From LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Fri Sep 10 19:38:22 1999 Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 20:50:07 -0500 From: "L-Soft list server at University of Illinois at Chicago (1.8c)" To: Laura Quilter Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF-LIT LOG9908C" ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Aug 1999 15:49:43 +0200 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Diane Severson Subject: The Sparrow and Children of God MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I just finished reading *Children of God* the sequel to *The Sparrow* by Mary Doria Russell. I saw that this group read *The Sparrow* in 1998 but after reading the archives I noticed that only a few names were the same. Is there anyone else currently on the list who's read them (one or both)? I've tried hard in the following not to spoil anything by making specific references to the plot but just in case SPOILER * * * * * * * * * * * * I enjoyed both books very much. But I was a little annoyed at knowing basically what would happen in the end. Russell's formal concept was to tell the story from two or more perspectives in the timeline. This had the effect that you knew that in The Sparrow everything turn out badly and that in Children of God everything turned out "well". It took a lot of the suspense away. But it didn't spoil the books by any means because there was plenty of other things to keep you occupied as a reader. The content was very philosophical. Not quite as religion-heavy as The Sparrow. One could draw many parallels to our human history and also to current events (to a certain extent Kosovo comes to mind). There were (like at the back of the Sparrow) Reading Group Discussion Questions and one of them was "How would you compare *Children of God* to the first Sandoz/Rakhat book, *The Sparrow*? Some reviewers consider *C of G* a much darker story. Do you agree? My answer to this question is a resounding "NO!" Even Russell comments that many readers thought that it was a much darker novel but (and maybe I'm alone with this) I just didn't see that. For the most part because of what I described above. Knowing the final outcome colored my perception of what was happening in the bulk of the book. I found *The Sparrow* to devastating. I felt a profound sadness throughout the entire book and that feeling overcame me in certain particularly bleak sections of the book. I was glad for the episodic nature of the form because the preparation for the mission was characterized by commonality of purpose towards something they all believed was good and right and also by joy of living then. But that was unequally (un)balanced by the utter awfulness of what happened on Rakhat and to Sandoz. And we knew from the beginning that the ending would be like that. In *Children of God* we find out halfway through basically what happens and who is still living after it is all over. The first half is about Sandoz "recovery" and from the perspective on Rakhat about change for what seems the better. It is only later that we find out it doesn't go as well as planned. But at the same time we find out that somewhere along the line complete disaster is averted and things stablize to a certain extent. Does anyone feel like discussing these 2 books more indepth? Diane -- Diane Severson Moerfelder Landstr. 108 60598 Frankfurt am Main (49)(0)69/624595 (+Fax) (49)(0)69/613371 Sent through Global Message Exchange - http://www.gmx.net -- Diane Severson Moerfelder Landstr. 108 60598 Frankfurt am Main (49)(0)69/624595 (+Fax) (49)(0)69/613371 Sent through Global Message Exchange - http://www.gmx.net ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Aug 1999 10:58:17 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: SMCharnas Subject: Re: The Sparrow and Children of God Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >felt a profound sadness throughout the entire book and that feeling >overcame me in certain particularly bleak sections of the book. I'm one of the (fewer) readers who felt a profound *irritation* at being manipulated in such a clumsy, obvious way by the author in this book. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * It simply never made an iota of sense to me that a person found in such a completely ruined state would automatically be assumed to be a murderer (on account of a very confusing but clearly accidental death) and a *pro- titute,* for crying out loud, when he's clearly a torture and rape victim himself. The "suspense" of finding out why he was shown endlessly tormenting himself struck me as tear-jerking to the nth degree, a heavy dose of masochism which reminded me strongly of a repellent masochistic strain I've only come across before in Slash fiction, specifically that version of homoerotic se- duction I've seen referred to as "hurt/comfort" (the "seducee" in this case being Father Edward (?), the one who is so certain that Sandoz was a dyed- in-the-wool villain and ends up all dewy-eyed over him. The world-building and the description of the two species on Rakhat was written well enough so you could almost not notice how simple-minded it was. And the joie de vivre of the expedition's members I found forced and over- done so that it became rather wearing (I really wanted somebody to cut loose and kick a dog or something). I also simply could not believe that a small-framed man could be repeatedly raped by gigantic lizard-guys, with no medical attention to the resulting injuries, and not die of rupture and internal bleeding. I mean, men die of rape by mere other guys in our prisons, you know? I just felt the author cranking up the volume to Abso- lute Deafening against all possibility, and the effect was to propel me out of the story cussing in disbelief and disappointment. >I was glad for the >episodic nature of the form because the preparation for the mission was >characterized by commonality of purpose towards something they all >believed was >good and right and also by joy of living then. But that was unequally >(un)balanced by the utter awfulness of what happened on Rakhat and to >Sandoz. The things that I liked or admired were the strength of the writing, which was considerable, and the depiction of the best-laid and best-intended plans going wildly awry through nobody's "fault" but because of basic misunderstandings. Maybe not surprisingly, I've not read COG, though I plan to get around to it eventually. I also want to reread THE SPARROW in a year or two to see if it strikes me differently; a book that so many people have enjoyed must have more to offer than I found in it the first time around. Since I can't now be outraged by encountering the flaws I mentioned for the first time, maybe I can see past them to more admirable qualities. It may be that