2026-09-29 06:47 UTC
But this isn't a "stay-at-home wife" scenario. I fully support any woman who chooses that (not is forced into that) if they can swing it.
The issue here is men claiming credit for their wives' work.
Like the mystery writer, whose nickname was "Dick"¹ in a case of deep comic irony, whose wife², it turns out, might well have done the bulk of the writing for "his" novels. Because at first he didn't even mention his wife's input, but as that came out it turned out that they were a "team" and she did "the research". Like when a "Dick Francis" novel about an air taxi service came out, it was after Mary got a pilot's license and ran ... an air taxi service. When a "Dick Francis" novel about a computer-based crime was in the works, Dick was going around doing his writer's glad-handing and interview thing while Mary was ... writing computer programs.
There's just enough plausible deniability here that you could almost believe the story that it was collaboration and that "Dick Francis" was just the code for "Richard and Mary Francis" but for the fact he never mentioned her until it came out that they worked together, the fact he dropped out of school to become a jockey at age 15 and she had degrees in English and French literature, and, here's the killer bit for me, the style of "Dick Francis" novels changed dramatically after her death and his son became his collaborator.
This is the kind of thing the meme is talking about: men taking credit for women's work. And you see it in literature. You see it in science. You see it everywhere.
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¹ Dick Francis
² Mary Francis
Replies (2)
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@idiomaddict@lemmy.world 2026-09-29 10:47
Yeah, I’m not trying to suggest that this instance is iffy (I haven’t read anything from Francis), nor that it’s generally morally unclear. My first reaction was unsureness, but consent is a pretty clear way to distinguish it. Like, I don’t want credit for proofreading work I do for my husband, even when it edges from proofreading into co-writing.
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@captainlezbian@lemmy.world 2026-09-30 21:07
Damn, Mary was fucking impressive