Feminism – Page 14 – Wis[s]e Words

The Female Man — Joanna Russ

Published on April 3, 2011

Cover of The Female Man

The Female Man
Joanna Russ
214 pages
published in 1975

The Female Man is the third book in my list of works by female sf authors I’ve set myself as a challenge to read this year. Of the books on the list it is the most explicitely feminist one, a cri de coeur of “second wave feminism”, a science fictional equivalent of The Feminine Mystique. Written in 1970 but only published five years later it was somewhat controversial, science fiction never having been the most enlightened genre in the first place. Reading it some thirtyfive years later it’s tempting to view it as just a historical artifact, its anger safely muted as “we know better now” and accept the equality of men and women matter of factly, its message spent as sexism is no longer an issue, with history having moved on from the bad old days in which The Female Man was written.

Bollocks of course, but seductive bollocks. The reality is that for all the progress made since The Female Man was published, its anger is not quite obsolete yet, or we wouldn’t have had the current debate about the lack of female science fiction writers in the first place. What’s more, The Female Man ill fits in this anodyne, whiggish view of history anyway. Russ is much more angry than that. She’s utterly scathing in her view of men in this novel, reducing them to one dimensional bit players: thick, macho assholes her much more intelligent heroines have to cope with. You might think this “hysterical”, “shrill”, “a not very appealing aggressiveness” but Russ is ahead of you and has included this criticism in her novel already, on page 141: “we would gladly have listened to her (they said) if only she had spoken like a lady. But they are liars and the truth is not in them.” Russ was too smart not to understand that no matter how non-threatening and “rational” The Female Man might have been written, (male) critics would still call it emotional and not worth engaging. But Russ uses her anger as a weapon and tempers it with humour and some of the angriest, bitterest scenes are also grimly witty.

The Nigella Lawson of bible scholars

Published on March 29, 20114 Comments

Francesca Stavrakopoulou

Last week I got annoyed at Brian Cox’s Wonders of the Universe, this week it’s Francesca Stavrakopoulou’s Secrets of the Bible that hacked me off. It shared all the usual faults of BBC documentaries: too much explaining of basic knowledge, not enough trust in the viewer, endless cutting away to pretty pictures, that annoying thing were the presentor interviews somebody and the camera cuts away to them nodding in an understanding manner, but above all the relentless Nigellasation of the documentary.

You see, Francesca Stavrakopoulou is, apart from a bible scholar, also somewhat of a looker and boy do the camera and the director know it. It’s not enough to have the usual closeups of her looking thoughful, no she has to bend down looking in the camera with her boobs almost popping out. The BBC should not need to do this to attract viewers; it’s pandering of the worst kind. And Francesca Stavrakopoulou should think twice about lending herself for this.

(Kudos for S. for the title. Yes, she’s home today and hopefully for longer than last time…)

Unbearable whiteness of British science fiction

Published on March 1, 2011

Pie chart depicting the race of 2011 Clarke Award submissions

Everything is Nice has some nice, juicy posts up analysing the eligible submissions for the 2011 Clarke Award. The Clarke Award is awarded annually for the best science fiction (or fantasy) novel published in the UK the previous year. It doesn’t have a long list but a short list is selected from all submitted novels; those submissions cover roughly 90-95 percent or so of new sf&f novels being published in the UK each year. Some works of course always slip through the crack, especially from non-sf publishers who don’t know or care about the awards. The Clarke Award submissions list than is a good, but not perfect indicator of the state of the UK’s sf publishing industry and as such Martin Lewis has analysed them, which resulted in e.g. the figure above.

In other words: sf publishing is only marginally less white than the group of writers the BBC thinks represents the future of British literary fiction. And worse, it has a much bigger gender imbalance: only 17 percent of the 54 novels submitted this year were written by women. Martin also looks at other identity markers (sexuality, nationality) and it all points to the conclusion that it’s largely straight, white British or American men that were published last year. (The raw data for all this can be found at Torque Control. )

The questions this inevitably puts to mind are a) is this analysis reliable when applied to the general state of the UK’s sf&f publishing industry as opposed to just the Clarke Award submissions b) is this a bad thing (imo: yes) and c) what can we do about it?

Assuming the answer to a) and b) are both yes, the question what we readers can do to change this situation is a difficult one to answer. You can only buy what’s being published after all and if only two books out of fifty-plus are by people of colour, how big an impact will it have when enough people buy their books? It’s easier to send a signal by boycotting a given company’s products, not so easy to express a preference through your buying habits. More projects and media attention to under represented people in science fiction as with the various “women sf writers” reading projects started this year would be a start, but are only suited to provide attention to this problem, not solve it. Suggestions?

