[Clive]

Any comments Jane or Eva have made about men have been general comments, not about specific men on this forum, so I don't get what has been rather a vituperative reaction at times. Maybe as a queer man, I don't feel so on the defensive about this issue? Maybe I can see how the poor representation of women in anthologies is just part and parcel of the gender inequalities that still exist in wider society, inequalities that aren't really the fault of me as an individual man? I dunno, but as a member of a minority group, I've witnessed how, when certain groups' privileges are a) pointed out and b) challenged then there is a tendency on the part of that group to circle the wagons because of the discomfort this arouses.

It's interesting to note whose voices are heard and whose aren't in the po-world. I would hazard a guess that poetry remains largely the preserve of middle class heterosexual men. Nothing wrong with middle class heterosexual men, of course, some of my best friends are...etc. But given that, is it not possible that certain voices get silenced, albeit unwittingly and unconsciously on the part of the m/c het men, as a result, because those voices are writing poetry that isn't the kind of poetry m/c het men would produce? So working class people, women, queers - maybe they don't have much of a voice because their voice isn't the "right" voice?

Isn't it worth investigating and discussing, with no defensiveness on either side?