I’m back in the city after a few delicious days away (thank you, Woodhull!) and, in the spirit of catching up, wanted to share a link, courtesy of Marci Alboher at Hey Marci:

The New York Writers Workshop is hosting a two-day pitch conference for writers working on nonfiction book proposals, Friday through Sunday, February 22, 23 & 24, 2008.

PLACE: JCC of Manhattan, 334 Amsterdam Avenue (between 75th & 76th Streets)
COST: $300 for three-day workshop

At this unique conference, participants meet with and pitch book proposals to three different editors from major New York publishing houses (houses including Viking, Penguin, Random House, Scribners, Simon and Schuster, and others). Click here for more details, and how to apply.

The answer, writes sociologist Virginia Rutter (pictured left), author of The Gender of Sexuality, may surprise you. Here’s Virginia:

I’m pondering the results in Iowa, thinking about numbers, and continue to feel so troubled by the misogynistic responses to Hillary Clinton. When I got the idea–just recently, listening to Bill Moyers interview Kathleen Hall Jamieson on politics and the blogosphere–of how aggressive the remarks about Clinton are, I had this duh moment that reminded me (not to be too dramatic) of when my husband died.

See, my husband died 9 years ago, but my brother had died 14 years before. When my husband died, I was like, “shit I forgot that people you love can die.” And when I started figuring out what was going on with Clinton, I was like, “duh I forgot just how much people hate women who lead and take charge.” It is that fundamental, I am afraid to say.

The issue is gender identity politics. Not gender politics, like whether a candidate is concerned with family leave, which continues to be a concern of women more than men, for example, but gender identity politics, the politics of feeling like a man or a woman is in a role or status that we’re comfortable with. When Clinton is called “that bitch” that is a good signal that it isn’t about policy, but about identity politics.

Mind you, seeing Barack Obama win is great for the election, because it keeps the pressure on all around. But there is something else going on, and commentators keep acting like concerns about gender are baloney. “Get over it. 35% of women voted for Obama versus 30% for Clinton.” But those numbers do not tell us anything about how voters are responding to gender. They just tell us that the people of Iowa like Obama more than Clinton. What I want to know is what are men doing. Men have gender too, you see.

So the question is this: are men (or women) more likely to vote their gender? The NYTimes provides a profile of caucus voters. I’m a quantitatively oriented sociologist who studies gender, and before I looked in detail at the numbers I thought what I was hearing was that men were voting their gender, and women were voting neutrally–that we women were as likely to vote our gender as not. But the results are a little different: men are more likely to vote their gender, and women vote their gender, too, but less so than do men.

Here’s how it works. First, of course in Iowa men had more opportunity to vote their gender than women did, what with 6 men on the ballot. But if we just compare Obama and Clinton, we see that men and women voted for Obama about 55% of the time and that they both voted for Clinton about 45% of the time. (How did I get this? 34% is what Obama got and 27% is what Clinton got; if you add those two together, 55% is the share that belongs to Obama, and 45% is the share that belongs to Clinton.)

Given that distribution, here’s what we know about “voting one’s gender” in Iowa: Out of all the men who voted for either Obama or Clinton, 60% of those were for Obama–that is men voting for a man. Men voted their gender 5 percentage points more than we would expect if their voting weren’t influenced by their gender. Meanwhile, out of the women who voted for either Obama or Clinton, 46% of those were Clinton supporters–that is women voting for a woman. This means that women voted their gender more than we would expect—but only by 1 or 2 percentage points.

What does this mean? Well these are not dramatic differences, but they are a trend. Gender identity is a factor in this election–and I believe men’s hidden biases (and not so hidden in the crassly expressed attacks on Clinton) against women are playing a role. This doesn’t mean that women are morally superior; it doesn’t mean that Clinton is secretly the better candidate because she is a woman. It means that you should pay attention to what men are doing not just what women are doing. It means that you should speak up and say “not so fast” when commentators or your colleagues or your dinner companions dismiss gender identity politics as a meaningful factor in the democratic primaries. Because it is.

-Virginia Rutter is a sociology professor at Framingham State College (MA). vrutter@frc.mass.edu.

Damn. There’s wireless at this here writing retreat. For the most part, though, I’m being “good.” Meaning, staying offline. But I couldn’t help but post this cool button below, once I signed up for Blog for Choice Day, which will take place on January 22, 2008–the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Which, as I’m watching the caucuses and primaries, seems to be a pretty important thing to continue making tons of noise about, if you know what I mean.

I remain slightly stunned that Hillary came in not second but third in Iowa last night. And at the way she is painted the establishment candidate. And at the strength of the venom against her. More election commentary coming soon from guest poster, sociologist Virginia Rutter. In the meantime, a quick bit on two books, just out:

Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex and Power–a new anthology edited by Shira Tarrant–compiles the voices of 40 men who explore issues of masculinity, sexuality, identity, and positive change. The book lays issues on the table that are sure to stimulate a lively debate. It’s starting already at myspace and facebook. Check it.

Next up, Making Love, Playing Power: Men, Women, & the Rewards of Intimate Justice, by family therapist and organizational consultant Ken Dolan-Del Vecchio, debunks superficial theories about communication styles and geder roles and, according to the book’s description, “gets to the real reason so many relationships are in trouble — misuse of power.” The book reveals how gender, race, sexual orientation, and money set the foundation for personal power, and how power as domination drives most conflicts whether between nations, interest groups, or individuals. Join Ken at Bluestockings Bookstore in Manhattan on February 13 for a reading…!

