Feminism

authenticity vs gender balance

"Literature", Art & Criticism, Feminism
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Steve Poole blogs about Publishers Weekly‘s oddly womenless top ten best books of 2009 to note a particular phrase of speech, as is his wont. What niggled at me was his last paragraph:

If you make a list of your favourite books of the year and then notice that they are all written by men, should you remove some of the books and insert some written by women? If you don’t do so, are you “ignoring gender” or “excluding women”?

Then it struck me. What this paragraph does is to create a contrast between the spontaneous act of listing your favourite books of the years and the artificial act of genderbalancing it. It presupposes both that the original list would be the “real” one, reflecting the genuine tastes of the PW editors and unsullied by other concerns, while the adjusted list would have phonies on it, books only chosen because they written by women. Not that Steve meant it that way of course, but it is the sort of assumption that’s always in the background of this kind of gender (or any other kind of) equality discussions. It both ignores the reality of how a list like this is created and denigrates gender balancing such a list as inauthentic.

A juxtaposition

Feminism
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Lenny summarises a Home Office study on violence against women:

16% of people in England and Wales think it is acceptable for a man to beat his wife or girlfriend if she nags; 13% think it is acceptable for a man to beat his wife or girlfriend if she flirts with other men; 20% think it is acceptable for a man to beat his wife or girlfriend if she dresses in sexy or revealing clothing in public; 11% think it okay to beat if the wife or girlfriend doesn’t treat the man with respect; 8% think it okay to beat if she is caught cheating.

Further, 36% think a woman should be held co-responsible for being raped if she is drunk; 26% if she is wearing revealing or sexy clothing; 43% if she flirts heavily beforehand; 49% if she does not clearly say ‘no’; 42% if she is using drugs; 47% if she is a prostitute; 14% if she is out walking alone at night.

Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre in a speech to the society of editors:

The judge found for Max Mosley because he had not engaged in a “sick Nazi orgy” as the News of the World contested, though some of the participants were dressed in military-style uniform. Mosley was issuing commands in German while one prostitute pretended to pick lice from his hair, a second fellated him and a third caned his backside until blood was drawn.

Now most people would consider such activities to be perverted, depraved, the very abrogation of civilised behaviour of which the law is supposed to be the safeguard. Not Justice Eady. To him such behaviour was merely “unconventional”.

Nor in his mind was there anything wrong in a man of such wealth using his money to exploit women in this way. Would he feel the same way, I wonder, if one of those women had been his wife or daughter?

As Justin notes, dacre’s Daily Mail has no problems spicing up an article on degrading advertisments to women up with some of the advertisments in question, despite Dacre’s moralising…

Do you think the results found in this Home Office study are surprising, considering the combination of patriarchal morality as displayed by this prominent newspaper editor in his speech and the salaciousness of the newspaper he edits?

Lazy comix video Tuesday

Comix, Feminism, video
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You know what they say (but what do they know): three videos makes a post, so let’s have it then. Three Youtube videos on a common theme: comics. The first is a very suitable song considering the date, showcasing brilliant but unknown to me until now seventies feminist funk group Isis, over a montage of seventies superchicks, to stay in the vernacular of the day. Isis sounds like a cross between Jethro Tull and Funkadelic, with a dollop of Davis, both Miles and Betty. Thanks to Palau (of Prog Gold fame) for finding this.

Another brilliant Youtube marriage of music and comics is Thor – GOD OF METAL!. No, it’s not the one you might be thinking of, the this Thor, it’s the real one, the blonde surfer dude with the faux-Shakespearian speech patterns, rocking out to some Slayer. Watch out for the Beta Ray Bill and Eric Masterson cameos.

The same people behind the first video also did a homage to secret agent/detective heroines, featuring a real find: the Kane Triplet’s version of the Mission Impossible theme tune, with lyrics. Very catchy it is as well.

Finally, something with no redeeming value at all and nothing to do with comix other than that its creator, David Campbell, is a dancer for comix:

All because Dave runs one of the more popular comics blogs and needed some scans from this man. He’s evil I tell you, evil.

Ammonite – Nicola Griffith

books and books review, Feminism, science fiction
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Cover of Ammonite


Ammonite
Nicola Griffith
386 pages
published in 1993

Nicola Griffith is a writer I’ve heard a great deal of but so far had never read anything by. Ammonite was her first novel and immediately made a strong impression on publication, winning both the James Tiptree Award and the Lambda Award. As these awards confirm, Ammonite is a classic feminist science fiction novel, straight in the tradition of writers like Ursula Le Guin (Left Hand of Darkness), Joanna Russ (The Female Man) and Sheri Tepper (The Gate to Women’s Country).

The world created in Ammonite is also a classic feminist science fiction trope: that of a world without men. In this case, it’s the colony world of Jeep where an alien virus killed off all men and a large percentage of women, leaving the survivors to rebuilt their societies on a one gender basis. How they’ve managed to do so is the central mystery of Ammonite, which is partially a puzzle story and partially a leisurely planetary romance as our protagonist, anthropologist Marghe Taishan, travels the planet in search of answers. Marghe is working for SEC, the government agency that was set up to safeguard the interests of indigenes of rediscovered colony worlds like Jeep from exploitation by the Company, which has a monopoly on space exploration and which whom Marghe has some unpleasant history…

Read more…

Women write science fiction??!

Feminism, science fiction
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Not a new discovery one should say, what with some women sf writers even winning Hugo Awards these days, but apparantly shocking enough for online sf magazine Helix, run by professional not very loveable curmudgeon William Sanders to bring out an entire issue full of wimmin writers and then complain bitterly when the rest of the world shrugs its shoulders:

There’s been a lot of talk in the SF community – some of it rather intemperate, as always happens in such cases – about “gender bias” in the genre or in certain magazines, about the largely estrogen-challenged Hugo list, etc. You’d think that there would be a favorable reaction when a magazine comes out with an all-women’s issue. Realistically, I don’t expect it’s going to happen, to any great extent – that’s how it goes, people yell and scream about something and then when somebody does something about it they don’t have a word to say – but somebody ought to say SOMETHING.

And somebody damn well ought to be reaching for that Paypal button. If they’re serious about their feminism, well, here’s a chance to put their money where their phosphors are. I’m going to be pretty damn disgusted if the donations don’t go up this quarter.

Now I’ve only followed Sander’s editorial career from a distance, but I cannot remember him striking any great blows for feminism or gender equality before, more the opposite. This is just a cheap stunt which won’t strike a great blow against gender bias and has nothing to do with feminism. Female science fiction writers are neither rare nor obscure, haven’t been for fifty years, so any sf magazine worth its salt doesn’t need to do “special” issues, but has a mix of male and female writers as a matter of course. So don’t break an arm patting yourself on the back, Sanders.

Thanks James!