April 7th, 2012
Catherynne M. Valente explains why what Christopher Priest did could not have been done by a woman:
I couldn’t, of course, even if I wanted to. But neither could almost any other woman writer or blogger I can think of. Go after popular SF writers and a respected award? She’d have gotten death threats, rape threats, comments telling her everything from shut up and make [unnamed internet male] a sandwich to wishing she’d be raped to death because that would shut her right up.
[...]
That’s the line I walk, and most female authors and commentators walk. On one side of it is a silence which we can’t afford and on the other are the blowback and threats, which come quietly and secretly through email or boldly and baldly in comments.
This is a reality you don’t have to face as a bloke; one of the greatest advantages/privileges of being a straight, white male is that if people dislike me or disagree with me, it’s purely because of what I say or do, not what I present as. Which means that voices like mine or Priest’s are both overrepresented and overvalued, both because we are listened to more and because other voices are dismissed; even worse is that some voices aren’t just ignored but actively chased away. With rape threats even!
Apart from anything else, this impovers the dialogue we’re all having with each other about science fiction, if you can only be taken serious if you’re a straight white bloke and if you’re not, you get sexist or racist slurs (or both) aimed at you. It’s not good for fandom and it’s obviously incredibly bad for those who are subjected to it.
For those of us who don’t run this risk, there’s the obligation to do something about it, to speak out against such attacks whenever we see them, obviously not participate in them ourselves and most importantly, not blame the victims for something they supposedly done to “provoke” these attacks.
Categories: Feminism, science fiction
April 4th, 2012
For the second year in a row Niall Harrison has looked at the gender balance in science fiction/fantasy reviewing, looking at both which books were reviewed and who reviewed them, for a range of sf and fantasy outlets. A month ago, Renay at Ladybusiness did the same for individual bloggers, which in turn inspired Martin Lewis to take a look at his own output, which prompted me to do the same.
As you know, last year I made an effort to read more female sf writers, both by picking a reading list at the start of the year as by in general paying more attention to female writers. As you may also know, I try and review everything I read, though I don’t always succeed; I’ve read some hundred books last year and wrote only fiftytwo reviews, not all of books finished that year. But of those fiftytwo reviews, it turns out twentyseven, or roughly fifty percent were by female authors. Slightly more than a third of those (twelve) were the books I’d put on my reading list; the rest are not just fantasy and science fiction, but also include a fair few history books.
Why is this important? Because obviously, if you agree that a rough gender balance in science fiction and fantasy is a good thing, just reading more female writers is not enough, you also need to talk more about them too. One of the perennial problems with female writers after all has been that their contributions to the genre have often been overlooked, ignored or minimised. Getting more people to review them is a first step to put this right.
Below is the complete list of reviews:
As for 2012, so far I’ve continued striking the right balance: of the twentyone reviews to date, eleven were of female writers.
Categories: books and books review, fantasy, Feminism, science fiction
March 8th, 2012
It’s just a coincidence that on international women’s day Tom Spurgeon linked to two of the most horrible cartoons that have been published about Sandra Fluke. The cartoon above, by Gary McCoy, is one of them, while the second one puts some racist icing on the sexist shitcake by putting in a Huggy Bear style pimp.
Sandra Fluke was the woman who testified before Congress about having anticonception as part of health care insurance and how when it isn’t covered by such insurance it can be quite expensive to pay for, especially for oral contraceptives like the pill, which have to be taken regularly and which can vary widely in cost and effectiveness. Frustrating enough that such hearings need to be held in what calls itself a civilised country, but for the dimbulbs on the American right who oppose any sort of measure that can give women any sort of control over their own bodies and sex lives, this made Sandra Fluke a whore and a slut, as Rush Limbaugh called her.
It’s no surprise therefore to see some cartoonists pushing the same stupid, hateful lie, but is depressing. Unlike Tom Spurgeon, I don’t think anybody actually believes this bullshit, unless they’re very sheltered and ignorant about how the pill works, which is impossible but unlikely and in any case no excuse. It isn’t viagra, you don’t swallow it just before sex but actually need to take it on a fairly rigid schedule to get its benefits and apart from being an anticonceptive, it’s also used to help women with a host of medical problems. To believe it’s a sex pill and a woman taking it is a slut is so incredibly stupid that it cannot be done other than in malice.
