I was talking with Mae last night about Virginia Woolf’s essay A Room Of One’s Own-yes, we are total lit nerds in addition to being comic dorks-and how the trap of being female that Woolf describes in 1928 still exists today. Women and girls are still seen for little more than their sex, while men are seen for their actions and skills. No where is this more apparent than in science fiction, where often female characters are raped or get pregnant, simply because the writers don’t know what else to do with them
YES!!! Right now I'm reading The Last Man by Mary Shelley (I'm going on this proto-sci-fi kick) and despite the fact that it's written by NOT ONLY A woman, but the DAUGHTER of a feminist writer, it STILL ascribes to the norm you stated above! I'm seriously fucking mystified. The only women in the book are wives or foils, which seems to be the only role of women in not only sci-fi lit, but lit in general. It only serves to perpetuate the idea that women's worlds revolve around men - whether they're pleasuring men or torturing them. The concept that women can exist OUT of the orbit of men is apparently unthinkable. Ugh.
YES!!! Right now I'm reading The Last Man by Mary Shelley (I'm going on this proto-sci-fi kick) and despite the fact that it's written by NOT ONLY A woman, but the DAUGHTER of a feminist writer, it STILL ascribes to the norm you stated above! I'm seriously fucking mystified. The only women in the book are wives or foils, which seems to be the only role of women in not only sci-fi lit, but lit in general. It only serves to perpetuate the idea that women's worlds revolve around men - whether they're pleasuring men or torturing them. The concept that women can exist OUT of the orbit of men is apparently unthinkable. Ugh.
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It's amazing how far we haven't come.
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