Role of Women in Speculative Fiction
I’ve often been annoyed by the way woman are portrayed in anything from science fiction to fantasy.
When I was 9 years old, we had an old stodgy relief principal who was also acting as relief teacher for an afternoon. He read us an old fashioned science fiction story. (In the late 70s, it didn’t have to be published all that long ago to be in the old fashioned category.) A woman, absolutely useless in combat, had just been taken hostage. And this man authority figure reading to us asked ‘These girls. They just really ruin a good science fiction story, don’t they. Who agrees with me?” And he asked for a show of hands for those kids who agreed with him, and those who didn’t agree with him. It came out that all the girls disagreed with him, and the boys all agreed. Although I put up my hand to agree, but what I was actually thinking ‘No, it’s not the girls who ruin the stories. It’s that the writers make the girls in their stories helpless, and have them getting taken hostage all the time. Why can’t they write interesting girl characters for a change?’
Much later in life, I realised that a lot of science fiction writers, especially in the early decades, had no clue about women. Even the great Isaac Asimov didn’t know how to write useful female characters without also hypersexualising them. So it’s not that surprising women weren’t depicted well. Just a shame.
High heels bothered me from a certain age too, especially on superheroines. At about age 15, there was one comic of Justice League International that depicted Black Canary with flat soles on her boots, and I realised, hey, I really like this look. It made sense, unlike the high heels and stockings we almost see her in. (I never saw her sporting that look again though.) And then I started seeing high heels all over the place. I didn’t like them. Highly impractical. Cumbersome. They make a woman walk awkwardly, in a way that men are supposed to find sexy. I don’t find it sexy, it just annoys me to varying degrees. And yet in fiction we see so many women who are supposed to be competent front line police officers, or superheroines, wearing high heels on duty. Running. Jumping across buildings. Fighting bad guys. Etc…
And in almost all the porn, the women would always be wearing high heels too, even if otherwise naked. The superficiality annoyed me. I learned to cope with that - after all when I was looking at pictures of a naked woman, I could easily ignore her feet.
And then in the nineties, I thought that with new characters coming into our media, like Sarah Connor from Terminator 2, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, that the image of women had finally changed. These were strong women, who maintained their femineity. I thought things were getting better and would continue to get better…
Until last year. Two women of my vague acquaintance pointed out that, in fact, women still aren’t depicted all that realistically. There’s a good test for a movie, to see if women in it are depicted well - are there two women in that movie that talk to each other about something other than how attractive a particular man is? And the number of movies that fail this test, especially in the Speculative Fiction genre, is staggering. Now that I’ve been applying that test for quite a while, I’ve really noticed how often the token woman is only there to serve as the love interest, to either emotionally save or be conquered by the leading man. Otherwise, their role in the fiction is meaningless.
In relationships, I want to get to know the woman in my life. I want her to share with me about her needs, and her desires and her fears. I want to love and support her in all that she is, and all that she wants to become. Just as I want her to do the same for me. Getting to know the whole package over time is a big part of the attraction for me.
Why can’t I have fully realised women in my speculative fiction too?
I know I’m lacking the proper sensibilities to consider myself a feminist. (Especially when it comes to matters of the bedroom.) But I want capable women in my fiction. I want women with ideas, with capable skills, with roles that show them as independent people, with their own wants and desires, including, but also apart from being with the men in their lives. I want them to be shown as being connected with other women of the same calibre. And I want to see them wearing sensible shoes, especially when the situation calls for it. It’s not because I want to be a feminist. It’s because I think women are more sexy depicted that way.