Why is it that so many of us approach writing with fear? Is it because our most intimate truths may be exposed? That we may be criticised? That we may fail?

Fear is the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind and according to H.P. Lovecraft “the oldest and stongest kind of fear is the unknown.” Fear also keeps us safe. That fear of spiders and snakes keeps us from getting bitten. But fear can keep us from living life to the fullest.

As writers we have our own special set of fears. First we are afraid to send out our writing so we polish until we get to the point we are changing things which have been changed several times. We aren’t making things better, we are just picking nits. Putting off the next step.

Jean – WOW! Blog

I read this and thought about the number of women I’ve asked to complete a story for Urban Chick who have not, as yet, submitted. I wondered if our fears are heightened by the fact that we’re women.

Cynthia Leitich Smith thinks that this has to do with early gender socialization. She explores the idea that perhaps we’re too keen to be people pleasing nice girls.

Problem is, the moment we start making decisions about where our story is headed, we’re already alienating some potential readers. Perhaps even those in our all-important immediate circle. We’re failing to please everyone.

Maybe we try anyway, and the result is a bland mush of a story. It might even sell well, but will it ever really sing?

Cynsations blog

But there are other factors at play here too, one of which is our fear of sexual discrimination.

Recently, an unpleasant internet troll posted about a local female blogger’s site. Her appearance was attacked, as was her personal life. If it was a man being criticised, would he have been judged using the same criteria? Is this an example of ongoing worldwide gender discrimination? Such sexist attacks do appear to be an emerging online trend.

The Washington Post

The reasons behind these attacks don’t seem important – what is important is that this harrassment is bullying, intimidating and even violent, clearly with the aim of belittling and silencing these women.

Local blogger Champagne Heathen expands on a possible outcome:

We might be intimidated to the point of leaving this medium altogether. Or we perhaps could start “women-only blogging networks”. But then we are forced to cut out an element we find very necessary and often lovely – the many individual voices of men. Women might soon feel a need to create a “sexually-biased” space because all of us, of both genders, have allowed the bullying by a type of man who is unable to maturely handle the free reign offered by the lawless internet.

This kind of muzzling is not new or isolated to an online environment.

In 1978, the late Tillie Olsen published Silences, a blistering documentation of the exclusion and silencing of women writers throughout history. She talked about the many things that have kept women from writing — their roles as wives and mothers, the need for money, lack of workspace, being characterized as mentally unstable and many other reasons.

Olsen painstakingly catalogued the results. In a chapter entitled simply “One Out of Twelve”, she detailed the woefully small percentages of women in every measure of literature and writing. The discrimination that Olsen found more than 30 years ago is still alive and well today with women being grossly underrepresented in Op Ed pages, books published and every other measure.

Unminds Must Fear blog

Urban Chick is there to give women voices, to assist in growing local female writing talent and to break this pattern. I believe it’s possible. Internet trolls aside, blogging has still enabled local women to speak less conventionally and more openly about their experiences. It is these voices that Urban Chick seeks to portray in a printed format. We have a right to discuss our sex lives, our relationships, our difficulties with work and the world, without fear that we’ll be censored into oblivion.

As women, we should continue writing about our lives candidly in order for us to break the shackles of silence and to become truly liberated.

Submissions are still rolling in, but we’d like as many as possible. Pick up your pen, write these stories and let the world know that we won’t tolerate mysogyny any longer. You don’t have to be a nice girl, you don’t have to worry about chasing away readers – use your voice as you’ve never used it before!