Ormondsacker asked me: “Have you ever read Joanna Russ’ “How to Suppress Women’s Writing” and if so what did you think of it? I recently read it and couldn’t stop thinking how many of the mechanisms she describes in the book seems prevalent when it comes to how media treats fanfiction. Idk, maybe it’s just me.”
Oh man, it’s been (OY) almost thirty years since I read it, but man, I think you might be on to something. I remember the list of suppression methods most clearly—here’s the summary from Wikipedia, which I think is pretty accurate:
The book outlines eleven common methods that are used to ignore, condemn or belittle the work of female authors:
Prohibitions: Prevent women from access to the basic tools for writing.
Bad Faith: Unconsciously create social systems that ignore or devalue women’s writing.
Denial of Agency: Deny that a woman wrote it.
Pollution of Agency: Show that their art is immodest, not actually art, or shouldn’t have been written about.
The Double Standard of Content: Claim that one set of experiences is considered more valuable than another.
False Categorizing: Incorrectly categorize women artists as the wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, or lovers of male artists.
Isolation: Create a myth of isolated achievement that claims that only one work or short series of poems is considered great.
Anomalousness: Assert that the woman in question is eccentric or atypical.
Lack of Models: Reinforce a male author dominance in literary canons in order to cut off women writers’ inspiration and role models.
Responses: Force women to deny their female identity in order to be taken seriously.
Aesthetics: Popularize aesthetic works that contain demeaning roles and characterizations of women.
Yeah, if you replace the word “woman” with the word “fan” here, things get pretty interesting…
this book is great and it rang SO TRUE for me when I read it just after leaving university; i was SO angry with myself that I hadn’t found it before because – well i’m pretty sure that anyone who’s ever studied literature – or, idk, read some books in the world – has run into that boy (disclaimer: probably a boy) who is just 9000% out to diss the tiny handful of women who have made it onto the syllabus/into the CANON – or is like ‘i like writer A, but not writer B’, when the only thing A and B have in common is they are both female. anyway i don’t really have time for anyone who is trying to REDUCE the canon of female writers. this includes other women! i’ve heard a ton of variations on ‘i like the brontes SO much better than austen’ – and vice versa. chuck some dudes out of the balloon instead man
Lady Karasu 