Women writing Fantasy!

Published on October 15, 2010

Following on from that list of science fiction by female authors I’ve read in the last ten years, here’s the same for fantasy:

The Interior Life — Katherine Blake
Tam Lin — Pamela Dean
The Paladin — C. J. Cherryh
God Stalk — P. C. Hodgell
Dark of the Moon — P. C. Hodgell
A Wizard of Earthsea — Ursula K. Le Guin
The Tombs of Atuan — Ursula K. Le Guin
The Farthest Shore — Ursula K. Le Guin
Shadow Magic — Patricia C. Wrede
Daughter of Witches — Patricia C. Wrede
The Harp of Imach Thyssel — Patricia C. Wrede
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone — J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets — J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban — J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire — J. K. Rowling
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell — Susanna Clarke
Deep Secret — Diane Wynne Jones
A College of Magics — Caroline Stevermer
The Prize in the Game — Jo Walton
Gate of Ivrel — C. J. Cherryh
The Year of Our War — Steph Swainson
War for the Oaks — Emma Bull
Grunts — Mary Gentle

And per comparison, the complete list: 231 books read of which 24 were written by women. Not a great score either, if percentage wise slightly better than in science fiction. (Compare also with detectives: 34 out of 87 books read.) For me personally at least it’s untrue that women are more represented in fantasy than in science fiction; this may be true, but I’m still reading more male than female authors. there really isn’t something about a specific genre that makes male authors more appealing than female ones or vice versa.

My naive assumption is that in an ideal world, the gender balance between authors in any given subgenre will be roughly equal. The idea that innate gender differences are to blame for the relative lack of female space opera/hard sf authors or the same lack of male dark fantasy vampire shaggers, as suggested several times in the original Torque Control discussion is just wrong. That we can even have this discussion some thirty years after the second wave of feminism hit science fiction is awful, but somehow we’re still in a situation that female sf/fantasy writers are more easily ignored by publishers, reviewers and readers, including myself. I’m not interested in debating why this is (at least not here and now), but this is not a situation that’s healthy for sf/fantasy to ignore.

(More on women and science fiction at Torque control.)

Women writing science fiction!

Published on October 13, 201010 Comments

What Martin said. But. Here’s my own record on reading female science fiction writers during the last ten years (2001-2010):

Serpent’s Reach — C. J. Cherryh
Pride of Chanur — C. J. Cherryh
To Say Nothing of the Dog — Connie Willis
The Sparrow — Mary Doria Russell
Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus — Mary Shelley
Shards of Honor — Lois McMaster Bujold
Tea from an Empty Cup — Pat Cadigan
Sideshow — Sheri S. Tepper
Picnic on Paradise — Joanna Russ
Dervish is Digital — Pat Cadigan
Sign of the Labrys — Margaret St. Clair
In the Garden of Iden — Kage Baker
Sky Coyote — Kage Baker
Diplomatic Immunity — Lois McMaster Bujold
Nine Layers of Sky — Liz Williams
Heavy Time — C. J. Cherryh
Hellburner — C. J. Cherryh
Mendoza in Hollywood — Kage Baker
Ammonite — Nicola Griffith
1610: a Sundial in a Grave — Mary Gentle
Farthing — Jo Walton
The Secret of Sinharat — Leigh Brackett
People of the Talisman — Leigh Brackett
The Best of C. L. Moore — C. L. Moore
Cetaganda — Lois McMaster Bujold
Ha’Penny — Jo Walton

For comparison, the complete list of science fiction read in that time. that’s twentysix books by female authors out of a total of roughly 300 books, or less than ten percent. In other words, it would be a bit cheeky to join in the discussion about the real or percieved rarity of female science fiction writers and the lack of recognition they get considering how bad my own record is. There are reasons for this gender imbalance in my reading of course: most of my favourite writers just happen to be male, I at any rate tend to cluster my reading, with some writers (like Charlie Stross or Poul Anderson) getting a lot of repeat custom, which doesn’t help either. It’s not therefore that I deliberately avoid female science fiction writers, more that my unstructured reading for pleasure means my reading is biased unconsciously towards male authors.

If I want to do something about this, I have to consciously balance out that bias, by forcing myself to seek out women writers rather than just reading what I want. I don’t have to do that of course, but if I am worried about this gender imbalance in my favourite genre of fiction, I need to walk the walk as well as talk the talk.

So… Any suggestions?