this author is just too heavy-handed for me (or was so in her first book *be- cause* it was a first book). Suzy Charnas ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Aug 1999 23:56:34 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Joyce Jones Subject: Re: BDG Are we still here? A long quote from Suzy Charnas (with liberal snipping): "I think that part of our problem in discussing this book re- lates to various levels of "political correctness." The idea of abused women (not just raped and enslaved outright, but bound into impossible marriages full of various degrees of emotional and physical abuse) coming to forgive and even to love their abusers has come (at long last!) to be seen not just as "too bad, but the way things are" but as unacceptable It's to our credit as a culture that this "plot" is now seen by so many as demeaning of women and their rights to self-actualization; but that convic- tion, outraged by this book, drives us off and shuts us up Butler reminds us starkly and relentlessly that in most of the world people still live in cultures where a woman still hasn't the right to safely object to routine abuse by her husband (and sometimes her father and uncles and brothers). Vast numbers of women are still stuck in the position of having little choice but to find ways to accept their virtual enslavement or else just curl up and die (or be killed by some damned male relative "defeninding the honor" of his miserable family). This is really tough to swallow in any dose, and it's *very* uncomfortable to have your nose ground into it for a whole book's length instead of for the time it takes to read an upsetting article in a magazine, say. I think a number of women authors deliberately took this risk in the seventies -- we were trying to talk to each other and to readers about recognizing the depths of women's problems so that enough of us could get out of denial (and Valium) and start insisting on serious, real-world changes." You state this point very well, and I know part of what you write is an explanation for some of the more "uncomfortable" parts of your Holdfast series, but I see these as very different works. The problem with Wild Seed, the discomfort with the whole of the book, is not that Butler describes all the various accommodations Anyanwu must make in order to survive. That part was thoughtfully, even illuminatingly well written. The problem is that Butler does not present a regular woman faced with finding a way to live under oppression. She creates a super woman who is possibly immortal, intelligent, creative beyond the capacity of any known human. She can experience life through the perspective and being of other life forms, she can learn about disease and incapacity, and through the working of her own body, mind and spirit overcome them for herself and others. She is the ultimate healer; yet even Anyanwu with all her talent and magical ability must bow her spirit to the fist of the patriarchy. In acquiescing to her oppression she "settles" for a partnership with her rapist, the abuser of her children, the murderer of her loved ones. If even Anyanwu must settle, what hope does that leave for mere mortal woman? Yes, of course we know that sometimes survival in itself must be celebrated, and we saw that done well in Mission Child. But in Wild Seed Butler gives us a goddess and says even she is powerless in the face of masculine authority. Someone wrote of Doro's being defeated in a sequel. Unfortunately, unlike in Walk to the End of the World, as a stand alone book Wild Seed leaves the reader with no hope that Anyanwu will escape her oppression because there's no indication that she still wants to. I see the book ending with Doro somewhat changed. As Janice said, Anyanwu might have been the victor because Doro fully acknowledged how much he needed her and did agree to some changes in his behavior. She used her age old feminine wiles to make herself indispensable. But her spirit was still linked to his, she was still the lesser being. All the talent, characterization, and writing style in the world does not change the fact that a book which tells women that none of us has the hope of self determination is not only "uncomfortable" it is plainly anti-feminist. I'm rather offended at the idea that an insistence on granting women the assumption of full personhood is mere political correctness. I think it is the rock bottom of feminism. Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1999 13:17:58 GMT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Robin Reid Subject: Re: SPOILERS (TEPPER) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Jenn, >the Hobbs Land Trilogy is my favourite too, I read SIDESHOW first, then >GRASS, then RAISING THE STONES. >I know this was a rather backward order, but since the books are caught >together by only a few threads, it didn't seem to matter, and since SIDESHOW >is my fave out of the three, I got to research that one by reading the first >two, which was fascinating. And since Tepper's third book goes into detail about how all the times/spaces/places are simultaneously happening, or, there is no linear chronology, then the order of reading cannot be that important either! > >I thought that the wrong assumtions were quite good, because they showed >that even a formidable machine that had been dispatched by HOLICOW could >make wrong judgements, scary, because she quite often razed whole planets >because of native discretions. I think the story throws some "doubt" on the status of the Questioner (I'll have to recheck, but I'm fairly sure she does have an Official Designation) because of the fact that (as it turns out, and as she learns), her three "human brains" (she's a cyborg not a total machine) all come from young women who were killed in oppressive patriarchal cultures, and because the way we see the Consort (drat, I am so bad with names!) at the end "persuading" her using the rhetorical model he's been taught in the Consort school. That is, "machine" in the physical form of a woman (which is interesting in itself) and with "memories" of three human women--it makes sense that she would assume the oppresssed (the wounded alien and the girl babies) are oppressed because of their gender. And, as the Consort points out, "she" didn't wipe out the planet where large numbers of young men are routinely killed through wars because "she" sort of expects men to behave that badly, having a higher standard for women. How many of us set higher standards for women (including ourselves in some cases) than for men? > >AWAKENERS is my other favourite besides SIDESHOW, perhaps because it was the >first Tepper book I read, and was blown away by this strange world. I >thought it was a very intricate society, the complexities fascinated me. I'll have to go back