OPINION PIECE

F.J. Bergmann

The New Ascendancy

by F. J. Bergmann

Poets, writers, and other artists have been struggling for years or decades, in some cases going back centuries and millennia, on behalf of various aspects of social equity. In many areas, it feels as if no progress has occurred; in a few, headway has been made. But what do we do when our activist goals have been not only met, but exceeded? At what point do we need to take a new stance to further ethical balance as opposed to the agendas of particular interests?

Not many years into the new millennium, a major shift occurred in the gender preponderance of SFPA award winners. While initially this appeared to be a welcome move toward gender equality, it has gone quite a bit beyond that, as the data below will show. I have no suggestions to offer for remediation, but I find the situation disquieting—as well as having broader implications.

As far as I have been able to determine, since its founding (by a woman, Suzette Haden Elgin) the SFPA membership has always been pretty much even with respect to perceived gender composition. Despite this presumed parity, during the first 30 years of SFPA’s existence about 80% of the Rhysling Award winners (I am counting 1st–3rd where applicable) were men (going by ostensible name-gender if not acquainted with the individual’s identification). In the early years of this millennium, that imbalance began to shift. Since 2008, women have won the preponderance of Rhysling Awards; 76% in the last 5 years. The most recent year in which winners were equally split by gender was 2015; the most recent year in which more men than women were winners was 2007. NB: I’m not going to muddle this discussion by introducing the more complex aspects of gender or sexual identification, for which I don’t have statistics (and which would likely not enter the realm of statistical significance, given that the total SFPA membership has only recently exceeded 400 individuals).

I am not in a position to make a determination with respect to the Rhyslings or other awards as to how much women may have been underrepresented in the various eligible publications from which poems were nominated and how this may have affected the gender ratio of nominations, but it is clear that even when taking nominations ratios into account, the voting was skewed: in SFPA’s first 30 years, 1978–2007, poets perceived as women received 38% of the Rhysling nominations (due to various collaborations and multiple nominations of poems by the same author, 37% of the poems were by women), but only 20% of the Rhysling awards went to women. In the first decade, men comprised 75% of nominations; in the second decade, 64% of nominated poets were men and 67% of nominated poems were by men; in the third decade, 54% of nominations went to men. I have not calculated Rhysling nomination ratios past 2007 because the numbers became ridiculously unwieldy, but anyone interested in doing so (or in checking my math) can find the listed nominees linked from http://sfpoetry.com/ra/rhysarchive.html.

With respect to SFPA’s other awards, which are of more recent origin, the Grand Masters, though insufficient for statistical purposes, show the same shift (see http://sfpoetry.com/grandmasters.html). The Dwarf Stars Award, only in existence since 2006, has nearly two-thirds women in its 1st–3rd-place winners. The Elgin Awards, first given in 2013, have exactly two-thirds women winners. The SFPA Contest is judged blind, using the same structure since 2012. However, its results also display the same gender disparity, suggesting that the bias may be primarily agenda-driven, in terms of the content of poems. I’m not a statistician; I’d welcome a rigorous analysis of the significance of the data I’ve accumulated—but there does seem to be an across-the-board consistency.

Let me make clear that I do not believe that men were writing better poetry in SFPA’s early decades—nor do I believe that women are writing better poetry now. If we assume that something was wrong with the determination of the award back then, then something is also wrong now. It is absolutely true that gender equity is far from being attained in many areas … but SFPA has attained it with respect to its awards, and has now gone considerably beyond and entered what can only be described as a new form of inequity. I’m curious about why this is happening, and a bit concerned about the implications.

This is not affirmative action, which is when traditionally discriminated-against tranches are provided with opportunities of education, employment, financial aid, and oversight positions from which they had previously been excluded. I’m all for affirmative action. But I think that applying agenda-driven selection to finished work and what ought to be purely merit-based awards is a bad move. What really needs attention now is not so much the categories of historical discrimination or even minority status, both of which are on their way out, but new structures of power/privilege that are replacing former inequalities with their own.

The gender composition of SFPA award winners may be trivial when compared to greater issues, but I think the changes that have occurred within this organization are both indicative and significant. (I’d like to think that these changes, putting SFPA in the vanguard of creating a desirable society, are due to a perfect commingling of speculative poets’ artistic vision, literary and intellectual education, and dreams of imaginary futures.) Sometimes we think of changes we’d like to make in the world as battles that will never be won. But this one, it appears, has been won—and then some. Where do we, as SFPA members, award nominators/voters and poets, go from here? What will you do as long-sought goals are achieved in larger communities? What should be done when those goals are exceeded to the point of creating a new inequity? I, for one, do not want to strive toward or live in a world that remains in an endless state of alternating so-called “victories” in a war-for-supremacy. Rather than the pendulum swinging ad infinitum, I’d prefer to see it oscillate as rapidly as possible into a permanent, still centered position.

