEN don’t have to worry about that!” Well, yes they do. And the idea that men cannot/should not/do not behave in any other way than the stereotypical “guy” can be just as damaging; it’s telling men “You can’t be anything except THIS image that we’ve created for you.”
Good for you for sticking to your guns!
Many years ago, I (a woman) submitted to a writing class a short story I had written from the POV of a young boy. The teacher submitted it to the class anonymously. An older man in the class loved the story, but when he found out that a young woman had written it, he was furious. He refused to believe that I had written it, and became so abusive that the teacher had to step in. I think he thought I was lying about having written it. So…join the club, Bev.
Wow! I too am unpublished and am disturbed that this kind of thing can happen in this business. My first name is Candi and I am afraid of the impressions that name will give my readers and so choose to use my initials instead. Now I am worried about what the professionals I hope to work with will think of my name and reflect on to me.
I, on the other hand, have been addressed as a guy on a couple of forums I’ve frequented. :/
Candi has a valid point, and one people should seriously consider when naming a baby.
As writers, many of us work hard to remove bias. It appears if you’re a “highly respected editor” that isn’t necessary. That places this charlatan mid-pecking order with critics feeling they have to snark to be heard.
This sort of hooey can devastate a good writer. Bravo at standing your ground.
Just further evidence of how twisted this occupation can be. My own father VISITS his parents every week. If he didn’t, my grandmother would hunt him down and hang him by his…well, you know.
“I checked. Undid the zipper and looked, just to be sure.”
Busted! No real guy would do this!
But seriously, what an awful sequence of events. It’s almost as if someone at the publisher just royally screwed up, found this anthology-in-the-making in some pile and thought it hadn’t been edited yet. Gah.
I’ve been working on a short work with a female teen protagonist, very close POV. Hoping I don’t have to submit pseudonymously (Pat or Sandy or Terry) to get a fair reading
I’d be curious as to the age of this editor. It’s clear to me she doesn’t know people and worse can’t define a character.
I’ve been married to a guy for 40 years who called his mother every week until she was moved to a nursing home. He also spent the next 18 months visiting her three times a week while in that nursing home when she didn’t respond to him at all.
We have a son who also calls at least once a week just to say ‘Hi.’ I’m pretty sure his wife thinks he’s manly. I do. He happens to be a gentle giant. The other two kids (a male and female) don’t call as often but they do call and e-mail.
It all also goes toward manners and caring, which that editor lacks. Glad I don’t belong to that editor’s family.
I congratulate you for holding your ground.
I am not really as surprised at this from a literary standpoint as from a businss standpoint. You had a ssigned contract. For the story you’d submitted. End of story, for sure. But– evn though it ewasn’, iy should have been. Here’s an alternate denoument: you DON’T accept the killfee, You insist on the fee agreed upon and maybe even that your story be inluded in the book. Your agent threatens to sue (or not, I don’t know if that matters. But at this point an officer from management has to come in and decide what the publisher is going to do about this situation. Thus, the second editor will come under scrutiny, as will the business practices of the publisher. Joan Collins won her lawsuit against her publisher, Harper Collins I think,practically on this very point. They had paid her full advance on delivery of her final manuscript, then decided her mss was not satisfactory and asked for her advance back.
I am not really as surprised at this from a literary standpoint as from a businss standpoint. You had a ssigned contract. For the story you’d submitted. End of story, for sure. But– evn though it ewasn’, iy should have been. Here’s an alternate denoument: you DON’T accept the killfee, You insist on the fee agreed upon and maybe even that your story be inluded in the book. Your agent threatens to sue (or not, I don’t know if that matters. But at this point an officer from management has to come in and decide what the publisher is going to do about this situation. Thus, the second editor will come under scrutiny, as will the business practices of the publisher. Joan Collins won her lawsuit against her publisher, Harper Collins I think,practically on this very point. They had paid her full advance on delivery of her final manuscript, then decided her mss was not satisfactory and asked for her advance back. Hey, we’re not just in this for the joy of creating, you know; it’s our livelihood; meager as it is.
Somehow, I didn’t even know this kind of bias could occur. I myself am writing a book that is from the male POV, though I am female. I’ve known many men who are very well read, polite, intelligent, and with a great sense of self. In fact, the main character is based on one of my good male friends, who is not unlike you.
Not all men think about booze, beer, and the next conquest, and it shows an extreme lack of tolerance and understanding of the male gender. I wonder if that other editor lived by the words of that book, “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”. Furthermore, I feel that the original editor is simply a follower, that he only wants to please this “highly respected editor.” I think he should respect himself and his writers first.
I’m sorry you had to deal with such ignorance. I only hope the highly respected editor finds this and learns to respect his peers, writers, and everyone else.
I’ll be linking this post to my blog. Thank you so much for sharing.
Back when the animation industry used to use typing pools to generate the myriad copies they needed of an animation script, there was one script writer the female typists tended to praise for writing female characters convincingly: David Wise (TMNT, Transformers, Batman, etc.). One day, a script came in sans the writer’s name (names were never included) with a female character so compelling that the typists started betting over whether it was written by a woman — or by David Wise. They felt it could only be one of those two options. In the end, they decided it was a woman, and ended up losing all their money.
Sometimes that primal possessiveness we feel toward the idea that only we can truly “know” our own gender blinds us to just how deeply the other side is capable of understanding us.
Don’t let it bother you too much, Bev; you are in very good company.
It’s a shame that our names tell so much about our gender (or don’t in your case) as it just allows for that much more discrimination. Perhaps in the future, everyone will have ambiguous names that reveal nothing about our gender or race, and it will force editors to judge our work without judging the author. Perhaps there’s an idea for a science fiction story in there somewhere. Here’s a lesson for editors and anyone, never assume you know what gender or race a person is based upon their name.
