Saw this in The Guardian today: https://www.theguardian.com/books/shortcuts/2017/jul/18/riley-sager-and-other-male-authors-benefiting-from-a-gender-neutral-pen-name
The short version, lots of men recently publishing under female-sounding or gender ambiguous names. SJ Watson, Riley Sager, JP Delaney, SK Tremayne. Which is a switch from what we usually see, a woman pubilshing under a man's name or ambiguous name.
Ever thought about publishing/submitting under an ambiguous pen name?
Hmmm... well now I am...
Isn't that just marketing these days? It's popular to support women in some circles, so depending on the book you write it might be a good idea.
I really hate marketing. It seems so evil to me all the time.
Marketing... It's like beurocracy. You need it, but upon its existence, 2/3 of it is immeditely and irreparably corrupted to the utmost degree. And so it grows.
Isn't that just marketing these days? It's popular to support women in some circles, so depending on the book you write it might be a good idea.
And on this note... I'm so sick of this shit. SO sick of this shit. Oh, support women, support minorities, oh this author is gay or trans or whatever the fucking flavor of the fucking week is. Ooo!
It's to the point that articles are written (cough, cough, here, ahem), questioning whether it was racist to not realize the author of a book was of color or something. ... I mean... Just... ...
. . .
Anyway.
Hey! Hey! Here's a wild fucking idea. Support authors who do good work. And stop there. Who gives a goddamn fucking fuck what boxes they check on some questionairre?
JUST SUPPORT GOOD WORK!!!
I think we all agree it would be great if race/gender/whatnot didn't matter, but that isn't the world we live in. And if you ignore things that are because you don't like them, isn't that insane?
i'm not ignoring it. i'm just expressing extreme impatience with, and hatred for, the persistence of identity politics.
I did until I realized I was a woman.