The secondary features of these cartoons confirm this malice. Gary McCoy turns Fluke into a bloated monstrosity scribbling on the doors of a men’s lavatory, while Mike Lester silences here completely, while a stereotypical pimp figure tells the reader she’s a whore. These are nasty, vile cartoons and the people who made them should lose their jobs over them, just as Limbaugh in a just universe should lose his radio show.
Because what Limbaugh and these cartoonists, as well as all those good Christians chuckling over their jokes” are doing is bearing false witness, lying about and attempting to destroy one ordinary woman just because they see some transient political gain in it.
Categories: Comix, Feminism
Tags: Sandra Fluke
February 15th, 2012
The British Science Fiction Association (BSFA for short) has just announced the shortlist for its 2011 awards. And amongst the nominees for best non-fiction is a website I’ve contributed too, Ian Sales’ SF Mistressworks blog. Ian set the blog up last year as part of his attempts to get more coverage of female science fiction writers, inspired by the discussions about the gender imbalance in science fiction in general and British sf publishing in special. For the same reasons last year I had my own reading project, to correct the gender imbalance in my own reading.
The SF Mistressworks blog is intended as a showcase for all sorts of science fiction written by women, to demonstrate that,
as Ian puts it:
a) women have been writing science fiction since the genre’s beginnings,
b) many of their books should qualify as classics, and
c) many of their books are, in fact, better than “classics” by their male counterparts, and have at least aged better.
Such a showcase being necessary because more so than their male counterparts, female sf writers run the risk of being written out of the genre’s history, even when they were incredibly popular. For instance, around the time that Ann McCaffrey passed away, I remember reading a rant by somebody annoyed that a high profile review of Christopher Paolin’ Eregon books talked about the influence of Tolkien on them, but said nothing about the obvious Pern influences[1]. For various reasons, it’s much easier to construct male orientated histories of the genre, to talk about Verne-Heinlein-Niven-Egan-Stross, not so much to talk about Shelley-Moore-Le Guin-Cadigan-Williams.
I’ve contributed several reviews to the site, reprinted from my own booklog, for books I considered fitted in well with its aims[2]. As such I can’t help but be proud to see Sf Mistressworks recognised for its contributions, though obviously its success is mainly due to Ian Sale’s hard work and dedication. It’s a great initiative and I hope this recognition will help it continue its good work.
[1] If anybody recognises this article, let me know, as could I find it today? Could I buggery.
[2] E.g. The Sign of the Labrys, Ammonite, The Sword of Rhiannon and The Female Man.
Categories: Feminism, science fiction
Tags: BSFA Awards, SF Mistressworks
January 18th, 2012
Radical feminism is a form of feminism that’s, to put it politely, black and white in its view of the battle of the sexes, black and white enough to be able to use that outdated term with a straight face here. Radical feminism attempts to reject all gender roles and anything that smacks of sexual essentialism — men drive like this, but women drive like that — and argues that all such roles are socially defined, part of an overarching male dominated value system that defines women as inferior and which glorifies those characteristics that are stereotypically male and pillorises those that are stereotypically female. The breakdown of these structures and existentialist gender roles is what radical feminism attempts to do.
And if anything breaks down existentialist gender roles, it should be transgender people, shouldn’t it? What after all shows the idiocity of gender existentialism more than somebody who by their very existence shows that physical sexual characteristics does not a man or woman make, that you can be born and raised a man yet know yourself to be a woman or vice versa, let alone those who know themselves to be neither, or both, or something else entirely?
Yet radical feminism has huge problems with this. On the one hand, it insists that transgendered people are victims of exactly the patriarchial society they’re fighting against, confused by the gender essentialist social roles that insist that if you like pink dresses and My Little Pony you’re a girl, to the point that you’d use dangerous hormonal therapies and even surgery to change your physical gender, yet on the other hand it also insists that there’s no such thing as transgender women, just men masquarading as women (and vice versa). Both views are insulting and repulsive to say the least. Either you’re a duped and confused victim of social brainwashing, or you’re a hideous freak trying to fool real women you’re one of them.
