Commonplace

[brown_betty]

Discussing with Te the process of raising awareness about discrimination, and how it seems you're always meeting, confronting, and challenging the same person who always uses the same five arguments as to why it's not a problem, not that bad of a problem, not their problem, and geeze, why are you so angry? I keep on finding myself thinking of this

Comments

[ratcreature]

Maybe fictional humor would help for awareness raising? I mean, for example as a teenager at first I thought feminist linguistics and language critique was kind of silly, but then my brother gave me "The Daughters of Egalia" (actually I don't know whether that book even works in English since the language isn't quite gendered as much as German) which just reversed all the stuff and it was hilarious and eye-opening. Couldn't something like this work for racism too, to show how offensive some trope in fiction is? Or maybe just a subversion of perspective, like SGA fanfic from the POV of a Pegasus culture the idiot Atlanteans have unthinkingly ruined, or something. I have a hard time thinking of the right examples, but I mean the kind of fictional inversion tactic that makes you see how many stupid assumptions for "normal" you have and how offensive those are, but it kind of sneaks up on you in disguise, rather than coming in an obvious argument that you are inclined to deflect.

[storyjunkie]

"Egalia's Daughters" is the title of the English translation, and yes it works in English, but contortions of language are involved that I don't think would have to be in a structurally more gendered language. I read it for a topics in linguistics course, and I can't imagine it being something a local casual reader would pick up and read through without already wanting to "learn the lesson" (assumption governed by some combination of what happened to the story and language in the translation into English and my view of the American reading public). I do think the unexpected reversal holds a great deal of power, depending on whether its depth is "just for laughs" or not.

On the other hand, the situation does feel the solutions are "attractive, but impractical" more often than not.

[ratcreature]

Not to be nitpicky but I actually looked the title up and the UK edition from 1985 was titled "The Daughters of Egalia", the later editions were with the title you name, but I choose the earliest version to refer to it. But yeah, I can imagine that it comes across artificial in English. The book was fairly popular here in Germany, like it saw over 15 reprints since it first came out here in 1980, so I don't think only hardcore feminist picked it up.

[storyjunkie]

I'm glad it was more popular elsewhere in the world, as it was a great story, just really difficult to get through because of the linguistic changes for the first 70 pages or so. I got the title from the old class syllabus, so it sounds like the Prof. chose one of the later editions. Thanks for the info on the earlier editions - I should have used the internet ;)

[rubynye]

I agree with you. More than I could ever, ever say.

More importantly, I wanted to second your rec for Shards of Honor and extend it to the entire Vorkosiverse. :D

[brown_betty]

Attractive, but impractical. Alas, describes so many solutions.