Censorship is not someone saying "I will not read your book because I disagree with it." It's not even a publisher saying "we will not publish your book because we disagree with it." It's the GOVERNMENT saying "you cannot publish that book."
I don't think there's any secret here that I am bothered by the way women's writing is minimized; the way two books in the same genre will be received very differently based on the assumed gender of the author.
(And even this is very, very binary; without sufficient trad pub figures to start drawing conclusions, since trans authors are so often blocked before they can even start the process, I'm pulling my data almost entirely from cis authors.)
An urban fantasy by a man will be reviewed as being more sophisticated, better written, and literate. It will be treated as if it MATTERS.
An urban fantasy of exactly equal merit by a woman is likely to be dismissed as vampire porn.
An urban fantasy of exactly equal merit by a woman is likely to be dismissed as vampire porn.
But the review outlet that responded to my asking why they never reviewed the Toby books with "we don't review erotica" was not CENSORING me. My books still existed. They weren't preventing publication. They just weren't talking about me.
Individual publications can censor authors, although I don't think "censorship" is actually the word I want here; a publication that insists on removing all mention of queer relationships from an autobiographical essay is not doing good work.
(Looked it up, and yes, corporations and private institutions can commit acts of censorship. So this is still censorship.)
A magazine that publishes autobiographical essays saying your essay about taking your lover to Disneyland is inappropriate because you're queer, but they'd take it if you changed the pronouns, is censoring you.
That same magazine saying "we do not publish graphic sex, it's in our guidelines, and half this essay is about oral sex, we can't take it" is not censoring you, not if the rules also apply to descriptions of straight sex.
My work being omitted from consideration for Best Canadian Fiction, Best African American Fiction, or Best Trans Fiction, is not censorship. I literally don't fit the guidelines.
Guidelines can make things a little more complicated, since obviously a magazine whose guidelines state that only stories about straight white cis people are relevant is performing a sort of passive censorship, by reinforcing the dominant cultural paradigm.
"I got paid a seven figure advance to write a book about a cultural experience that doesn't belong to me, and then the people whose cultural experience it was got ANGRY and YELLED AT ME on social media, but the book still got published and I still got paid," not censorship.
Sort of the opposite of censorship. I hate being yelled at on social media. I have nightmares about it. Give me a million dollars and you can yell all you want, and I will never accuse you of censorship. Promise.