Bev,
While I’ve never gotten quite the extreme reaction, I can sympathize. I recall one person on the internet who, in discussing one of my pieces, seemed to spend almost as much time talking about whether I was male or female as they did about the story.
It’s an interesting, and rather disheartening, glimpse into the gendered stereotypes that are so firmly embedded in our culture, and the sort of thing that sometimes makes me wish all publications followed the Nemonymous style of late-labelling.
That is one of the most bizarre writing stories I’ve heard. It shows what preconceived notions about people can do, doesn’t it. And expecting people to all be alike seems to be not only foolish but carried to extremes, dangerous.Men are…thus and so. Women are…thus and so. Blacks are…thus and so. Jews… Muslims… you name it. Such lumping of people into homogenated slots has caused untold misery. In this case it has caused ridiculous frustration to an author. Why can’t we be seen simply as people writing about people?
Well, for the first time ever, I guess I’m thankful for having a gender-neutral name. I never liked it before.
Thanks again, folks, for all your support and comments. Someone on rec.arts.mystery supplied the following quote from Dorothy L. Sayers:
A man once asked me—it is true that it was at the end of a very good dinner, and the compliment conveyed may have been due to that circumstance—how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a larged, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. ‘Well,’ said the man, ‘I shouldn’t have expected a woman [meaning me] to have been able to make it so convincing.’ I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also.
yeah. the editor was definately a chick.
I’d like to read your book too. How interesting, an open minded, realistic, somewhat biographical novel from the male perspective. Let’s just say that chick editor was a..well, a dick.
Hahaha what cleverness!
You’re a stronger person than me. I would have been trying so hard not to quote “Do you need some time to comprehend why saying that to me makes you stupid?”
This is why I fundamentally distrust “middle-men,” or middle-people. They often deserve to be called meddle-people, because their personal prejudices, pride and greed outweigh their artistic integrity.
I am sorry that this happened to you
a little late to the party, but i wanted to sympathize with you, and share some random thoughts i had when i read this. one is that i know manly men who call their mothers every week: my father is one such, and he talks to his mom about sports of all things. grandma is probably where i got my own tomboy tendencies, and i’m very fond of her.
i suspect my brother also calls home every week or so, but my brother and his family live in the area and see my parents a lot. i’m considerably less conscientious about calling, but i do try. i know my sister’s husband called and visited home a lot, and when his mother went into an elder care facility, visited her almost every day. they were very close.
regarding the idea that ‘men don’t write elegantly’, my first thought was ‘what about Tolkien? that’s the definition of elegant writing if i ever saw it!’
finally, not to belittle your experiences, but i also know this type of gender bias tends to show up in two other areas, at least: 1) romance writing. there’s an almost universal perception that men can’t write romances. i’m not a fan of romances, but i wouldn’t be surprised at the amount of pen-names revealed to be male, i’m sure. 2) hardcore mil s/f or men’s adventure type stuff. the same kind of bias you’ve experience occurs here: it’s the majority of people think women just can’t write these things believably.
this sort of thing reduces the fresh new ideas i’m likely to be able to access, and that’s what gets my goat. again, sympathies and support.
-bs
I wonder how your second editor would cope with this situation?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8161184.stm
I only ask. I think we should be told. Etc.
ok, I really really really need you to call this editor on the phone and introduce yourself. And I need you to record it. Please. I want to hear that nickel drop.
Would that I could, but I don’t know who he or she is!
[boggle]
just… [boggle]
I’m sorry you had to have this experience, and somewhat disgruntled that it takes a male writer to point out how absurd the situation is before anyone is heard – it should be self-evident that men and women are both human beings and that their behaviours overlap more than the stereotypes from the edges (the ‘can’t break a fingernail’ girl and caveman) would suggest.
Literature should include a wide range of experiences, should include characters not just recruited from a very narrow band of humanity. Whether that be gender, ethnicity, age, body shape, ability, or anything else.
And I cannot help but link this to the recent flareup of the old ‘boys will only read books about male protagonists’ (and only read books by male authors, as if they can never work out that behind the letters JK there hides an – eeeek – girl). I fail to believe that fifty percent of the human race are naturally close-minded, biased, and scared of new experiences; they’ve got to get it from someone.
Wow. This blew my mind. I’d say more but I’m too horrified and gobsmacked.
Three comments:
I have written for several anthologies, and some of the contracts explicitly state that the publisher has final approval of the finished manuscript and can, therefore, reject or request additional revisions on accepted manuscripts. That’s not unusual.
I occasionally sell stories to an editor who only buys male-protagonist stories from male writers and female-protagonist stories from female writers. The editor has stated that men can’t write as women and women can’t write as men. A male writer I know created a female pseudonym and regularly sells female-protagonist stories to this editor and to others holding a similar attitude. (And it isn’t just a byline pseudonym; he conducts business using the female name, never putting his real name on anything the editor is likely to see.)
For fun, run some of your writing through The Gender Genie (http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php), a computer program that determines the gender of the author. According to The Gender Genie, I actually DO write like a girl.
I can only speak for myself, but I would take it as a compliment. As a male myself, I can’t speak with first-hand knowledge on what it’s like to be and live and think like a woman, only that–from second-hand observation–it seems to be a VERY complex place to live, redolent of shades of grey and subtle implications; a place where most men are hopelessly lost. To be able to inhabit that place comfortably is quite an achievement. (But then, what do /I/ know; I’m not a high-and-mighty editor. ;D)