and reread it again! > >>that Tepper creates--and I find her characterizations are often complex, so >>that there are "gaps" so to speak > >do you want to explain further? That the depth of characterization reveals, among other things, various characters' insecurities and "blind spots" that often change during the course of the novel. Marjorie's whole "thing" regarding her duty to the Church and duty to love her family and duty/duty/duty--her experiences on Grass lead to a major change in her character, and part of that is self realization about what she has been blinding herself to in the past. Sam Girat's obsession with his father--gone into in great detail and built up over time, and what it takes for him to learn differently. But he does learn! > >I'm pleased to say that after I realised there was a new Tepper boook, and >wrote that first message, my darling Mama found it at the library - great eh! >...so I'm only a chapter into it at the moment, but it feels as if the >Untouchables are like an Indian Caste... what do you think? Very similar. > >I know! and the interesting thing is that, when they reached the end of >their 'quest' isn't it interesting that we found a small group of humans >trying to survive as they always have been, trying to stay the same, and not >to change in any way if they can help it! and they were ill, and bent on >self preservation at all costs, this seems to be a real divergence from the >ecofeminist theme of Tepper's other books, that the animals had changed, >beomce sentient, yadda yadda yadda, but the humans hadn't changed at all! >except that they had become very ill through such close breeding. I think >Janice is really interested in this fact... Well, the other group of humans had changed--but you're right (and it turns out the monastary humans (?) are descended from ta-da government bureaucrats and officials who hid out in a secret enclave. Tepper's novels often speak very disparagingly of those who believe they are so high in the gene pool that any change would be terrible, or a lowering. >This is one of the things that I was talking about in reference to Teppers >unusual sense of humor.. I find her names really interesting! think about >Sideshow, they are such normal words, alot of them, that have become names! >it feels very whimsical, in such a harsh atmostphere, like in SIDESHOW - the >planet is called Elsewhere, the capital is Tolerance, and there we find the >Great Rotunda, beaurocrats from Tolerance come from Heaven. Near Enarae we >have the Seldom Isles etc. > >The acronym in SIX MOON DANCE is totally irreverent - HOLI-COW - what does >it stand for? Holistic something something something Council of Worlds. Humorous but also part of her didactic purpose (allegories tend to use names of abstracts to make a point. Tepper doesn't just write allegories, but some of her names are very meaningful, and you're right, do poke fun at pomposity). > >you're right! the strange names are merely a surface layer, underneath, the >cultures are still alot the same.. do you think this is subversive on >Tepper's part? I think so, but she's taking a risk. That is, only people who know enough to catch the referents see the point. Other would not--and for them the novels might be dismissed as "cute stories about other places not us." > >>GRASS--not only Catholicism (in the Old Catholics), but the Church of the >>Latter Day Saints (Mormons) play a big role. > >They also felt to me a bit like colonial Boers, what with the names, and the >confined nature of the seperate families on the planet.... or perhaps like >the big Pampas families in South America. Sorry, confusion. I see the LDS Church as the model for "Sanctuary" which controls Earth (the big cathederal, sanctuary, the beliefs about marriage, the important of keeping records of and reciting NAMES--and the idea that anyone can be "saved" even if they don't consent are all things I've seen in the contemporary Mormon Church). The Grassian aristocracy are not based on LDS. > >>what happens to the male characters in A PLAGUE OF ANGELS who sets off the >>the city with great plans, but ends up a ganger--what else could he do in >>that environment? > >The thing is though, that Abasio is an atypical ganger, he actually does >alot in that environment, he manages to get a high-status position with the >Purples - he READS! educates himself, doesn't have sex often, so avoids >IDDI's, doesn't take that many drugs, visits the country still. He survives >in the city environment with a very high standard of living, and is aware of >what is happening to others and avoids the same situations. He IS presented as atypical--but, no matter, there are no other social niches for him to occupy. The only social choices offered him are to stay on the farm or to join the gang. >I loved the archetypal villages in PLAGUE OF ANGELS, I think that this comes >into what I meant about Tepper's sense of humor too, she takes motifs that >seem slightly outrageous or whimsical to us, and puts them in a serious >setting, where they are totally real. Definitely. Robin ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1999 15:14:46 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Jessie Stickgold-Sarah Subject: Re: BDG - Octavia Butler In-Reply-To: <578.934579349@www7.gmx.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed This is a fascinating set of articles (in the transcript of the talk she's speaking with Samuel Delaney and, I think, some MIT profs: Jenkins [undoubtedly Henry Jenkins, prof of Film Studies I think] and Burstein [who I don't know]. A great deal of the material here is about literacy--also about communication, but very much about literacy and its relevance to social change and education. I recommend it. Thanks Diane! Jessie At 11:22 PM 8/13/99 +0200, Diane Severson wrote: >I just discovered an "authors statement" by Octavia Butler entitled >"Devilgirl from Mars - why I write Science >Fiction": > >http://media-in-transition.mit.edu/science_fiction/transcripts/butler_talk_ >index.html > >There is also a transcript of a talk she gave together with another author >(sorry I have a memory like a seive) at the same website: > >http:// media-in-transition.mit.edu/science_fiction ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1999 12:04:43 -0400 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Frances Subject: Re: Tepper Humor Perhaps it's a little broader, but I still get a blissful giggling fit every time I read the "Faithful Dog" sequence in "Marianne, The Matchbox, and the Malachite Mouse." Frances ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 00:01:01 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Big Yellow Woman Subject: Re: Survival (Butler) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit SMCharnas wrote: > > >Comparing Tepper and Butler: > Well, maybe that's part of what makes Butler difficult -- that in her > stories, survival *is* triumph, the only triumph there is; I've just been writing about this and thought these quotes resonate a bit. What is survival to a feminist? To a woman? To a black woman?Are we all sucked into that hierarchy of need where survival is has to be transcended before we can acheive "culture"? I highly recommend this essay to any who are interested in these questions. A couple excerpts: "For women, survival is a fundamental issue. Until we put survival at the center of our philosophical thinking, we are constantly at risk of having our theory-creation process lose sight of how fundamental is survival, rendering our theory irrelevant to our survival.