Fandom Fifty-Fifty & @paulcornell

[miss_s_b]

I have been interested to notice the launch of fifty-fifty festivals in the last few days. The concept is simple: since the readership of SFF is fifty-fifty male-female, and the writer base is fifty-fifty male-female, panels at cons should be fifty-fifty male-female too.

I'm VERY interested in Paul Cornell's response to this, and the responses to his ideas. While I agree that it's dispiriting that nobody pays attention to equalities measures till a man joins in, and Paul's method might be a bit of a blunt instrument, and yes, he has a bit of a reputation as a White Knight... I, for one, am not going to condemn him for this. As several people have said: for years and years mediocre men have been advanced in front of more knowledgable women, and Paul doing his bit to correct this balance should be applauded.

This makes me want to persuade magister to start organising cons again...

Further reading: http://www.badreputation.org.uk/2012/02/23/guest-post-the-5050-sff-movement/ and http://fjm.livejournal.com/1152261.html and http://tansyrr.com/tansywp/or-maybe-sometimes-equality-might-mean-half-the-paul-cornell-parity-project-edition/

ETA: FWIW, yes, I do think Cornell is probably doing this, at least partly, for selfish publicity stunt reasons, and yes, his wording and thinking are not perfectly feminist. But so what? Honestly, if it achieves something, so what? We need to stop condemning the good for not being perfect. Sure, constructive criticism can always help the good be BETTER, but doing something a bit good which is not perfect is better than doing nothing at all, or sitting throwing flames on the internet.

Comments

[purplecthulhu]

A few days after he announced this policy was Picocon. I was running the silly games there and, knowing he's good at Just a Minute, wanted him on the panel. He agreed, but noted his new policy, which was fine with me. I went well beyond 50-50 and arranged a panel with only two males on it - him and me - with 6 females.

And then, through a combination of factors, he didn't turn up to the panel, but stayed in the bar.

I was a little grumpy, I must admit, but the game went very well despite his absence.

[miss_s_b]

Glad the game went well :)

I feel a similar way about Cornell as I feel about Christopher Lee. I'm a fan - a big fan - of his output, but the man himself... less so.