The kernel of this post arose from the recent (and not-so recent) firestorm over sexism in science fiction and fantasy author circles. I’m not going to go into the details of what happened inside SFWA or the organization’s publication, the Bulletin. If you are not up to speed on those events, you can get a decent summary from John Scalzi’s post addressing the situation as SFWA president.
Rather, what I want to discuss is why prose science fiction in particular seems to have an excessive number of incidents. I was an engineer in the semiconductor industry for fifteen years and worked with a lot of engineers who happened to be women. A lot of the engineers were also other than white.
In all that time, and the five years working as an engineer in other industries, I heard only one comment that could be considered mildly racist, and it wasn’t really all that bad. This was from a politically conservative white male, right after 9/11, and he said he didn’t trust “the guy who lets the Palestinian flag on his keyring dangle from his pocket.”
But go into SFF culture and racism, sexism, and other -isms are rampant. I’m not saying everyone is involved; it only takes one escaped lion to cause a panic at the zoo.
The problem with sff writers, as in other independent ways of making a living, is there are no solid repercussions. In industry, you get your ass dragged into the HR department or worse. In sff, you create an online firestorm that fades away and nothing changes. We’ve seen it time and again, both in the Bulletin, and at conventions with much more blatant harassment and even stalking.
Why is the culture among sff writers so much more accepting of this behavior than it is out in the “real world?” (Again, I realize a very significant percentage is vocal and trying to change the culture, but that takes time and it may require the old guard to die off.)
I think it comes down to ramifications. In industry, the threat of a lawsuit is always hanging over your head, both yours and the company’s. The threat of the axe, taking away the livelihood, the means of supporting one’s self is also just around the corner.
An author is an independent business. Most fans of an author do not follow the person in social media. They just buy the book and read it, so the paying customers are often oblivious to the author’s behavior unless it makes mainstream news.
A decade ago, behavioral clauses in a publishing contract might have been a deterrent, but the ease and acceptance of the indie model makes that into a dull sword.
Bottom line, I think we see a lot of self-imposed restraint in industry because there is a price to pay. For a self-employed author, it just turns into publicity, and in some ways that could even benefit the author.
I don’t see a solution other than peer pressure, and we’ve seen how well that has historically worked in SFF.