It’s weird to be a woman sometimes. It’s weird to be me almost all the time, but it rarely has so much to do with my sex as it does when I start thinking about sexual segregation in the poetry world.
Poetry journals, contests, anthologies, all set aside form women only. It doesn’t bother me, until I start wondering why it doesn’t bother me. And then I realize that I can’t explain it. Why would I roll my eyes at a man only journal and not at a women only one? I sent a submission to a segregated journal a few months back without a qualm. But why? Why do they exist, and why am I okay with it?
Great question, one that has made me stop and think in general terms more than once. Personally, I would vote for a “be OK with it” answer in the US and probably *most* of the rest of the world right now. Women are a segment of the population who have been shown to have been oppressed by society. One would probably stop being OK with segregated (the word is apt) journals – or segregated anything – the moment one thought women have in fact overcome that societal imbalance. As things are now, imho, women-only journals are still fair enough in the US or UK, for example. Would be interesting to see what importance/prominence, if any, they have in societies such as Scandinavian ones where women represent half or more of positions of power as a matter of course and where social benefits and processes are crafted specifically to address the gender imbalance. In other words, a society where women as a group have “arrived.” I guess that African-American-only, gay-only and other “minority group-only” journals are generally deemed OK for the same reasons. The PC factor. Good luck with that submission!
Is this after the ‘funny female formalistas’ debacle on the Sphere?
I look at it as a supply and demand thing–the people that submit to and buy these magazines obviously feel they serve a purpose and the market tends to be self-contained, and this will self-perpetuate for as long as people deem them important.
I have no problem with segregations of any sort as long as they don’t provide an outlet for bigotry and hatred, which is entirely possible as seen by the New Formalist/neo-nazi thing.
I suppose it depends on how you view these things, but something like an all-female magazine could be setting the ’cause’ back, but seeing as it is only women that can decide whether these ventures can continue, it cannot be seen as an act of oppression. I don’t think it is even political correctness, because surely that implies that is an act of benevolence from the dominant section of society, whereas segregated magazines are almost inevitably created by the ‘oppressed’ for their own.
Eloise
Eloise, you mean that thread from a couple of months ago? That started me thinking, but then I ran across a couple of people on private boards who were really upset about Mezzo Cammin.
Maryann here:
That thread from a few months ago is STILL hot. I’m not even trying to keep up with it, because, like you, I’m not exercised about it. Male poets feel they’re being cheated out of a venue for submissions: we get something they don’t. But are they as interested as I am in poems like, say, Sharon Olds’s “The Language of the Brag,” which is about childbirth? If not, then there’s a reason for those publications.
as a male writer (including poetry) I can completely understand why there are women only platforms
it’s all about balance – it’s a natural tendency of any organism or organic process to seek balance and most if not all aspects of the human world are clearly unbalanced in favour of men
true skint – you only have to look at what people quote as being ‘good’ poets to see that usually (and I hate to generalise) there are quite a few men on it and not a lot of women…
And men don’t really read childbirth/domestic experience type poems either… *sigh*
The pendulum swings.
In New Zealand there seem to be at least as many women poets as men, probably more. Some of the most esteemed ones are men, but that’s probably because they are the oldest, and in around ten or twenty years that will change as they die off. There are no “women only” journals here. Probably the market isn’t big enough.
I suspect the types of poems in women only journals are different. Unless the journals are more about feminism than poetry, I suspect they aren’t necessary, but I would probably submit to one if I felt it fit my work.