This poisonous attitude is even on display in the writings of more moderate radical feminists, of those who have found that it is no longer possible to ignore or laugh off the “problem” of transgender. Which brings me to what inspired this post, radical feminist Nine Deuce’s sincere attempt to find some way in which transgender can be reconciled with radical feminism. She does this by stating her own position on the issue and seems to believe this should offer some way in which radical feminists can positively engage with transgender “activists”. Yet the bigotry is still palpable:
That there are people who feel so uncomfortable with the difference between their sexed bodies and their socialized conception of themselves that they would choose to risk deformity, death, and disability is to be deplored. Women have been conditioned to harm their own bodies in service of a social gender role grounded in misogyny and male supremacy. Radical feminism seeks an end to this practice. Women seeking surgery in order that their bodies will appear like male bodies, or men who undergo surgery in order that their bodies will present as female bodies, face huge psychological and physical risks and social ostracization. Adamantine gender roles are the source of the demand for these medical procedures and the dangers that attend them. Radical feminism also seeks an end to this practice.
That’s the idea of transgender women –transgender men not being of much interest to radical feminism, other options rejected entirely — as brainless victims having to be saved from themselves.
When trans activists bully radical feminists and attempt to force their way into women-only spaces, women should be angry and should speak up — and should express anger when they do speak up — but should do so responsibly and intelligently, so that the radical feminist perspective won’t be written off.
That’s the idea of transgender women as intruders, as charlatans pretending to be female in order to infiltrate “women-only spaces”. There’s a bit of projecting going on here as well, in an earlier comment Nine Deuce made:
Men absolutely loathe and fear trans people. Transmen are seen as intruders, but transwomen are seen as traitors. Men cannot understand why someone born male would choose to take on what they see as a subordinate position in society. It threatens their sense of order in a fundamental way.
Note that this is men, not some men or many men, but men. In Nine Deuce’s worldview, we all hate and loathe transgender men and women.
Meanwhile, it’s becoming clear that this whole exercise is more about a way to improve radical feminism’s image as an ideology that is bigoted towards transgender people, without actually wanting to lose this bigotry, viz:
What cannot be allowed is for the public face of radical feminist theory to appear reactionary, and right now it does.
I think radical feminism has lost that battle. It was a product of second wave feminism, a separatist ideology that has long outlived any merit it once had. For younger women, who grew up in a world in which the ideals second wave feminists fought for have been largely realised and for whom gender and sexual identity has always been a much more fluid thing than radical feminism thought possible, it’s just not an attractive ideology anymore. It battles the wrong things and seems to have no answers to real problems facing women today, welded as it is to a view of gender that’s just as existentialist as the patriarchial system it tries to overthrow.
Categories: Feminism, GLBT
Tags: radical feminism, transgender
January 6th, 2012
Last year I set myself the task to read at least twelve science fiction or fantasy books by women, making a list of what I was going to read, based on what I had already on my bookshelves. Having written my review of The King’s Peace yesterday, I’ve reached my goal. I’m not going to do the same this year, but I will keep a check on how many science fiction or fantasy books by women I’m reading. At the start I was a bit apprehensive about how difficult this would be, but in the end it turned out to be relatively easy to keep to my goal, with only an occasional hiccup.
The list:
January: The Left Hand of Darkness — Ursula LeGuin
This is not a feminist science fiction novel. It’s a novel about gender and gender expectations and the role our assumptions of having two separate sexes each with their own character, strength and weakness play in our societies, but it’s not feminist, unless every book about gender is by definition feminist.
February: Bold as Love — Gwyneth Jones
At first glance Bold as Love looked like a late and out of date example of New Wave nihilism, but thinking about it when reading it I realised that instead it mirrors the anxieties of late nineties Britain, when the optimism of early New Labour had long since vanished, the country resigned to being rundown and slightly shit, but still with a bit of the glamour of Cool Britannia left, that idea that rock bands could influence politics by rubbing shoulders with the politicians.
