Shine OnCanadian female writers defend David Gilmour’s ‘sexist’ comments
It's only been two days since Random House published a profile about award-winning Canadian author and university professor David Gilmour, and already the country has erupted in rage.
"I’m not interested in teaching books by women,” he is quoted as saying. “... I don’t love women writers enough to teach them, if you want women writers go down the hall. What I teach is guys. Serious heterosexual guys.”
But among the legions angered by his comments, two Canadian women columnists are coming to his defense.
Long-time National Post columnist Barbara Kay says that Gilmour has a point.
She claims Canada's literary scene is dominated by women authors because more Canadian women buy novels than men. Consequently, these authors focus on the issues and sensibilities that matter to women. In her column, she writes:
"I can easily see how a serious lover of literature, even a pretentious one, would find most Canadian literature by women that is gushed and Giller-ed over, however finely workshopped the prose, pretty slow-paced, broody and dull against the best male writers. As I myself once wrote about Canadian novels: “They’re all jumbled together in memory as feminized paeans to a sepulchral past, mired in poetically lyrical, but navel-gazing narrative stasis."
Toronto Star columnist Rondi Adamson furthers the sentiment that Canadian women authors leave us wanting. She writes in her column:
"... Why teach an author you believe to be second-rate simply to fill a quota? Why force Alice Walker on people? Why subject the young to Margaret Atwood or Margaret Laurence? I still want all the hours of my life I had taken from me in various Can Lit courses over the years back, whereas I feel no resentment about time spent reading Shakespeare or Faulkner or Hemingway."
Adamson believes the nation's negative response to Gilmour is representative of our collective "parochial" sensibilities and inability to overlook silly comments.
"This cycle of righteous rage and indignation and baying at the moon whenever someone makes a thoughtless comment or two really must stop," she writes.
For those of you who missed the controversy that ensued when Gilmour's offending words were published earlier this week, check out the original story.
After Canadians started accusing Gilmour of sexism, he later backpedalled in an interview with the National Post saying, "It was a careless choice of words. I’m not a politician, I’m a writer."
What are your thoughts on the Gilmour controversy? Do you think the outrage is justified? Tell us in the comments below.
