Women and SF
Annalee has a post up at io9 about a clueless NYT article claiming that women don't like science fiction and the only way the Sci Fi network could get women to watch was by expanding the definition of "science fiction." (You know, like how Democrats can only win by pretending to be conservatives, or something.)
Apparently the NYT forgot what it published 26 years ago: Women don't just like SF. We're right at the goddamn center of it.
The first person I think of when I think of "people who like SF" is my mom. My parents' house is full of bookcases and they're full of SF. The DVD and video racks are full of Sci Fi series, Babylon 5, the Alien series, etc. ad nauseam. When I think of other people who like SF, I think of sithjawa and other women I know. Y'all are way more hardcore than I am - this entry's going to mention only the most obvious names, as I don't know the more obscure ones.
SF is not just a spectator sport, either. Women write SF, and we're damn good at it. There's a thesis in me about marginalized peoples using SF as a way to create alternate universes. Octavia Butler, may she rest in peace, was one of the leading lights of SF, busting through barriers of class, color, gender, and even dyslexia to assume her rightful place. Joanna Russ wrote fiercely feminist SF during the first wave of feminism, exploring gender roles through the Whileaway stories, positing an entire planet of only women, fighting and loving and working - until men arrived in their spaceships and it all changed. Ursula K. Le Guin, another huge name in SF, wrote about worlds where men and women were truly equal. As in Russ's stories, labor - the make-things-with-your-hands kind, not the baby-birthin' kind - was a major defining factor in The Dispossessed: there is no concept of "women's work." Everyone pitches in to survive on unforgiving planets, and anyone with the capabilities can operate heavy machinery or be a scientist - or a parent or lover. A world in which the working class is the only class - science fiction, right?
(It's due to eagerly poring over my mom's bookshelves as a teenager that I stumbled across Russ and Le Guin. Thanks, Mom.)
Go back farther. Charlotte Perkins Gilman is remembered for writing a story, "The Yellow Wall-Paper," about a woman who, cooped up and ignored, goes crazy. But Gilman also wrote Herland, a novel about a women-only society where women reproduce by parthenogenesis and where, when male travelers stumble upon their world, they are astonished to learn that women could run a society themselves - and do it better.
Even farther back. Have you read, or even heard of, The Blazing World? I bet the author, "Tim," of that asinine NYT article hasn't. A woman from our world stumbles upon our neighboring world, which is inhabited by frog-men, fish-men, louse-men, all manner of fantastic (oops, I said the F-word) creatures; where battleships are built like honeycombs, to tessellate together and form an impassable bloc against enemy ships. (Isn't that a cool idea?) The Earth woman is made the queen of the Blazing World. Read that book, over 340 years old, and tell me that it's only SF if you expand "the" definition of SF.
SF is how women told stories about women wielding great power and standing on an equal footing with men at times in history when powerful women were still anomalies: Margaret Cavendish wrote The Blazing World 60 years after the death of Elizabeth I; Herland came out 14 years after the death of Victoria. Russ, Le Guin, and Butler found their voices in the second half of the last century, when women and people of color - in the Western world, at least - were finally starting to edge out from under the thumb of sexism and racism, even as the Communist experiments were already proving not to be utopias after all. (And of course that thumb's still pushing.) The '60s, '70s, and '80s were exciting times to be an SF author. It still is an exciting time to be an SF author, whether you're male, female, or some other identity.
There is so much scholarly literature out there about women and SF that I can't even begin to point you to it. But apparently five little words - "women don't like science fiction" - are still easier to swallow than an entire library of primary and secondary sources. Do not believe this lie. If you're reading this, my well-read and writerly friends, you probably know better than that anyway.
Have fun at Wiscon, everybody.
Apparently the NYT forgot what it published 26 years ago: Women don't just like SF. We're right at the goddamn center of it.
The first person I think of when I think of "people who like SF" is my mom. My parents' house is full of bookcases and they're full of SF. The DVD and video racks are full of Sci Fi series, Babylon 5, the Alien series, etc. ad nauseam. When I think of other people who like SF, I think of sithjawa and other women I know. Y'all are way more hardcore than I am - this entry's going to mention only the most obvious names, as I don't know the more obscure ones.
SF is not just a spectator sport, either. Women write SF, and we're damn good at it. There's a thesis in me about marginalized peoples using SF as a way to create alternate universes. Octavia Butler, may she rest in peace, was one of the leading lights of SF, busting through barriers of class, color, gender, and even dyslexia to assume her rightful place. Joanna Russ wrote fiercely feminist SF during the first wave of feminism, exploring gender roles through the Whileaway stories, positing an entire planet of only women, fighting and loving and working - until men arrived in their spaceships and it all changed. Ursula K. Le Guin, another huge name in SF, wrote about worlds where men and women were truly equal. As in Russ's stories, labor - the make-things-with-your-hands kind, not the baby-birthin' kind - was a major defining factor in The Dispossessed: there is no concept of "women's work." Everyone pitches in to survive on unforgiving planets, and anyone with the capabilities can operate heavy machinery or be a scientist - or a parent or lover. A world in which the working class is the only class - science fiction, right?
(It's due to eagerly poring over my mom's bookshelves as a teenager that I stumbled across Russ and Le Guin. Thanks, Mom.)
Go back farther. Charlotte Perkins Gilman is remembered for writing a story, "The Yellow Wall-Paper," about a woman who, cooped up and ignored, goes crazy. But Gilman also wrote Herland, a novel about a women-only society where women reproduce by parthenogenesis and where, when male travelers stumble upon their world, they are astonished to learn that women could run a society themselves - and do it better.
Even farther back. Have you read, or even heard of, The Blazing World? I bet the author, "Tim," of that asinine NYT article hasn't. A woman from our world stumbles upon our neighboring world, which is inhabited by frog-men, fish-men, louse-men, all manner of fantastic (oops, I said the F-word) creatures; where battleships are built like honeycombs, to tessellate together and form an impassable bloc against enemy ships. (Isn't that a cool idea?) The Earth woman is made the queen of the Blazing World. Read that book, over 340 years old, and tell me that it's only SF if you expand "the" definition of SF.
SF is how women told stories about women wielding great power and standing on an equal footing with men at times in history when powerful women were still anomalies: Margaret Cavendish wrote The Blazing World 60 years after the death of Elizabeth I; Herland came out 14 years after the death of Victoria. Russ, Le Guin, and Butler found their voices in the second half of the last century, when women and people of color - in the Western world, at least - were finally starting to edge out from under the thumb of sexism and racism, even as the Communist experiments were already proving not to be utopias after all. (And of course that thumb's still pushing.) The '60s, '70s, and '80s were exciting times to be an SF author. It still is an exciting time to be an SF author, whether you're male, female, or some other identity.
There is so much scholarly literature out there about women and SF that I can't even begin to point you to it. But apparently five little words - "women don't like science fiction" - are still easier to swallow than an entire library of primary and secondary sources. Do not believe this lie. If you're reading this, my well-read and writerly friends, you probably know better than that anyway.
Have fun at Wiscon, everybody.