I finally finished the book of short stories that I've mentioned a couple times. Near the end there was a fierce essay about feminism. I didn't really like it because it was saying stuff like "You need to kill your grandma because she didn't do enough to help women." Yeah, I'm sure it was just for effect, but I still don't like that. Anyway, it was so dramatic that it made me realize something. I went back to check, and sure enough, I was right.
1/4 of the stories and poems in that collection were by women. Actually, it was probably slightly less than 1/4.
So much for that feminist essay. One of the two editors was even a female. Was she overruled in including more female authors? Did she not realize what happened? Maybe the reason goes back farther. Maybe it's because when she was learning about literature, the teachers just left most of the females out, so that's what stuck with her.
There are so many reasons that this could have happened. But if they went through the trouble of including that essay, how could they have not noticed the overwhelmingly male contribution?
I'm also reading an old book my Grandma got rid of. A book of humorous quotations. Some of them are genuinely funny and even insightful. But there almost no females quoted in the entire book. And on top of that, sometimes there will be a "funny quote" along the lines of, "Hah, that's as unlikely as a woman being smart!" If it wasn't a very old book, I'd get rid of it. I try to pretend like people were stupider back then.
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