science fiction

That’s from the backcover blurb of Sign of the Labrys, a 1963 sf novel written by Margaret St. Clair. Even then the idea that it was new and different for women to write science fiction was laughably ignorant, but that didn’t stop whatever unnamed marketering genius who came up with that quote.

This blurb is the perfect illustration of why the “Russ Pledge” is important. No male writer would’ve been introduced like Margaret St Clair was here, as both representative of his whole genre and as something new. That’s one part of what Joanna Russ wrote about in How to Surpress Womens’ Writing: the constant emphasis that this female writer is an exception, that female writers are rare and strange. Though things improved since this blurb was written, we’re currently — with allegedly only two female sf writers having a book contract in the UK — in danger of moving back towards a situation in which it once again becomes easy to imagine such blurbs, unless we actively work to prevent this.

As Farah Mendlesohn made clear in her contribution to the SF Mindmeld linked to above, it is especially important for male sf writers, editors, reviewers and readers to take the lead in this. Though women can obviously share the same biases and are caught in the same distortion, it’s been us men who’ve — consciously or unconsciously — been setting this trap. Moreoever, if we don’t change our behaviour the same power dynamics will continue to be in force. Obviously. Hence the Russ pledge and its importance. What I’d therefore like to do, apart from reading and reviewing more books by female sf writers, is to do a series of posts on my favourites and why they’re my favourite female writers: people like Jo Walton, Mary Gentle, C. J. Cherryh, Leigh Brackett, Lois McMaster Bujold…

If you know anything about feminism, you probably know about how feminist history can be roughly divided into three different waves of activity. In that scheme the first wave of feminism took place in the late 19th and early 20th century and focused on winning women equality before the law (right to vote, stand for election, get an education and so on), the second wave of feminism hit in the sixties and seventies, focusing on winning economical and societal equality (equal work for equal pay, getting out of restrictive gender roles, women winning control over their own reproductive systems and all that jazz) and the third wave started sometime in the nineties or perhaps earlier, focusing more on cultural issues and the interaction between sexism and racism, gender and sexuality and so on. Each wave built on the accomplishments of the preceding ones, while carrying the struggle into areas left untouched by them. It’s a massively simplified view of feminist history of course, based mainly on American experiences not always applicable to other countries and it leaves out everything that happened before the first wave or inbetween waves, but that’s only the start of the problem.

The real problem is that much of the difference between the various waves is political. Now nobody but historians really cares about first wave feminism anymore and all the people involved with it are long dead, but things are different for second and third wave feminists, both generations still very much alive and not always understanding each other. As with most movements, the differences between the two can often be decidedly minor to outsides, more a question of difference in degree rather than kind, but for those in the middle of the struggle they can look enormous. Especially on the internet, where everybody has a voice and is an expert — second versus third wave feminism leads to almost as many flamewars as gun control does. These sort of debates can be hugely counterproductive, especially when taking place in the context of bigger battles.

Case in point, when Cheryl Morgan gives the following definition of second wave feminism in an otherwise sensible post teasing out the impact of different notions of feminism on modern UK science fiction and why it’s so seemingly unfriendly to women, it doesn’t help:

Second wave feminism was the movement that started in the 60s and 70s. In theory it was about equal rights for women in all areas of life. In practice it was sometimes more about equal rights for middle class white women, and occasionally about the rights of middle class white lesbian separatists.

That’s cherrypicking and caricaturing the very worst aspects of second wave feminism, as seen through the lens of several decades worth of backlash. If your view of a second wave feminist is a bra-burning lesbian until graduation willing to pull the ladder up behind her as soon as she and her friends have broken the glass ceiling, that’s the backlash talking. Yes, there have been class and race issues with classical feminism that modern feminism is attempting to avoid and correct, but we should not forget that much of what third wave feminism concerns itself about was an issue for second wave feminists as well. That it sometimes degenerated into “equal rights for middle class white women” is not a feature of second wave feminism as such, but more of its defeat; the co-opting of parts of it by the patriarchy or the capitalist system or whatever you want to call it.

In the context of what so far has been a relatively fruitful debate about how to fix science fiction, especially British science fiction to make it less excluding towards women, such a sneer is unnecessary and unhelpful.

One Magemanda isn’t keen on the current attention given to the continuing gender imbalance in science fiction, claming so totally NOT on board with this focus on women in literature:

1) In any other workplace, if people were determined to focus on the specifics between men and women, there would be a good case for a charge of sexism.

2) Women have been fighting for equality for years: why is this suddenly a new story?

3) In chick lit, there is not a fierce desire for there to be a slew of male authors – no one argues that Mike Gayle should be as widely read as Marian Keyes. Authors are enjoyed on their own merits.

4) Last night I was watching the Great British Menu and the commentator described one of the judges as a top female chef – and I felt insulted that she wasn’t just considered to be a top chef. The same can be applied to authors: we should be insulted at having to focus on women separately.

For me, this is the height of a storm in a teacup, and I’m so tired of hearing about it now.

Why not consider it this way:

Read the books you like. Enjoy the books you read. Who cares the sex of the authors writing them? I certainly don’t! Do you?

A naive and ill thought out response perhaps, but one that needs to be answered. I suspect there are quite a few science fiction readers who likewise don’t get what the fuss is about and wonder why they should care about “the sex of the authors”. You cannot force people to care about the political implications of their entertainment choices; you’ll have to convince them. Magemanda’s post offers a good opportunity to do so.

The reason why feminism and the continuing gender imbalance in science fiction has gotten back on the agenda is simple: the death of Joanna Russ. An outspoken feminist icon and writer, her death and the renewed focus on her work that it inevitably brought made painfully clear how little has changed since she first criticised science fiction for ignoring its female writers. And while there had been a renewed interest in making science fiction more inclusive these past few years, Russ’ death was the catalyst that spurred people to action.

So, no this is not a new story, but that doesn’t matter. It’s still important. Science fiction suffers if we ignore half the people writing it. But last year several of us discovered this was exactly what we had been doing by “enjoying the books we read and not caring about the sex of the people writing them” and –surprise surprise– discovering the overwhelming majority of writers were male. By reading on autopilot, I missed quite a bit of good science fiction written by people not on my radar. I needed to consciously think about the kind of authors I wanted to read to redeem my mistakes. That’s why even as a reader it pays to look at what you’re reading, to make sure you’re not missing books you’d enjoy just because their author isn’t part of your usual circle.

Reading between the lines, I got the impression Magemanda thinks projects like Ian Sales’ SF Mistress Works is about separating out the women from science fiction, putting them in a separate league like with womans’ sport. But this is not the intention at all. We I think we’ve proven by now is that if we don’t make a fuzz about female writers, especially as male readers and reviewers, we run the risk of forgetting about them, of neglecting them. That’s why we need to pay more attention to female writers, even if in an ideal world the gender of a writer shouldn’t matter.