^Å No level of posited survival hierarchy is assured: not our individual bodily well-being, or our community well-being, or our psychological well-being, or our intellectual aesthetic well-being.^Å We must conceive ethics--indeed, I suspect, all of philosophy--as a part of our survival." (130) "It is an accomplishment 'just' to survive.^Å That we are taught to see our mere survival as a personal failing of some kind is an insidious aspect of the very social and political arrangements that endanger our survival^Å. [S]urvival is neither an underachievement nor an embarrassment. It is an act of political resistance (not just personal strategy) to survive, and it is another act of political resistance to refuse to see "mere" survival as failing. Both of these are important acts of political resistance." (131) Ruth Ginzberg. "Poetry is Not a Luxury." Feminist Ethics. Ed. Claudia Card. Lawrence: The University Press of Kansas, 1991. 126-145. Susan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 13:29:46 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Big Yellow Woman Subject: Re: BDG: Wild Seed MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Janice E. Dawley wrote: > > Does anyone have any insight into the Biblical overtones of the novel? > It must be important that the three sections of the book are entitled > "Covenant", "Lot's Children" and "Canaan", but I'm so ignorant of the > Bible that I'm not seeing the connections. I *can* see that Doro is in > many ways a God figure, even to the "bright light" people see when they > merge with him. What does this say about Butler's opinion of > Christianity? Hm. I'm pretty rusty myself, but I'll give this a shot. It seems like "covenant" evokes the Old Testament/Torah God who Doro seems to parallel. God/Yahweh has a chosen people (the Israelites) with whom he makes a covenant, essentailly to protect and guide them.[I am using "he" because that is appropriate here]. This is obviously what Doro is doing in the first section--he gathers his chosen people and looks after them (although he often fails to preotect them, which is interesting.) Because of God's covenant, he leads the people out of slavery in Egypt--that is the Moses story. It seems that Doro sort of saves some of his African people from slavery, only to make them slaves of his own. Could we reverse the analogy of God/Doro and assume that God only chooses his people to use them for his own pleasure and his own survival, heartlessly manipulating them for his own purposes, enforcing their love through fear and constant threats of death? Sounds like the Christian God to me! As for the second section, "Lot's Children," it's less clear who "Lot" is supposed to be--pehaps Anyanwu. In the story of Lot, he is the only righteous man in a city that God is going to destroy because of its wickedness. God sends an angel(?) to warn Lot and his family to leave before the city is destroyed and they do. They are warned not to look back and, when Lot's wife does, she is turned into a pillar of salt. Merciful God, indeed. Is this referring to Anyanwu's fleeing Wheatly when she can clearly see that Doro (God?) is going to destroy her? One thing I liked about Anyanwu was that even though she treasured her children she was able to realize that she could no longer try to protect them from Doro, but that she was able to leave without looking back. "Canaan," I think refers to the "promised land." It could be thought of as heaven or utopia. Surely it's a place where Doro can't manipulate you any more. I guess Anyanwu has a hundred years of happiness and freedom at least. I have really been wondering about what difference there is between the way Doro and Anyanwu gather their people. I wanted to tell myself that Anyanwu was completely different because her motives and means were completely different. She is a healer who gathers these people because she can help them whereas Doro gathers them to use them. But even though Anyanwu refuses to manipulate breeding and is obviously a kind "master," it seems like the results for the people are not much different. There was no question in my mind that Doro was "God," but I saw Anyanwu as God too. Aside from the fact that she could (probably) be killed, Anyanwu's powers were in many ways greater than Doro's. It seems like his only abilities were to sense his "special" people and to change bodies, remaining immortal. I was reminded of a long conversation about immortality on the other list a while back--the point that was made about how everything depends on what you would do with your immortality, ie.would you use it do experience more and do good things and help people, or would you grow bored and cynical. It seems like Anyanwu and Doro definitely respond to their immortality differently. Doro just becomes less and less human, whereas Anyanwu continues to strengthen the family that she loves and to accept thier mortality. She keeps on loving and healing, whereas Doro is reduced to his appetite and his unfeeling pragmatism. His emotion at the end of the book seemed very contrived to me and completely inconsistent with what we knew of him. That this (apparent) resurrection of his humanity was sparked by his "love"(need?) for Anyanwu and that Isaac's insistence that only she could save him turned out to be right made it all the more offensive to me. I'm sick of women saving men from their brutality. Ugh! On page 14, when Doro first finds Anyanwu, she says something like "sometimes you have to become a master to avoid being a slave." I think that statement is central to what Butler is exploring. It is also an attitude that determines my own discomfort with this book because, as true as that statement might be, I feel that our response must not be merely to learn how to be better masters (i.e. a healing master rather than a manipulating one)but to question the notion that mastery and slavery are our only choices in how we will exist and relate to others. I am writing about Ursula LeGuin's book _Four Ways to Forgiveness_ now and she