Chick Lit Hissy Fit

Apparently we chicks can’t do anything right. First, it turns out that we make lousy scientists. Now, according to the editors of a respected British literary anthology, we apparently can’t write all that well, either. In the introduction, they described the submissions from women as “ dull, 'disappointingly domestic' and 'depressed as hell.’” It reminds me a lot of something Patricia Williams complains about in her book, “The Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor,” when she calls bullshit on the common refrain that no blacks were hired because no blacks were qualified.

In a rebuttal printed in the Guardian, female writer (no, it’s not an oxymoron) AL Kennedy gets things off to a good start by rightly declaring “women’s writing” to be a category so broad as to render it completely meaningless. You can read her argument and two others here.

The fact that we’re still having this argument points to the lasting power of prejudice against all things female. Reduced, it looks something like this: Men's world=smart, fascinating, woot! Women's world=boring, trivial, and dumb. When women write about “big subjects” (read: anything outside the home), they are praised like it's some big surprise they can wrap their pretty little heads around such things. When they write about domestic topics they are dismissed as trivial, never mind that half of human experience occurs in the home--not trivial at all.

Of course, when a male writer like Jonathan Franzen writes about family life in “The Corrections,” he’s hailed a genius, fearless. And when Oprah invites him on the show, he refuses because (in my opinion) he wouldn’t want anyone to confuse him for an inferior woman writer. Or maybe worse, a successful mainstream one. Horrors!

In the meantime, I have a woman writer to recommend: Carol Tavris, whose excellent book “The Mismeasure of Woman” reveals the underlying misconceptions that give rise to arguments like this one.

Otherwise, perhaps some cheeky lit critic would like to tackle the disappointingly workaholic, unrealistically violent as hell world of “men’s writing,” you know, like Tom Clancy.