Rape and birth control aren't SF? That's news to me

This week I had a Facebook discussion with a group of women SF writers.  I was commenting on an article about a magazine's submission policy that failed to pin down what type of story they liked. I find the blanket statement "we don't know what we want until we see it" totally unhelpful, and I wondered if anyone out there had any opinions or experience that could help.

The first response to my query was from a man, who said that rape and birth control didn't sound like subjects for SF stories.  I immediately replied, demanding to know why they weren't SF when they were issues that affected over half of the human race, and would continue to do so in the future.

The deafening silence from the women members of a so-called feminist SF organisation bothered me. This group's aims include "celebrating women as writers... In SF, fantasy... And the speculative genres."  And yet the majority of its members didn't consider this an important enough subject to comment on.

My comment was a response to an article by a magazine editor who stated "editors select what they think are the best stories for the publication."  Best is a subjective personal opinion of one person, and in this case of a man.  And this particular magazine makes no statements in its submission guidelines about committing to diverse stories and authors, as many others do.

At least other magazines state in their submission guidelines that they welcome work from under-represented groups.  But that doesn't go far enough.  Those guidelines don't address diversity of subject matter.  Do we have equality of submission, but not equality of story subjects likely to be bought?  Are certain issues being labelled as "women's issues" and ignored by the magazines?  I have to suspect so, given the response I got from the man on Facebook.

When I start seeing published stories that question and challenge current cultural assumptions I might start to believe in those magazines' equality  statements, but until then I remain to be convinced.

Wendy Metcalfe is the author of Panthera : Death Spiral and Panthera : Death Song and the short story collection Otherlives.  Find out more at www.wendymetcalfe.com