examines the way former slaves perpetuate the "slave mind" after they become masters. This whole paradigm must be dismantled. Of course it's not simple, and I really appreciate Butler's understanding of the ambiguity of power--how there is much more involved than just race or gender. Yet, as others have said, I just will not accept that "the way things are" cannot be changed or that we humans are inherently built this way. Since Suzy raised the issue of political correctness, I wanted to confess that part of my uneasiness in critiquing Butler is that I feel I must give her some epistemological advantage because of her identity as a black woman who surely has a better understanding than I of the dynamics of slavery. Is that so, I wonder? Or, rather, how does a white woman say, with respect, "You know more about this than I do, but I still disagree with your conclusions?" I really want to know..... Any thoughts? Susan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 15:03:49 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: teragram Subject: Re: BDG: Wild Seed In-Reply-To: <37B9AA1A.6C85@people-link.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Susan wrote: >As for the second section, "Lot's Children," it's less clear who "Lot" >is supposed to be--pehaps Anyanwu. In the story of Lot, he is the only >righteous man in a city that God is going to destroy because of its >wickedness. God sends an angel(?) to warn Lot and his family to leave >before the city is destroyed and they do. They are warned not to look >back and, when Lot's wife does, she is turned into a pillar of salt. >Merciful God, indeed. Is this referring to Anyanwu's fleeing Wheatly >when she can clearly see that Doro (God?) is going to destroy her? One >thing I liked about Anyanwu was that even though she treasured her >children she was able to realize that she could no longer try to protect >them from Doro, but that she was able to leave without looking back. While still in Sodom, Lot offers his daughters as sacrifice to the crowd when they demand the he release the angels to them. For the record, the crowd isn't interested in the girls, virgin though they may be - they're looking for the new boys in town. Still, offering up his young daughters to a mob to do with as they will never struck me as a particularly caring nor kind gesture on the part of Lot. It's also worth noting that after having fled the city Lot's daughters then sleep with their father (to 'preserve seed of our father') resulting in two sons: "And the firstborn bare a son, and called his name Moab: the same is the father of the Moabites unto this day. And the younger, she also bare a son, and called his name Benammi: the same is the father of the children of Ammon unto this day." It's all about bloodlines. meg *************** "When you drink from the river, remember the spring." ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 17:12:59 -0400 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Frances Subject: Re: BDG: Wild Seed > Meg wrote: > While still in Sodom, Lot offers his daughters as sacrifice to the crowd > when they demand the he release the angels to them. For the record, the > crowd isn't interested in the girls, virgin though they may be - they're > looking for the new boys in town. Still, offering up his young daughters to > a mob to do with as they will never struck me as a particularly caring nor > kind gesture on the part of Lot. I wonder if the Lord was pleased? And you'd think Lot would have realized angels could take care of themselves.... Frances ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 19:24:02 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Big Yellow Woman Subject: Re: BDG: Wild Seed MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit teragram wrote: > While still in Sodom, Lot offers his daughters as sacrifice to the crowd when they demand the he release the angels to them. > It's also worth noting that after having fled the city Lot's daughters then sleep with their father (to 'preserve seed of our father') resulting in two> sons: It's all about bloodlines. Oh yeah. Thanks for filling that in, Meg. For some reason I was thinking Sodom and Gomorrah was a different story, but I obviously didn't unearth my Bible to check. Considering what you've said, it seems obvious that Doro is the Lot figure, sacrificing his own children out of his warped sense of values (rather than righteousness) and having no qualms about incest at all. Bloodlines indeed. I thought that the issue of taboos in the book was very interesting. I found myself trying to get objective about my own responses to Doro's breaking them. I asked myself if the taboo of incest could actually be equal in kind to the taboo of milk drinking, for example. When Nweke can feel her neighbors, brother and sister, having sex, what would have happened if the girl had not liked it? Would Doro have still assured her that there was nothing wrong? Would he still have made them have children? I think so. Do others have any responses to the way these taboos being broken felt? Is Butler saying something about taboos? Susan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 00:26:44 -0400 Reply-To: releon@syr.edu Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Rudy Leon Organization: Syracuse University Subject: would you believe ... Jaran MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Obviously, I am *months and months* behind in my reading, but I am finally getting around to reading the archive on *Jaran*, and had some specific thoughts. I read Jaran well after the BDG, and had really mixed reactions to it. On the one hand, it sucked me in and I bought it, hook line and sinker, and couldn^Òt put it down. It has stayed with me for months, and I just bought the next book and started it this evening. It made me remember why I didn^Òt go right out and buy the rest of the series right then and there. I was really *really* bothered by the stereotypical depictions of the various cultures ^Ö it was the only place where suspension of disbelief failed me, and it was just so vary jarring. I went through the archives to see what the sages onlist had top say about it, and to my surprise, there was only one reference to it, and only partial: Way back on 22 Apr 1999, Petra wrote: The Chappali. Their description reminded me of how Europeans and North Americans perceive Asians, especially Japanese and Chinese. The different set of values and rules, difficult to comprehend and to make out, the different ways to loose face, etc. I am bothered - I wear my political correctness hat again - that they are presented in such an unsympathetic, despising way, so very much from the outside. I am bothered because - as I see it - in real life we will have to live more and more in a multiethnic