So self-contentedly, exclusively male

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

In 1987, Ursula K. LeGuin sent a letter to an editor at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich who had asked her to blurb a new anthology of science fiction stories.

Letters of Note

John Radziewicz
Senior Editor
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
111 5th Ave
New York NY 10003

Dear Mr Radziewicz,

I can imagine myself blurbing a book in which Brian Aldiss, predictably, sneers at my work, because then I could preen myself on my magnanimity. But I cannot imagine myself blurbing a book, the first of the series, which not only contains no writing by women, but the tone of which is so self-contentedly, exclusively male, like a club, or a locker room. That would not be magnanimity, but foolishness. Gentlemen, I just don’t belong here.

Yours truly,
(Signed)
Ursula K. Le Guin

That was nearly 30 years ago. Very damn little has changed.

Comments

One response to “So self-contentedly, exclusively male”

  1. Theo Bromine Avatar
    Theo Bromine

    I recall reading (or hearing) an interview with LeGuin in which she recounted her dealings with Playboy magazine when they were publishing one of her stories. It was submitted as the genderless “U.K. LeGuin”, and accepted for publication. My friend Google provides more details from a recent New Yorker piece by LeGuin:

    In the late sixties, Robie Macauley, the fiction editor of Playboy—“Entertainment for Men”—was publishing stories of literary interest. My agent, Virginia Kidd, who couldn’t be kept in a ghetto of any kind, sent him one of mine. It was pure science fiction, and all the important characters in it were men. Virginia submitted it under the discreet byline of U. K. Le Guin. When it was accepted, she revealed the horrid truth. Playboy staggered back, then rallied gamely. The editors said that they’d still like to publish “Nine Lives,” Virginia told me, but that their readers would be frightened if they saw a female byline on a story, so they asked if they could use the initials, instead of my first name.

    Unwilling to terrify these vulnerable people, I told Virginia to tell them sure, that’s fine. Playboy thanked us with touching gratitude. Then, after a couple of weeks, they asked for an author biography.

    At once, I saw the whole panorama of U.K.’s life as a gaucho in Patagonia, a stevedore in Marseilles, a safari leader in Kenya, a light-heavyweight prizefighter in Chicago, and the abbot of a Coptic monastery in Algeria.

    We’d tricked them slightly, though, and I didn’t want to continue the trickery. But what could I say? “He is a housewife and the mother of three children”?

    I wrote, “It is commonly suspected that the writings of U. K. Le Guin are not actually written by U. K. Le Guin, but by another person of the same name.”

    (read the rest at http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/06/04/the-golden-age-5)

More posts