Sometimes It's Hard To Be A Bloke

Right, had an exciting (read: boring) couple of days in the Portsmouth area, and then had to work all day Saturday until the skin began to peel off the bottoms of my feet (too much detail again, right?). So I'm pretty tired now, and the writing isn't going very well. Inter Vivos's second draft isn't going. Full stop. Though I'm thinking about taking it back to basics and trying to redraft again. It's just quite daunting having a whole novel to correct, and I hope I can get my head around it. I have to anyway, as it's almost NaNoWriMo time, and I want it finished by then.

When I visited Waterstone's on Sunday, I was saddened to find that one of my new favourite authors, Caitlin Kiernan, had been placed in this sad little section called "Paranormal Romance". It wasn't even a proper shelf, it was made of cardboard, and had the types of books in it that looked like the books Mills and Boon would produce if they introduced Vampires into them (had to do a quick check and they don't). If you haven't read Caitlin Kiernan (and you should!), she doesn't write "Paranormal Romance" at all. She writes Sci-fi, and horror. Really good horror. I have a feeling that this is the section where they are dumping women's sci-fi/horror/fantasy now. I was surprised, however, to find that Stephanie Meyer's books weren't in this section, which is strange, as she is the Queen of the paranormal romance (well, her and Anne Rice). I guess if you're a bestselling author, you transcend genre and Waterstone's can't afford to segregate you.

I've been thinking recently how hard it is to be male in this society sometimes. That sounds a bit weird, I know, but it's true. I know a bloke who got beaten up last week, just because some other bloke thought he had looked at him (he hadn't). I'm kinda glad I live in a society where women are still kinda protected and don't frequently get head-butted in the street after finishing work (well, not as often as men do anyway). I am a feminist, and I consider this to be an important issue within feminism. Equality is a two-way street in my book. Yes, I am very pleased that I can work, and vote, and that I earn the same as my male counterpoint (though I know that some aren't so lucky, and support campaigns to even the balance), but men should be equal to women too. They should have longer paid paternity leave, and have the freedom of choice that women now have, without living in danger of losing a tooth. By pitting one of the sexes against the other, it doesn't do anything to ease the burden on either party, or make life better for anyone. We're all human after all.