world with many groups with different habits, values and rules living in the same area. And I don't think it helps if someone alien is only described as alien and never from his or her point of view. Or if for some reason it is not possible to switch to their point of view to describe the alienness in such a phobic way. I am sorry that I cannot express this better. What bothered me wasn^Òt just the depiction of the Chapalli, with all of their Oriental mystery and hierarchy and magical technological expertise - - not to mention their dangerous and subtle way of overtaking the world )please PLEASE read the sarcasm here!) ^Ö but of every single culture group I^Òve come across so far. In JARAN itself, there are only 3 ^Ö Chapalli [Asian, most likely Japanese], Human [apparently, generic, but in reality a multi-flavored/colored Anglo/Euro/US culture] and the Jaran [Russian. Reminded me of a cross between Marija Gimbutas^Ò Kurgans and a kinder gentler Russian nomadic type]. And in Book One, I came across some new culture on Rhui, got through about three pages of them, threw the back down and came searching for some insight ^Ö in those three pages, the most offensive Oriental, Medieval Muslim, harem owning picture comes through. While reading Jaran, I tried really hard to tell myself that the blatant patterning must have a logic ^Ö there must be some symbolic importance, some part of the story, carried in the transparent ethnic transplantations. Now I think I^Òm just offended. But I know I^Òll end up finishing this huge fat book, and if it really ends in mid-thought, I^Òm sure I^Òll go on to the next one, because I hate dangling endings^Å [and if something you can^Òt put down even though you^Òre fighting yourself over it doesn^Òt qualify as candy, I don^Òt know what does ^Å. Now what happened to that bag of peanut M&M^Òs^Å.? does anyone have any thoughts that might help me better enjoy my reading of these? Are Petra and I really the only ones who noticed? Maybe I^Òm just oversensitive, but it kept slamming into me like a hockey game or something. Or maybe the discussion just got really really sidetracked by a discussion of liberal arts in higher education^Å. Rudy Leon PhD Student Department of Religion Syracuse University releon@syr.edu (315) 425-8171 fax: (707) 982-1780 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 01:02:15 -0400 Reply-To: releon@syr.edu Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Rudy Leon Organization: Syracuse University Subject: would you believe ... Jaran In-Reply-To: <199908180424.AAA08520@mailbox.syr.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT It's only this one paragraph that's Petra's. Sorry for the poor formatting. Way back on 22 Apr 1999, Petra wrote: << The Chappali. Their description reminded me of how Europeans and North Americans perceive Asians, especially Japanese and Chinese. The different set of values and rules, difficult to comprehend and to make out, the different ways to loose face, etc. I am bothered - I wear my political correctness hat again - that they are presented in such an unsympathetic, despising way, so very much from the outside. I am bothered because - as I see it - in real life we will have to live more and more in a multiethnic world with many groups with different habits, values and rules living in the same area. And I don't think it helps if someone alien is only described as alien and never from his or her point of view. Or if for some reason it is not possible to switch to their point of view to describe the alienness in such a phobic way. I am sorry that I cannot express this better.>> Rudy Leon PhD Student Department of Religion Syracuse University releon@syr.edu (315) 425-8171 fax: (707) 982-1780 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 16:09:30 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: SMCharnas Subject: Re: BDG Are we still here? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Joyce wrote (snipped for length): >The problem with Wild Seed >is that Butlercreates a super woman who is possibly >immortal, intelligent, creative beyond the capacity of any known human. >yet even Anyanwu with all her talent and magical ability >must bow her spirit to the fist of the patriarchy. In acquiescing to her >oppression she "settles" for a partnership with her rapist, the abuser of >her children, the murderer of her loved ones. If even Anyanwu must settle, >what hope does that leave for mere mortal woman? >a book which tells women >that none of us has the hope of self determination is not only >"uncomfortable" it is plainly anti-feminist. I'm rather offended at the >idea that an insistence on granting women the assumption of full personhood >is mere political correctness. I think it is the rock bottom of feminism. Well, yes; my reference to "political correctness" was specifically tied to the subject of Whites criticizing a Black author's handling of the con- cept of *slavery,* not feminism, and of course I agree that personhood is crucial. When you put the rest of your argument as you have above, I am hard put to it to find a solid defense for WILD SEED. In fact, I'm not sure there *is* a defense, except that I think that in this book she was focusing so hard on the ramifications of absolute and immovable subordination and how people respond to it that she did not see, or chose to ignore, the specifi- cally *feminist* aspects of Anyanwu's struggle with Doro. Having sat in on several meetings at which Black feminists charged White feminists with not having a clue about the real, "rock bottom" issues of personhood for women of color, I'm a little hesitant to assess what Butler was attempting in this book and to pass judgment on it as harshly as you do -- although I sure as hell can't dismiss your objections, either, because I felt them too; enough not to want to see your post go unanswered solely on account of the sensitivity of the questions you raise. So that's my answer, for what it's worth. Can others here who have read more of Butler's work speak about feminist themes and handling of issues, or lack thereof, in later books of hers? I read the two "Parable" Books and thought they showed a feminist bite in positing a female prophet whose "religion" is *not* one of sweetness, light, and forgiveness but of grim, practical acceptance, and who gives up family life for social leadership; so much for the patriarchal tenet that women are inherently conservative, mentally un- original, and incapable of leadership. But I wouldn't rule out the possibility that this version of feminist awareness, easily recognizable to a White feminist reader, was not a primary target for Butler at first. She approached her material from a different angle -- a real-world slave history -- than, say, Joanna Russ or Marge Pier- cy; and that an