feminism

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Guest Post: On sniping, women, and SF by Brenda Cooper

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There’s a lot of sniping going on across genders in our field.  Vitriolic sniping.  Shame on us. Yes, science fiction is largely male dominated.  So are a lot of fields.  I know.  My day job is in technology, where I’m a c-level exec. It wasn’t necessarily easy to get here even though I live in the liberal bubble of the West Coast where it’s easier than it is in a lot of places.  I’ve been living this conversation my whole life across multiple fields of endeavor.  Yes, it sucks.  Yes, it needs to stop. But sniping isn’t the answer.  Mind you, I’d be fine with sniping if it worked.  It’s kind of fun.  But as far as I can tell, it’s not effective. Yes, there are truly evil men out there in the midst of the current social fights, like whoever issued the death threats to women writing about feminism in the game world.  This is not an article about how to deal with them.  Jail time would be a great start.

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Diversity in SF Film: Things to Come (1936)

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This is my third post on diversity in Science Fiction films. I started with Metropolis (1927), and then skipped two decades to The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). Largely, my reason was that there weren’t any options for the 30s or 40s available on Netflix. Apparently, there aren’t very many SF films within that twenty year period.[1] I’ve decided to skip Frankenstein — although the novel is one of the first, if not the first, SF novels — because the classic film has more in common with horror than SF. I feel much the same about King Kong. Therefore, I settled on Things to Come (1936), which is based upon the H.G. Wells’ novel published in 1933 entitled The Shape of Things to Come. I know I’m risking a bit of confusion by going backward here, but I felt it was too important to skip. Also:  keep in mind that I don’t think I read the novel. At least, I don’t remember having read it.[2] So… Things to Come.

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Squeeing About Superheroines by Tansy Rayner Roberts — #monthofjoy

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There’s a lot to critique about the role of women in superhero comics and associated media — and I spend a lot of time and energy doing exactly that. But today, I’m here to talk about a bunch of reasons to be super excited about female superheroes, and what’s being written, drawn and performed either right now or in the future. 1) Wonder Woman It’s a really good time to be a Wonder Woman fan. We’re drawing to the end of Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang’s legendary run on the character, which was one of the few creative success stories to come out of the DC Comics New 52. I’ve particularly liked the heavy focus on Greek mythology, the retro and non-exploitative art direction, and the supporting cast. Keeping Diana mostly outside the rest of continuity for these comics has helped with the consistency of the story, meaning (hopefully) that they can continue in graphic novel format to be an accessible gateway to the character for many years to come.

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“Where Are the Wise Crones in Science Fiction?” by Athena Andreadis (Reprint)

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[This essay first appeared at the Astrogator’s Logs of Starship Reckless.] “The childishness noticeable in medieval behavior, with its marked inability to restrain any kind of impulse, may have been simply due to the fact that so large a proportion of active society was actually very young in years.” — Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century Until recently, women died on the average younger than men, primarily in childbirth – though they also died from overwork, undernourishment and beatings, like the beasts of burden they often resembled, or were killed in infancy for having the wrong hardware between their legs. However, this changed in the last few decades. UN records indicate that most of the world’s aged are now women (ignoring the “girl gap” of China, India and other cultures that deem sons a sine qua non). Concurrently, biology is (reluctantly) coming to the conclusion that grandmothers, particularly maternal ones, may have made humans who they are.

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Adventures in SF Parenting: A SFWA Kerfuffle

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Yes, I realize calling the most recent incidence of sexism in SFWA a “kerfuffle” somewhat diminishes the importance of the situation, but I’m going to try to make up for that in body of this post. As you may, or may not, know, I have two daughters.  They are 11 (almost 12!) and 13 years of age.  They are not considered “normal” by society because they are “geeks;” they are not considered beautiful by society because they don’t look like models; they are not considered equal because they are girls.  They are, however, white girls, so they’ll have more opportunities than a lot of people. My challenge is to make them aware that though they are “normal,” “beautiful,” and “equal” in MY eyes, that they are not necessarily any of those things to the broader society in which we live.  The further challenge is to teach them that not only do they not HAVE to be the former two (normal & beautiful), but also that they should, nay, NEED, to embrace themselves as amazing human beings regardless of what society tells them.  As for the latter (equal), the challenge is to fight EVERY SINGLE INSTANCE of sexism and bigotry that I come across so that they see that it’s one thing to not be equal, but it’s an entirely more awful thing to take that lying down.

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Feminism in Science Fiction and Being a Feminist Ally

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I had an interesting conversation with a good friend of mine the other day. She’s far more educated in Feminism than I — I never took a Women’s Studies course at the University, nor did I have many Feminist friends in college. (I was a geek.) Therefore, I read as much as I can on my own, talk with other Feminists, and form my own opinions. My friend stated that she firmly believes that men cannot be Feminists. They can only be Feminist Allies. She believes that men who claim the Feminist label are prone to use their male privilege to define Feminism, which is, in itself, a form of oppression. In short, when the oppressor defines for the oppressed what is oppressive there’s an instant conflict of interest. I’m conflicted about this, I have to admit. On one hand, she has a point. I think of this argument whenever white people declare whether or not something is ‘racist.’ It swiftly mutates into dictating to another person what their feelings are — dictating to them the words (and situations) by which they’re allowed to be insulted. So. Not. Cool. On the other hand, I believe Feminism must be inclusive in order to work, and telling men they can’t be Feminists is being exclusive. 

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