#metoo in the kidlit industry

Kjbartolotta said:

There seems to be an inherent problem in being the gatekeeper. Though how one goes about fixing this is beyond me. (not having gatekeepers?)

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This isn't a gatekeeper-created problem. The person in question is an author, not an agent or publisher.

JJ Litke said:

This isn't a gatekeeper-created problem. The person in question is an author, not an agent or publisher.

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The common denominator in all of these cases is power. A man is allowed to get away with being a harrasser, an abuser, and/or a rapist because he has a marketable skill that other people decide is more valuable than the damage he inflicts on his victims. He gets more power and gets away with more bad behavior.

There is also a tendency in kidlit (and quite frankly in all lit) to elevate male author above the female ones. It's especially frustrating in kidlit where generally the majority of creators are female. But men get more attention in kidlit because they are special and rare. Then there is also the business of "boy books", and the assumption boys prefer to read books written by men, which is utterly fallacious but still promoted as a real thing. This twitter thread is an excellent explanation of what sometimes happens: https://twitter.com/rj_anderson/status/963835213368512513

I'm not saying that the gatekeepers are to blame for the actions of the men. There are plenty of very famous and awesome male kidlit authors who don't use this power in inappropriate ways. But I do think there is a systemic sexism facing kidlit that does little to dissuade the bad behaviour when it does happen.

CWatts said:

The common denominator in all of these cases is power. A man is allowed to get away with being a harrasser, an abuser, and/or a rapist because he has a marketable skill that other people decide is more valuable than the damage he inflicts on his victims. He gets more power and gets away with more bad behavior.

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Yes, but now this is a semantic argument about who qualifies as a gatekeeper. It's frequently used in terms of agents and publishers. If you're talking about big-name authors, I wouldn't use the term "gatekeeper", but I also wouldn't argue that they are in positions of power that could be abused.

Sorry I found your last sentence confusing. It came across to me like you are saying that big time authors don't have positions of power that can be abused?

Toothpaste said:

Sorry I found your last sentence confusing. It came across to me like you are saying that big time authors don't have positions of power that can be abused?

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I wouldn't argue against the idea that big-name authors have a lot of power, and are in a position to abuse that power. Of course that's true. But I wouldn't apply the label "gatekeepers" to them. That's the semantic debate part.

Ah okay cool. Yeah I do agree with you there. And it is important that writers know the difference. In fact it's likely because some inexperienced and naive writers don't, that the predatory few can take advantage. An author, even a successful one, can only do so much to help a new author's career. But they can promise the moon if they think it might get them somewhere.

Toothpaste said:

There is also a tendency in kidlit (and quite frankly in all lit) to elevate male author above the female ones. It's especially frustrating in kidlit where generally the majority of creators are female. But men get more attention in kidlit because they are special and rare.

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And they get proportionally more attention in genres like SFF, where they are neither special nor rare, but neither are they the overwhelming majority of authors.

It is getting pretty boring how much extra attention guys get simply for being guys and how overlooked women are, until someone mentions one. Then people will say, "Oh yeah. She's good too. I'd forgotten about her."