Bitches Ain't Shit

Roughly two weeks ago VIDA  posted the 2011 “Count” revealing the still painful disparities between the roles of men and women in the greater literary world. VIDA’s work is meant to be a launching point for a conversation about the cultural perception of women writers. The numbers are meant to be factual and completely non-judgmental. They are, of course, still sad. Having worked in the trenches, sloshing through table of content after table of content for the organization to help provide the numbers to create the lovely pie charts you see on their website, I felt it was only proper that I give Cannoli Pie a thorough going over. I consider myself to be a feminist and had actually been under the impression that Cannoli Pie would end up with more women published than men. I was wrong. Counting only literature contributions (not letters from either myself or Claire, nor visual art, nor Joe’s recipes) we ended up with a 58/42 split with the scaled tipped to the patriarchy. What shall we make of this? Well, considering this magazine was co-founded and is co-edited it had always been the intention to make sure that gender representation is equal. These numbers point out that there was a lapse in what we considered to be one of the main tenets of Cannoli Pie; it was simply ignorance of our own numbers. This is why we count; to examine and understand the trends taking place in publishing. Clearly, from here Cannoli Pie needs to be a bit more conscientious of just who we are printing. I am not, of course, willing to sacrifice editorial standards for affirmative action style gender pandering. It is more insulting to publish women because we “have to” than to not publish them at all. At least we could pretend the latter is due writing merit or the lack thereof. Rather the right thing to do is to be conscious. Owning our fault is the first step to inviting more women to contribute by indicating we are a publication which is committed to women writers.    

As a bonus to go with "the count" we also have a magazine. There are poems and other round things inside it. Happy Women's Month! Happy π-day!

P.S. our website is undergoing yet another makeover but in the meantime you can read the Issuu edition of our magazine by clicking on the Cannoli Pie link above.