Combining as we do the aspects and auspices of both the speculative genre and poetry, it is not surprising that SFPA finds itself in the forefront of actual, measurable social change, nor that—far earlier than most other institutions—it has achieved demonstrable gender parity in its own community … and then gone far beyond that standard. We can serve as a model for other institutions, genres, and fields of endeavor. How shall we implement and become that model? What would you like to do now?

I realize that the questions I’m asking here will threaten many whose influence stems from having taken up an activist mantle of resistance against discrimination in other spheres. More power to your activism elsewhere … but what will you do once you’ve succeeded? Especially since, if your activism achieves a new disparity, it will then serve as a model for those groups who in their turn feel disregarded or threatened. (I’m well aware, due to copious recent examples, that it is possible to claim to be disregarded and threatened while still solidly in a position of power and privilege, but screw those guys.)

I’ve long been a scapegoat for various attacks on SFPA but marinated as I am in eons of wickedness and guile, I’ve become somewhat inured to misdirected opprobrium. I do think that we all can’t but benefit from discussing the issues I’m bringing up here. Of course we’ve achieved this status well in advance of other communities: we live in the future! Now, dear SFPA members, what kind of future do you want to have? What model shall we create so that others may follow our sterling example? 

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Rhysling winners 1st–3rd, F/total (1st 1978–2006, see http://sfpoetry.com/ra/rhysarchive.html)

2/6 2007
4/6 2008
4/6 2009
4.5/6 2010
4/6 2011
4/6 2012
4/7 2013
3/6 2014
4/8 2015
4/7 2016
4/7 2017
5/6 2018
6/7 2019
6/8 2020
5/6 2021

63.5/98 = 65%

Dwarf Stars winners 1st–3rd, F/total (see individual years linked at http://sfpoetry.com/dwarfstars.html)

2/3 2006
3/3 2007
2/3 2008
2/3 2009
1/3 2010
3/3 2011
2/3 2012
3/3 2013
1/3 2014
1/3 2015
4/5 2016
2/3 2017
3/4 2018
2/4 2019 (includes translator of winning poem)
1/3 2020
1/3 2021

33/52 = 63%

Elgin winners 1st–3rd, book/chapbook, F/total (see individual years linked at http://sfpoetry.com/elgin.html)

2/3 2/3 2013
1/3 1/3 2014
2/3 1/3 2015
3/3 2/3 2016
4/4 1/3 2017
3/3 2/3 2018
1.5/3 2/3 2019
2.5/4 1/3 2020
4/4 3/3 2021

38/57 = 67%

For all the above, single collaborative works are shown as split authorship; ties are credited individually.

SFPA Contest 1st–3rd, F/total (see individual years linked at http://sfpoetry.com/contests.html)

Data not shown for years prior to 2012 due to differing entry constraints.

2/7 2012 (winners/runners-up only)
6/9 2013
7/9 2014
7/9 2015
6/9 2016
4/9 2017
7/9 2018
6/9 2019
7/9 2020
6/9 2021

58/88 = 66%

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F. J. Bergmann has been a member of SFPA since 2007. She is the poetry editor of Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, a past editor of Star*Line, the journal of the SFPA, managing editor of MadHat Press, poetry editor for Weird House Press, and freelances as a copy editor and book designer. She lives in Wisconsin with a husband, intermittent daughters and a horse or two, and imagines tragedies on or near exoplanets. Her writing awards include SFPA Rhysling Awards for both long and short poems and SFPA Elgin Awards for two chapbooks: Out of the Black Forest (Centennial Press, 2012), a collection of conflated fairy tales, and A Catalogue of the Further Suns, first-contact reports from interstellar expeditions, winner of the 2017 Gold Line Press manuscript competition. She was a 2019 Writers of the Future winner. Venues where her poems have appeared include Asimov’s SF, Missouri Review, Polu Texni, Spectral Realms, and Vastarien; her speculative fiction has been published in Abyss & Apex, Little Blue Marble (CA), Pulp Literature (CA), Soft Cartel, WriteAhead/The Future Looms (UK), and elsewhere. She has competed at National Poetry Slam with the Madison Urban Spoken Word slam team. While she has no academic literary qualifications, she is kind to those so encumbered. In a past life, she worked with horses. She thinks imagination can compensate for anything.

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