Monday 9 June 2014

The ghettoisation of female writers


Yesterday I visited Housmans, a wonderful radical bookshop just around the corner from Kings Cross Station in London.  I was looking specifically for Penny Red by Laurie Penny, a collection of her writing about politics and dissent, with a focus on her reportage from the protests of 2010/2011.  I wander in and head straight to the largest section in the store, Political Thought.  If they have the book, I'm pretty sure this is where it'll be, alongside other books on the same subject such as Paul Mason's Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere.  I find a pile of Mason's tome but no sign of the Penny book.  I search the P section carefully, then the surrounding shelves, but no luck.  I really want this book, and I want to buy it from an independent, and preferably radical, store, so I do something I almost never do: I ask at the counter.

The bookseller searches his computer and finds that yes, it's in stock.  I'll find it in the Feminism section. Now, this is a little weird, because although Laurie Penny is a vocal feminist and one section (out of five) in the book is a collection of columns about feminism, the remaining four-fifths of the book are general politics.  But fair enough, Penny has written other, explicitly feminist, books, so maybe they just shelve them together?  However, then it gets weirder.  The guy behind the counter and the woman working with him explain that women writers are usually placed in the Feminism section*.  I'll repeat that.  Women writers are placed in the Feminism section.  Never mind the content of the book: if you're a woman, it's off to the Feminism shelves with you.

Now, I'm a believer in the need for Feminism sections in bookshops when they contain books that are explicitly feminist, but in this case I found it intensely problematic.  By putting all books by women into Feminism - in this specific case, a book that would fit perfectly into the Political Thought category - the store seems to imply that men can have political thoughts but women, we can only have our women's issues.

The ghettoisation of women writers is an issue that has been much debated recently.  Shelving books based on the author's gender rather than the content of the book is, like the packaging of novels by female authors with 'girly' covers regardless of their content (implying that anything written by a woman is for women-only, while men's books are for everyone), is all part of an insidious cultural climate that marginalises women and the female experience, treating us like a minority rather than like half of the population.  Not only that, but categorising books this way isolates the women writers and limits their readership.  Because let's face it, even the progressive and politically engaged men I know don't generally look at the Feminism section in bookshops.

Most worrying to me is the fact that this is happening in a radical bookshop: a shop with a fantastic range of books, a wide selection of genuinely feminist texts, a place that you might perhaps expect a more clued-up approach to categorisation.  I wish I didn't have to criticise Housmans because I think it's a vital and rare resource and one which I value greatly, but how disappointing to find that a store which should be an ally is part of the problem.

* They also, to their credit, said they'd recently discussed whether this was the right thing to do.

6 comments:

  1. The conflation of "feminist" and "women" is something I'm seeing a lot of recently, particularly on the internet so it's a shame you experienced it in such a decided way, you know not flippantly or accidentally done. I think it's a genuine lack of recognition that "feminism" pertains to specific social beliefs about the position of "women" and instead a thought process, as you said in the post, that these are just women's issues. It's really damaging to the cause as a whole because it doesn't generate a perception of political importance (or indeed any political agency at all), it doesn't separate gender from feminism (and although predominantly a cause of women, it needs to be as accessible to men as possible in my opinion), and it works to continue the 'othering' as women (which you so rightly pointed out). Love this - I've pinned it!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As always, your comment is far more articulate than my original post! I heartily agree with what you say, the conflation of 'feminist' with 'women' is extremely damaging on all sorts of levels.

      Delete
  2. That's quite shocking to be honest. It would imply that the Harry Potter series would be shelved under the feminist section, that's ridiculous. As you say, it limits the acknowledgement for female writers. Putting ttheir books in the feminist section instead of politics, just keeps this idea that women don't participate in politics or don't even know what's going on alive. I never realised it went as deep as deciding which books go on what shelf.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Exactly, and to have that sort of attitude - that women don't participate in politics - implied in a radical bookshop was even more worrying.

      Delete
  3. I find this so bizarre. I mean, I know that sometimes the lines can seem blurred between 'women's issues' and feminism, but between women writers and feminist writers? That's a new one on me, or maybe I'm just naive. And the fact that its a radical bookshop makes it even stranger. Interesting post, its really got me thinking....

    ReplyDelete