A discussion about the need for the Women's Prize for Fiction.

The Man Booker Prize started it all. I was sitting at a bus stop, flicking through this year's nominees for the literary Oscars when I noticed something. In the shortlist of six finalists, only two of them were women, and even then I wasn't sure. Ali Smith, who I'm sure is a woman because I have read her book How to Be Both, and Karen Smith, who I'm pretty sure is a woman despite having one of those versatile names like Kim or Stacey. Then, on the thoughts of women and literature, my attention turned to the Women's Prize for Fiction. WPF is a yearly award, much like Man Booker, that honours the achievements of women in the literary field over the past twelve monks. Past winners include Zadie Smith and A.M Holmes, which means that winning WPF can't be all that bad. But then my mind started on its very own feminist rant. Hold on a second: why should women be put in their own, very separate category? Why shouldn't the books of women be judged against those of men and not segregated for the gender of the writer who spent hours (and I'm working on my own book, when I mean hours I mean fucking months) labouring over every single detail of their own novel, and managed to forget that being a woman or not being a woman would affect how it is received? How patronising. The WPF is basically saying to female writers: well done, women! You wrote a book! Clever you!

The WPF is an award that should not be needed in this day and in this century. There is no longer a need to separate men from women anymore. Separation only pinpoints the need for feminism and for equality even more, and that should not be happening. Why is it that as I sit here in a cafe, which I have been doing for the past three or four days, trying to write my own novel, I'm not aware that if this book (please, God, please) ever went to publish, I would be being judged as a female writer, and not just a writer? Why has this thou never occurred to me, because in truth that is exactly what will happen as soon as I step foot into a publishers office. Male writers are just writers. Their books are for everyone. So why do women writers get pushed towards writing books aimed specifically for women? This is exactly what the Women's Prize for Fiction is doing; isolating both sexes in a case of something I like to call Pseudo-Feminism at its best. 

So why is it that as I condemn WPF for segregation of the sexes, I'm also wondering why there weren't more women on the Booker prize list this year. Is that fair? Is that equality at its best? Perhaps the books written by women just weren't that great this year, and there is no shame in admitting that. The sooner we get over the fear of comparing the sexes fairly, by judging them together and discarding the tag of "man" or "woman" we will reach a happy medium. Perhaps the Booker Prize judges are huge mysogynysts - and then again perhaps they are not. Maybe they are already at that stage of judging a book by the quality of it's writing and not by who wrote it. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be judges if they were not. 

Surely, feminists everywhere will still be questioning the 2:1 ratio on the nomination list. It's inevitable. It shows how many strains of feminism there can be in the world and that is something to be marvelled at. But my own little branch of feminism is this: separating man and woman will never help, and will make sure that there is always a need for the feminist argument. With something as particular as novels, it does not matter to the gender of the author - he or she has a style very different to anyone else, and that can be rejoiced or it can be slated. The only loser int his situation is the Women's Prize for Fiction, because if I ever do get a published book, I certainly won't want patting on the back for being a brilliant writer, who happens to have - SHOCK! HORROR! - a vagina.