I try to avoid talking about social issues on this blog, not because I don’t have Strong Opinions, but 1) because I don’t want to alienate anybody with unnecessary controversy, and 2) because I’m not an expert and instead of coming off as informed I’ll probably just come off as pretentious and obnoxious. But I’m going to make an exception for this particular issue, because it has to do with authors and writing and Things of That Nature, and therefore isn’t entirely beyond this blog’s scope.

All right. I’m going to talk about Gender Issues—particularly, Gender Issues in the writing community. I’m sure a lot of you are aware of the recent big to-do over Wikipedia’s decision to remove female authors from its “American novelists” category into a separate “American women novelists” category. I haven’t followed the case closely enough to know how it was resolved. My sincere hope is that the whole separate-categories idea was scrapped and female American novelists have rejoined their male counterparts in the original category, because American novelists are American novelists whether they be male or female. Actually I wouldn’t care if the “American novelists” category were, in fact, further broken down into gender-specific subcategories. But to relegate females and only females to a subcategory—as if males are the true face of American novel-writing and females just an afterthought—is problematic.

But here’s a thing I saw today which, I think, takes the problem in the opposite direction:

So sorry to be unable to attend writers’ conference in Homer, Alaska where a “female fiction writer” has been requested.

— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) May 4, 2013

It’s quite possible I’m reading too much into the tweet; 140 characters doesn’t allow you much room for context. But, honestly, I don’t understand the need for the snarkiness. I don’t know anything about Homer, Alaska, to be sure; I certainly don’t know anything about their writing conference. But I see nothing at all problematic with their specifying they’d like to host a “female fiction writer.”

Gender should have no influence on your ability to identify yourself as a novelist—that was the underlying issue with Wikipedia’s category controversy. Siphoning women off into a subcategory, while allowing men to inhabit the main category exclusively, assumes that “novelists” should, in the purist sense, be male; female writers who somehow manage to write novels require some additional label. But gender—like a plenitude of other factors—does affect the way you approach your novel-writing. A female novelist will have different things to say about her work than a male novelist will have to say about his; they each bring their own unique experiences and perspectives to the table, and some of those experiences and perspectives may have to do with the fact of their gender. There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that—they’re both still novelists regardless. There’s nothing wrong with the Homer, Alaska writing conference acknowledging that and deciding they’d like specifically to hear what a female novelist has to say. I have to admit I went out and pulled up the schedule—there are male speakers too, so clearly the conference isn’t suggesting there’s some qualitative difference between male and female writers.

Here’s where I say something inspirational about how our differences shape our art and how Art as an Abstract Concept depends upon those differences—but seriously. If you write novels, you’re a novelist. That should be inarguable WIKIPEDIA. But I don’t think it’s somehow demeaning to acknowledge that your novel-writing experience may be informed by your gender experience.