Helen Sedgwick

There was a documentary recently shown on television about the life of Beethoven. It was an interesting program that, among other things, showed Beethoven to have been cruel and abusive to several female members of his family. In a discussion about the program afterwards, a friend told me that she wished she hadn’t watched it at all. For her, this new understanding of Beethoven’s character had spoiled his music. I was surprised. I don’t doubt that Beethoven was an arrogant and violent misogynist, but his repertoire still contains some of the most beautiful and uplifting pieces that I know. For me, the music is separate from the man.

And so, when writing about issues of gender in the publishing industry, I think a distinction first has to be made. Do I wish to consider the representation of women in literature, or am I discussing the treatment and attitudes of individuals working within the industry? To my mind they are different, though connected, subjects; I will narrow them down to a particular example taken from my own experience.

Along with Kirsty Logan I co-edit a magazine. It is a new magazine; there is little on our website by way of guidelines. This is in part to avoid becoming over-prescriptive, and in part because writing in all genres on all subjects might potentially be published in the magazine, if the writing itself is good enough. The only information about ourselves we have given on the website is our first names. They are both women’s names.

The majority of writers who submit work to us have the good sense to address us using our names, and to send a polite, if sometimes informal, covering email with their submission. However, we recently received an email from a writer who chose to address us as “You girls.” He said, “Perhaps you girls will like this story.” On reading this address, I passed fairly rapidly through intense irritation to a bewildered amusement. It was patronizing and it was disrespectful, there’s no doubt about it, but it was also a strikingly stupid way to email an editor who you want to publish your work. There is a chance that the author of this email was deliberately trying to belittle us as women—and I don’t deny that there are such people in the world—but on consideration my overriding suspicion is that he simply didn’t think about what he was writing. I must admit I didn’t have high hopes for his story. Writers, of all people, should be aware of the meaning of the words they use.

Here, my music analogy falls apart. Where music can often be interpreted to mean almost entirely what the listener would like it to mean, writing is more explicit. Words inescapably have meaning. One author might, in some cases, have a political agenda; for others, they might be unaware of the full implication of what they write, or might accidentally allow their own attitudes to seep into the writing and color the text. Where these attitudes—whether intended or not—are unacceptable or offensive to the reader, a dislike of the writing can instinctively result.

Nevertheless, in the same way as I listen to Beethoven’s music for the love of his music, I have always said that as an editor (and a reader) I would judge writing in terms of the writing itself, not the author. I often just skim cover emails and rarely read the author biographies I am sent. My decision on whether or not to publish a piece of work does not depend on how much or how little the author has previously published, or on their education, class, race, gender, or sexuality. Nor does it depend on the author’s personal politics. It depends on what the words on the page actually say.

So I put the phrase “you girls” out of my mind and began reading the story as though I had no knowledge of the author. It did not surprise. It was not very good. In fact, allowing myself to consider story and email side by side for a moment, it followed what seems to be something of a trend: Where a thoughtless, ill-considered, or potentially offensive email was used as a cover letter to a submission, the submission itself was often badly constructed, inconsistent and sometimes completely incoherent. In my experience, people who do not consider in any depth the words they use—and the potential implications (be they personal, political, or sociological) of those words—often also write weak, muddled fiction.

But the question remains, if I read a piece of anonymous fiction that I engaged with and admired enough to want to publish, then subsequently read an email from the author that contained attitudes I find unacceptable, should I then reject the story?

If I refused to read the work of misogynists, sexists, racists, or people of any other bias or prejudice with which I disagree, I would have lost out on a lot of inspiring and highly influential literature, from Plato through Shakespeare to Hemingway. In some cases, the writers’ own attitudes do not seem to me to be present in their writing at all. In others, I find the writing engaging despite the opinions it contains. I completely disagree with Plato’s politics and suspect I would have despised the man himself, yet his writing made me want to go back in time just so I could enter into dialogue with him—I disagree with what he says, yet I find it fascinating. Hemingway’s misogyny offends me, but I find some of his short stories so insightful and subtle that I return to them again and again.

But these are examples from throughout history; these authors do not live in our world. When it comes to publishing new fiction, we should be judging it by our own standards. Modern day writers should know better than to behave, talk, or write in a sexist way. Attitudes still need to change, and that is a belief that I represent both in my own writing and in the way I choose to live and treat others. As an editor, I would not publish a piece of writing that contained attitudes I find unacceptable anymore than I would publish a story that I thought was badly written. Literature can inspire and entertain; literature can also change the way people think. I want the fiction I publish to do all of the above. So, would I publish a sexist piece of writing? No I would not. But would I publish the work of a writer who I found to be sexist, if I felt the writing itself wasn’t sexist but was insightful, interesting, and worthy of publication? I think I would, yes. And when, after being published, he received his copy of the magazine, perhaps some of the other stories included would open his eyes a little. After all, as an editor of a new, independent literary magazine, if nothing else you have to be a bit of an optimist.