I’m starting 2008 by taking myself on a mini writing retreat upstate. So during the next few days, I’ll likely be posting on process–as I continue to tweak my own!

Having trained in lit crit, rather than as a journalist, interviewing people–you know, the live ones–is a new skill for me. While the best way to learn is by doing, for those of you who, like me, obsess by reading about it first, here’s some wisdom gleaned from those who’ve been at it for a while (mostly culled from Telling True Stories):

• Find examples of unfolding action; try to experience something interesting with your subject. Try drafting scenes immediately after reporting.

• Don’t ever lead your sources by thinking that you already know what the story is.

• Trust your material – what people actually do, what people say can be quirky, dramatic, humorous, painful.

• “People’s voices are like found poetry—raw, uncrafted, imperfect. Still, we do them the greatest justice when we choose carefully and get out of the way.” –Debra Dickerson, TTS

• “The overall interaction is more important than the particular questions. I try to make the interaction as enjoyable as possible. No one wants to be grilled for hours on end. A formal interview isn’t conducive to soul baring.” – Isabel Wilkerson, TTS

• Think “guided conversation,” where the overall interaction is more important than the particular questions

• “The natural impulse is to ask questions. Sometimes that is wrong. It makes the reporter the focus of attention. Be humble. It honors the person you’re trying to observe.” – Anne Hull, TTS

• “Journalists tend to be very self-centered: our questions, our answers, our timetable. Field reporting isn’t about that.” – Louise Kiernan, TTS

• “Ask people what they worry about most or who matters most to them or what makes them most afraid. Always follow these abstract questions with concrete ones to elicit specific anecdotes. . . . Your job as an interviewer is to turn the subject into a storyteller. Ask questions so layered, so deep, and so odd that they elicit unusual responses. Take the person to places she wouldn’t normally go. Ask questions that require descriptive answers. If your profile hinges on an important decision the subject had to make, ask her everything about the day of the decision. What kind of day was it? What was the first thing you did when you woke up in the morning? Do you remember what you had for breakfast? What were you wearing What did you think about that day? Walk me through the first two hours of your day. These things might not seem relevant to the story, but they serve to put the person back in the moment. Push a bit. Make some assumptions that require the person to validate what you say or to argue with you.” – Jacqui Banaszynski, TTS

• “One way to get people to say interesting things is to ask dumb questions….If they don’t talk, I sometimes remain silent. Silence makes people uncomfortable and people keep talking to fill the space.” –Debra Dickerson, TTS

• “Don’t worry about your list of questions, your editor, and your story lede. Worry only about the person in front of you. A friend of mine calls this full-body reporting. If you do it right, you will feel exhausted when you leave the interview.” TTS

(Image cred)

I love feministing and Broadsheet. But now I heart them even more for posting the year in feministing and the year in Broadsheet. It’s like a whirlwind tour through feminist (and antifeminist) America circa 2007. The scholar in me is thinking how great this kind of thing is for online archives, future feminist scholarship, and the like. But the girl in me is just thinking this kills. Remember when there weren’t yet blogs like these around? When keeping current on feminist news and issues and happenings was a far more scattershot endeavor? When researching a previous year’s happenings was not quite so easy as the click of a mouse? Keep it up, feministing and Broadsheet gals and readers. The womengirlsladies are cheering you on. (More on that clunky but catchy run-on word soon….)

What better way to kick off the new year than with the gift of sex? Sex writing, I mean of course. Rachel Kramer Bussel’s new anthology, Best Sex Writing 2008, looks like a must-read. Salon calls it “A fun, nimble book that never loses its sense of humor about itself.” The press release says it “captures the heart and soul of what’s happening behind the bedroom door, where lust, desire, gender, identity, sex work, and politics collide.” But Rachel puts in best in the opening line of her introduction: “Sex. One little word, so much drama.” Love that in the very first graf, Rachel looks back with a reference to Carole Vance’s anthology from the 1982 conference “Toward a Politics of Sexuality” at Barnard College, called Pleasure and Danger, noting how sex is an ever-evolving set of acts, philosophies, and identities that “teaches us, thrills us, empowers us, confuses us, electrifies us.” In all sorts of complex ways.

Check out the book’s blog, read the intro, and, if in NYC, join Rachel and friends at the book release party on January 22 at, where else, Rapture Cafe. There will be cupcakes. Details here. And stay tuned–I hope to be writing a bit more on the collection here on GWP.

Photo cred: Marco Acevedo

Catching up on, well, life, I wandered over to one of my publisher’s websites this morning and found a slew of kick-ass titles for 2008. Here’s a taste:

The Happy Stripper: Pleasures and Politics of the New Burlesque by Jacki Willson is due in January 2008. Why Women Wear What They Wear, by Sophie Woodward, and Pornification: Sex and Sexuality in Media Culture, an anthology, are both due in February 2008.

Third Wave Feminism and Television: Jane Puts It In a Box, an anthology edited by Merri Lisa Johnson, is now out. And so is Geek Chick: Smart Women in Popular Culture, an anthology edited by Sherrie A. Inness. I am forever indebted to Sherrie for publishing my first piece in an anthology back when I was in graduate school–an essay on Nancy Drew. Happy 2008 Sherrie, wherever you are!

…but headed back to NYC tomorrow. BTW, that is not an embryo pictured left but a manatee, otherwise known as the sea cow. We missed the Weeki Watchee mermaid attraction but did manage to take in the two-headed turtle. Hope everyone’s having good times out there. I’ll be back to posting regularly next week!