The VIDA Count, Empathy, and "Personal Taste"
I wrote the following piece in response to the 2013 VIDA Count. Posting in today's Unfit to Print because equitable representation in the print industry (and beyond) continues to be a struggle.
In 2013 I wrote a piece about “personal taste” and what it means in world of tightly curated content. I had been inspired by the VIDA: Women in Literary Arts (VIDA) 2013 VIDA Count, which “tallies the gender breakdown in major literary publications and book reviews.” My piece was never published, but I recently read the New York Times opinion piece “Just How White Is The Book Industry” so I jumped over to the 2019 VIDA Count (incredible introduction by Marcia Douglas) and reconfirmed that the concepts I was wrestling with back then deserve our continued attention now: our personal tastes for art and story are acquired, not innate. The publishing industry shapes “our tastes” in narrow and prejudicial ways. With algorithms adding an additional layer of curation upon us, we’ve now become unconscious agents in the reification of those narrow and prejudicial “tastes.” I offer this piece in the month of June because representation is still essential—not only for those of us desperate to find reflections of ourselves in literature and art, but for every one of us—to increase empathy, broaden our understanding of our fellow human, and become more open to the possibility of a just future.
VIDA, Empathy, and Personal Taste
When I was growing up there were three lesbian books that were easy to acquire and read, and almost every woman/gender-queer in my generation read them: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Rubyfruit Jungle, and The Well of Loneliness. Of course there were other lesbian poets and writers whose books had been printed—Audre Lorde, Pat Parker, and Cheryl Clarke to name a few—but they were not easy to find if you didn’t already know about them, and in fact, I didn’t find them until decades after I came out. I grew up in a rural Catholic region and nothing I was taught in (Catholic) school, or that was available to me in local libraries or bookstores, would have led me to any of those writers. So for most of my early life, I read what everyone else around me read: 99.99% straight, white writers.
In the mid 90s, likely because of the media attention that the AIDS crisis and HIV/AIDS activism had drawn to white gay men, different voices began to emerge in more readily accessible print, and I eagerly sought them out: poetry by W. H. Auden, Wayne Koestenbaum, Frank O’Hara, and others. Coming Out is always a process—usually, one comes out to themselves first, and slowly shares the vulnerability of discovering themselves with others in ever-widening circles outward. For me, coming out to myself was especially hard won because of my rural Catholic experience; having little to no access to stories about the Queer experience absolutely hindered my Self-understanding. So when I found these gay male writers, I ate them up. At least, I rationalized, the love and pain they wrote about was Queer. But reading them only further conditioned me to enjoy a particular literary aesthetic and story.
Being forced to identify with (mostly gender normative) white gay men—due to the inaccessibility and invisibility of other writers vis a vis the tight curation of the publishing and distribution industry—during my most formative years impacted my self-esteem in deep and abiding ways, particularly regarding what was considered beautiful: gender conforming middle class white men. Sure, I turned out ok; most of us do. But most of us isn’t good enough. And having turned out okay does not mean that a significant portion of my loneliness and despair in youth and young adulthood could not have been lifted by greater access to writers who were speaking the truths I needed to hear: rural women writers, Queer women writers, working class women writers, religious women writers, women writers of color across the board... Having had access to, and reading a far greater array of voices and perspectives would have significantly shifted my developing “tastes” in literature, and probably would have helped me cultivate an even greater sense of empathy1 both for myself (against the homophobic and misogynistic onslaught that was the 90s for me), and toward others, which is an important human trait that we seem to be losing despite our global interconnectivity2. As Diane Mehta writes at VIDAweb.org, “what you read in college tilts you into the world and triggers emotional stances you might not have if, as a literary person, you read entirely different books3.” I’ll add, what you read in high school, and the home, tilts you, too.
The most important thing to think about regarding the VIDA Count is not so much about first-wave feminism and male/female parity in publishing—which is where defensive publishers focus so as to dismiss the larger issue altogether4. Rather, what the VIDA graphs should get us thinking about is how we, as writers and readers, through the power of our pens and the power of our purchases, can help ensure that the greatest array of voices, styles, aesthetics and perspectives as possible are published and made available. In reading diverse works, we can come to know ourselves and each other a little better, and orient ourselves more toward compassion. I mean, why else do we read, if not to be moved to see the world differently, more complexly?
Easier said than done, though: I am still trying to find my voice as a writer. My tastes in literature still find me resisting inhabiting different dictions and fictions; fresh styles and plainspoken stories. I find myself still resisting work by women because of my own predisposed notions that work by men is automatically going to be “better.” I don’t think about it; intellectually (factually!) I know this to be excruciatingly untrue. Yet the deeply rooted unconscious “tastes” nefariously influence my choices. As Amy King writes in the intro to the 2013 VIDA Count: “we are still learning the power of our voices and the necessity of sustained practice. We hear that old habits die-hard5.”
Our so-called “personal taste” is a part of the white supremacist capitalist culture we live in. And like that culture, it is acquired, not innate. We participate in and fashion it, and in turn, it refashions us. But we do have agency in the equation. Because taste and culture are not innate they can be changed—but we must first become aware of their operation in our lives. The VIDA Count reminds me that I have been trained from a very early age to understand, appreciate, and truly like writing by (white) men in every genre. The VIDA Count graphs won’t change with any significance until we change ourselves, which starts with reading women writers, especially women writers of color and women writing from intercontextual perspectives. To buy their work. To choose not to read men—not as punishment to them or as a denial to my own enjoyment, but as a way for me to acquire new, broader “tastes” and to grow. Because let’s face it: I never asked for the old tastes. I was born into them just as I was born into my Catholicism and my home state. It is time to realize that the hard work of dismantling the old notions that helped me move across country, change my perspective on food, and God, and politics, can be applied to the liberation of my “tastes” and “preferences” from what the white supremacist capitalist culture keeps serving us up.
—MF
To get you started, here’s a list of 2020 award-winning Queer books you can buy and read right now!
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/oct/08/literary-fiction-improves-empathy-study
http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/10/17/the_empathy_deficit/
https://www.vidaweb.org/what-is-a-classic/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/feb/04/research-male-writers-dominate-books-world
https://www.vidaweb.org/vida-count/the-count-2013/#count-2013