A reading question/poll about sexuality...

[celandineb]

I'm rereading the Darkover series by Marion Zimmer Bradley, and have been in a discussion with jillbertini where I've noted and have been trying to explain how/why those books (especially but not exclusively Thendara House made me aware of and okay with my not-straight sexuality

Comments

[stasia]

I've read some of them, including the Thendara House book(s) (and upon checking the Darkover book list, I've read more than I remembered. I do wish I didn't have such a strong distaste for Bradley herself, as I sort of want to re-read the books as an adult).

Anyway, I said that Darkovan society didn't change my reaction to non-straight sexuality, as my reactions has always been neutral to positive. My uncle, the main male in my life when I was a child, is gay and had a long-standing partnership while I was growing up. In fact, his partnership was the longest single relationship I knew about for many many years. I grew up with non-straight sexuality as a normal part of life and didn't learn that it was a "bad" thing until I was old enough to be horrified at the people trying to convince me.

I'm glad that the Darkover books show non-straight sexualities so clearly, though.

Stasia

ETA: Damn, I miss the older style of cover art. Wow.

[celandineb]

I don't know - have never really wanted to know - much about MZB as a person, so that has never been a factor for me. I think they're worth rereading (obviously)!

*nods* I have an aunt who had a long-term relationship with another woman (which has been over now for many years, but at one point when there was a family reunion, her partner was shown on the family tree that someone had created for the occasion), so there was that later on, but OTOH when I was younger that was never *talked* about. It existed, but wasn't overtly acknowledged, at least not to my generation (although my dad and his siblings might have discussed it amongst themselves).

[stasia]

I... if you want to know about her as a person, let me know. It's ... not nice.

Yeah, I don't remember my uncle's relationship being talked about much, but it wasn't NOT talked about. It was just, well, who Morrie was. No one in my family treated him or his partner any differently than any of the other family members. My family's a bit odd, maybe.

Stasia

[magnetic_pole]

Did you and jillbertini come up with anything interesting in your discussion? I didn't have any books that helped me think through my queerness, but I had one or two that helped me understand my relationship to the place where I grew up. The right book at the right time of life--or the right character in the right context--can be a powerful thing. M.

[celandineb]

Definitely! I'm going to C&P a comment I left for J. here:
I think what got me re: discovering sexuality through books was the matter-of-fact way that MZB presented characters who were not straight. There were conflicts (internal and external) regarding their sexual identities sometimes, but not always; the culture portrayed accepted that many/most (higher caste, at least) adolescents would form strong same-sex bonds that might include sex, and in fact those bonds were preferable at that age to heterosexual experimentation (which had negative social impact especially for girls, but to some extent also for boys; there's a double standard but it's not always as differentiated as one might expect). So the description of a society where it was accepted, even normal, to be bisexual - even if in some ways the expression of that was limited by age, i.e. people were normally expected to marry and/or have children after a certain age - reassured me that whatever I felt along those lines was not wrong, that there could be places where it was

[celandineb]

I should also say - MZB actually edited and got published by her own publisher volumes of short stories set on Darkover, written mostly by fans (though there was usually at least one by her, too). So although I didn't think of it that way at the time, she was encouraging fanfiction in her universe. Pretty cool really.

[koshweasley]

I've not heard of them. Are they a must read?

[celandineb]

Well, I like them a lot. They are mostly not a "series" in a traditional sense, in that you can generally read any one of them without having read others, but they're set all set on the planet Darkover which has a semi-medieval type culture, with a ruling caste who have psi powers; many of the books deal with the interactions between Darkover and Terra, which has rediscovered the planet after millennia (it was settled by a "lost" spaceship). There's really a pretty wide variety of type of story among them as she wrote them over about 4 decades. I'm not sure they're all still in print, but your public library might have some, or used bookstores.

[koshweasley]

Thanks for t he summary :) I'll have to check our library.

[mrowe]

I read a few way back when, but can't remember all that much about them. I've gone off MZB's writing a bit after writing an essay about Guinevere's role in Arthurian fiction at uni. The later prequels to Mists of Avalon pretty much cemented that aversion.

Heinlein for me

[julifolo]

Moon is a Harsh Mistress & some others pointed out group marriage as an alternative to monogomy, which made sense.

I started out reading MZB, but didn't always keep up as new novels were published.

I stopped reading when the introduction to one book (I forget which) explained that a certain town had a different geographical location in this book than another book(s) for plot reasons. pfft.

OK, I'm guilty of similar myself, but I remember thinking her reasoning seemed silly.