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Looking for an article about sexism in publishing
Creagan
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I remember reading a really exciting article a few years ago, and I can't for the life of me find it, and it's driving me nuts.
The article was either written by a book author, or off of an interview done with her. And the gist of it was that she had written this book with a female protagonist, but her editors kept telling her the protagonist was unlikable and "a bitch." The author got fed up with the criticisms, and instead of making the changes she was told to do to the protagonist, sent back the same draft with the character's name changed to a guy's name, and the pronouns switched. Suddenly everything the editors hated about the female protagonist was seen in a positive light. She pointed out the change, and was allowed to switch the character's gender back.
Finding this article would really help me with some work I'm doing right now for my Masters. I was wondering if anybody remembers the article, who the author was, or maybe where I could find it? That would be amazing. Thank you!
The article was either written by a book author, or off of an interview done with her. And the gist of it was that she had written this book with a female protagonist, but her editors kept telling her the protagonist was unlikable and "a bitch." The author got fed up with the criticisms, and instead of making the changes she was told to do to the protagonist, sent back the same draft with the character's name changed to a guy's name, and the pronouns switched. Suddenly everything the editors hated about the female protagonist was seen in a positive light. She pointed out the change, and was allowed to switch the character's gender back.
Finding this article would really help me with some work I'm doing right now for my Masters. I was wondering if anybody remembers the article, who the author was, or maybe where I could find it? That would be amazing. Thank you!
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Posts
https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/05/do-readers-judge-female-characters-more-harshly-than-male-characters/275599/
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
And based on what I was reading at the time the article was put out, it had to be on or linked on something like The Mary Sue or Jezebel (I was trying to keep up with my friends' form of social justice news so I stayed in the loop when they talked about stuff) but all I can find is that piece about the female author lying about her gender to see if people liked her writing better if they thought she was a man.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/06/catherine-nichols-female-author-male-pseudonym
I found it by using the following search terms: "story rejected by editors until protagonist gender swapped"
I posted around on a few different websites because I really, really wanted this article. And somebody found it!
http://seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com/528621.html
I am absolutely sure that the first place I read it wasn't livejournal, because I don't remember the intro bit being in the article at all, and I would have remembered if it was what I consider a blog post. So what probably happened is I read an article about the livejournal post, and then at the time didn't know there was a difference between a proofer and an editor. Which is why my keywords were off and I couldn't find it in the first place.
But I am almost certain I can still use this in my research because the livejournal belongs to an author who's won multiple awards (including a Hugo!) and in my mind, that's actually better than some web article put out about an average author. Oh my god you have no idea how excited I am right now.