early book (am I wrong in thinking it's her second novel?) like WILD SEED was a way of writing past the issues of slavery to a place at which this majority-recognizable feminism could move to share the fore- ground with other power-issues, as in the "Parables". Suzy ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 19:14:48 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Todd Mason Subject: Re: ARSLAN: Charnas MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" -----Original Message----- From: SMCharnas [mailto:suzych@SOCRATES.NMIA.COM] Subject: Re: [*FSFFU-LIT*] ARSLAN: Charnas There was also about this book a whiff (though quite rarified) of the male-homosexual-love-affair-written-by-a-woman strain that used to be common in Slash fanfic which made it feel somewhat "overwrought" and displaced, somehow, from its real concerns, and that also bothered me. Mason: I've wondered, since reading about Kirk/Spock porn in Joanna Russ's essay, why this mode flourished as thoroughly as it did (does?), beyond simple TREK fandom on the part of the creators...it seems almost too obvious to suggest that the fannish writers may have had the same sort of mental block, and a scary one, that you diagnose in Engh--the notion that only men could be actors in the world, politically/dramatically as in ARSLAN, sexually as in the Slash fiction. Charnas: But given all that, it's a powerful piece of work focusing in a unique way on the immense damage that Western "civilization" has wrought in running roughshod over just about everybody else in the world, "for their own good" of course. Mason: And also, the lack of wonderfulness of much of non-Western Civ...as Arslan, like his namesake, is from the "Near East," and thus a reminder that the "West" has no monopoly on insane patriarchy... ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 21:11:13 EDT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: "Demetria M. Shew" Subject: Re: ARSLAN: Charnas MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 08/18/1999 5:15:01 PM Pacific Daylight Time, Todd.Mason@TVGUIDE.COM writes: << agnose in Engh--the notion >> I have often wondered about this...but...having read "The Charioteer" and some other works...I can't help but wonder if the attraction is the escape from the man saves woman, brings home the bacon, while she cooks and has babies plot of male/female love/sex stories. Often slash stories are about equals (or near equals) whose relationship is cosmic, or tragic, or intense at some existential level. There is a tremendous relief in not having to have one partner faint, or need to be rescued, or scream at spiders (mice) and for real conversation to take place. I think the gender roles just take over in male/female stories and force the action into a familiar and perhaps slightly boring path. Madrone ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 22:33:15 -0400 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: "Janice E. Dawley" Subject: Re: BDG: Wild Seed In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 11:42 AM 8/13/99 -0700, Suzy Charnas wrote: >>after all, you can't change Human Nature! > >Until you change the human genetic map. Right. >The *really* scary question, to >me, is, once you *can* change human nature via interfering with the genome >technologically, what are the chances that "we" will choose to do this >with the intention of making our descendants less crazy and aggressive and >selfish and narrow-minded? Hm. I feel what I might call a "Butlerian pessimism" about the prospect. But that is because I see any such technology as being controlled by the same elite that rules today. I'm certainly open to alternatives! >Incidentally, why do you disagree on a scientific basis? What I've seen on >the subject from a scientific point of view still vacillates wildly between >total behaviorism and total genetic determinism (kind of like my own >opinions . . . ). One minute they've "found the gene for homsexuality," >the next it's all baloney, on and on, almost as bad as scientific studies >of diet and heart disease. As far as I know, all of the studies that have claimed genetic determinism of complex behavior have proven to be full of holes. And I imagine that they will continue to be, judging by the number of false assumptions and the amount of reductionist thinking that dog them. (A good debunking of "biological theories about women and men" is *Myths of Gender* by Anne Fausto-Sterling.) A stumbling block of such studies is that it's enormously difficult to define what we mean by a term such as "aggression" (or "homosexuality") in a way that will be scientifically meaningful -- let alone measure it! Personally, I think we need a lot more study of behavior itself before we can address the issue of how genetics affects it. ----- Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/ Listening to: The *Velvet Goldmine* Soundtrack "...the public and the private worlds are inseparably connected; the tyrannies and servilities of the one are the tyrannies and servilities of the other." Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 22:33:28 -0400 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: "Janice E. Dawley" Subject: Re: ARSLAN: Charnas In-Reply-To: <874BCFAAE5A4D211BA020008C70D100501484129@tvgradpo1.tvguide .com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 07:14 PM 8/18/99 -0500, Todd Mason wrote: >Mason: I've wondered, since reading about Kirk/Spock porn in Joanna Russ's >essay, why this mode flourished as thoroughly as it did (does?), beyond >simple TREK fandom on the part of the creators...it seems almost too obvious >to suggest that the fannish writers may have had the same sort of mental >block, and a scary one, that you diagnose in Engh--the notion that only men >could be actors in the world, politically/dramatically as in ARSLAN, >sexually as in the Slash fiction. Is it also too obvious to note that, for a heterosexual woman, imagining two men together might be "doubling her pleasure"? Much as heterosexual men often like to see women together? ----- Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/ Listening to: The *Velvet Goldmine* Soundtrack "...the public and the private worlds are inseparably connected; the tyrannies and servilities of the one are the tyrannies and servilities of the other." Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 00:28:51 -0400 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: "Janice E. Dawley" Subject: Re: Arslan In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 11:42 AM 8/13/99 -0700, Suzy Charnas wrote: >I truly hated ARSLAN, mainly because Engh chose to concentrate on >the fate of a favored boy while tossing away in the margins some truly >horrific treatment of girls and women as if *that* wasn't really worth >bothering with -- the one whose abuse *mattered* was this lone male. It >just made me *grind my teeth!