March: The Female Man — Joanna Russ
The Female Man is a tough book, but not a hard book to read. Joanna Russ is a brilliant writer and everything in here sparkles; at times you can only sit there open mouthed with awe. It’s a tough book because of the raw anger Russ has put in it.
April: China Mountain Zhang — Maureen McHugh
China Mountain Zhang is not just a good first novel, it’s a good novel period. What strikes me most looking back on it is the sheer ambition of Maureen McHugh to write such a kitchen sink, slice of life story in a genre not know for its patience with that sort of thing.
May: Foreigner — C. J. Cherryh
Yet, once you’ve read a few of her novels, you discover that there is one narrative trick all her stories have in common, no matter what the setting or the plot is. What she likes to do is to take her protagonists out of their comfort zone, get them at their most vulnerable and then put the pressure on.
June: The Halfling and Other Stories — Leigh Brackett
As a genre planetary romance has always been a bit dodgy, an evolutionary offshoot of the Africa adventure story, with a lot of the same racist and colonial assumptions build in. So you have cringing Gandymedian natives, mysterious jungles and alien drums, crazed halfbreeds and all those other tropes recycled from Tarzan.
July: A Point of Honor — Dorothy J. Heydt
A Point of Honor is an enjoyable, light adventure science fiction story that sadly did not get the readership it deserved,
August: Golden Witchbreed — Mary Gentle
It was the beautiful Rowena cover that got my attention, a long long time ago when I was browsing the English shelves at my hometown’s library. Showing a blonde woman in jeans and fur cape, armed with a stave and linking fingers with an obviously alien six fingered man, two swords at his side. That intriqued me, it promised both adventure and romance and it got me to pick up the book and that was how I got to know Mary Gentle.
September: 10,000 Light Years from Home — James Tiptree, Jr
10,000 Light Years from Home starts on a high note, with a classic Tiptree story that embodies everything that you should associate with Tiptree. It takes something that lies at the heart of science fiction as a genre, a worldview and turns it on its head, not to mention reveals the sexual undercurrent running through it.
October: Trouble and Her Friends — Melissa Scott
What Trouble and Her Friends does that few other cyberpunk novels do is to look at the internal politics of that hacking underground itself. And by doing so Melissa Scott is the only cyberpunk author that actually understood and anticipated the dynamics of online groups, of how even in groups that define themselves as outsiders there can be people who are outside the group as well, because for one reason or another they are different from the dominating members of a given group. Not a new dynamic of course, as any veteran of a socialist or anarchist splinter group can confirm. Even in progressive groups race, gender and sexuality play a role, but most cyberpunk authors assumed that in the bodiless worlds of cyberspace these things would no longer matter. Melissa Scott was clever enough to know that this is naive at best.
November: No Present Like Time — Steph Swainston
What also helps to set the Fourlands apart is that while like in other series the technology and society is vaguely European and Medievaloid, it also has cigarettes, newspapers, t-shirts and professional football matches: it’s clearly not our Middle Ages. Swainston never tries to explain these incongruities; it’s just the way the Fourlands are and it works. In some ways her world building reminds me of China Miéville’s, only less gorey and incessantly baroque, though she comes close in the scenes set in the Shift, another element never fully explained or even understood by Jant, part hallucination but very real in its own terms.
December: The King’s Peace — Jo Walton
As anybody who has actually been reading my booklog over the past few years knows, I’ve been reading a lot about the fall of the Roman Empire and the transformation of Late antiquity into the Early Middle Ages and about whether the Roman world really fell or was just transformed and how that would’ve looked like to the people living through it. The King’s Peace may be set in a disguised, fantasy version of this part of history, but I think it got it as well as anybody could’ve gotten it. The world changes, but change does not have to be bad and although what was lost could not be recaptured, what was built in its stead is good in its own right. A very complex, bittersweet and mature attitude for a fantasy novel to take.
Categories: fantasy, Feminism, science fiction
