Who-ee the outpouring of posts due to this VIDA count is never ending. There seems to be a Feminine Mystique-like awakening here. A silence awoken by red and blue (mostly red) pie charts.
Here is another set of links:
Amy Lawless at Best American Poetry
Akilah Oliver, who just passed away (as noted in Amy Lawless's post)
Ariana Reines post AWP poem (as linked from Amy Lawless)
Something about this post by Stacey Harwood bothers me.
I think it is the fact that she borders on dismissive of the VIDA count and responses to it. That bothers me because I would rather we sit with these ideas and really think about them before we go about finding ways to dismiss them. She poses this point: "I wonder how I would feel if I were to be among the first wave of women published by a magazine that is beginning a campaign to publish more women. Do I cheer when a woman gets an award? Yes. If I think she deserves it. I hate that I sometimes respond to such announcements by thinking "Oh, (insert name) got the award because it's time to give it to a (fill in the blank)."
Well, isn't the point that we don't know who's out there that "deserves" or doesn't "deserve" to be published because there's some unexposed barrier, it seems, to getting all the best there is out there? It sounds like the same arguments made against Affirmative Action, which may be valid but until there's an adequate exposure to the unknown, unheard voices, let's not go about finding ways to dismiss any posits for uncovering those voices, if you please.