* Very effective book, though, in other >ways. I guess it didn't bother me as much because I took it as a given near the beginning of the book (having skimmed chapter headings) that there were only going to be two narrators, and I knew they were both male. I was somewhat surprised at the dearth of female characters and the shallow way they were treated when they did appear, but I could explain that to some extent by the fact that everything we, as readers, know is mediated by these two, not-exactly-feminist male points of view. It doesn't surprise me, though, that Engh admits not having thought about it at the time. Hunt was also a character I identified with, so that mitigates the offense for me, especially as he suffered some abuse that is often reserved for females in fiction (i.e. rape). His experience of humiliation by and forced co-existence with a man who could charitably be described as a monster echoes that of many abused women. I didn't get the impression that his abuse *mattered* any more than anyone else's; at the beginning he is chosen, along with two others (both female), more or less at random by Arslan. The near-randomness of many events is part of what made the book so chilling to me. Now I am wondering: what would the book have been like if Engh *had* made an effort to think about women more? What if Hunt had been a woman? Hm. ----- Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/ Listening to: The *Velvet Goldmine* Soundtrack "...the public and the private worlds are inseparably connected; the tyrannies and servilities of the one are the tyrannies and servilities of the other." Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 15:20:38 GMT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Robin Reid Subject: Re: ARSLAN: Charnas Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 09:11 PM 08/18/1999 EDT, you wrote: >In a message dated 08/18/1999 5:15:01 PM Pacific Daylight Time, MADRONE: >I have often wondered about this...but...having read "The Charioteer" and >some other works...I can't help but wonder if the attraction is the escape >from the man saves woman, brings home the bacon, while she cooks and has >babies plot of male/female love/sex stories. Often slash stories are about >equals (or near equals) whose relationship is cosmic, or tragic, or intense >at some existential level. There is a tremendous relief in not having to have >one partner faint, or need to be rescued, or scream at spiders (mice) and for >real conversation to take place. > >I think the gender roles just take over in male/female stories and force the >action into a familiar and perhaps slightly boring path. A fascinating point which brings up the issue of the problems of "realistic" fiction and perhaps why "speculative fiction" (any genre bringing in fantastic elements and removing or downplaying realism) may be so satisying to SOME of us (although apparently not to the many feminists, or, should I say, feminist academics). Even SF stories which do not have the experimentalism (in narrative form) or open feminist experimentation can get away from this plot. Now that I think about it some of the feminist mysteries also do this, although some of the authors I'm thinking about are vulnerable to charges that their "female" characters act like "men." (Melissa Michaels (SF), Marcia Muller (mystery) for example). I think this charge is totally ridiculous because it's been made against ME, and is based on an essentialist notion of what "women" are supposed to be like. Some academics seem to be working toward arguing that some earlier work by women, while not 'science fiction' in its contemporary sense, is utopian in purpose and thus fits the parameters for "feminist sf/f." On another related level, the conservative nature of fantasy also gives writers/characters a fairly restricted range for female characters, which makes the efforts of some of the women writing fantasy to expand those roles (often through a Goddess based religion) interesting... Robin ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 08:40:59 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Joyce Jones Subject: Re: BDG Are we still here? Thanks Suzy for acknowledging my arguments. I rather overstated them because my "political correctness" button is easily pushed. To me being politically correct means trying to see all the people involved in a discussion as people, so it seems like a reasonable response. I'm a little surprised at your discomfort with the way white women discount a black author's depiction of slavery. Perhaps I am very naive, but I don't see how one would know the racial origins of list members. I was discussing some of your thoughts with my sister and said, "Of course, I don't know anything about slavery first hand." Then it occurred to me that no one on the list would probably have any such first hand information. Reading Kindred brought up some of the ideas touched on in Wild Seed, mainly that a person could be reluctant to strive for her own freedom because even if she achieved it, the consequences for her loved ones could be horrific. Also, I think the casual expression of power and control of slaveowners and the degree of that expression is one most of us can't understand. However, when I think of the lives of abused women of any color, I think many of the same totality of control would be found. For the individual to know that not only is she controlled but that so will be her children on down through generations is not completely foreign to women of any hue. It's a class rather than a racial knowledge, I think. But again, perhaps I'm being naive. Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 14:09:43 EDT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Sophia Hegner Subject: Re: BDG: Wild Seed MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 8/17/1999 2:06:05 PM Pacific Daylight Time, hagsrus@BANET.NET writes: << Still, offering up his young daughters to > a mob to do with as they will never struck me as a particularly caring nor > kind gesture on the part of Lot. I wonder if the Lord was pleased? >> I wonder if the Lord was pleased that Lot slept with his daughters. That just creeped me out. It's like one of the earliest recordings of child molestation, and the father justified it by saying, "You have to do this so we can preserve my seed." I wonder why he was considered so holy? because he kept it in the family rather than seeing prostitutes? Why didn't he just remarry if he wanted to preserve his seed so badly? Feeling a little shaken, sophia ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 18:41:37 GMT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Robin Reid Subject: WAS (BDG: Wild Seed), NOW Biblical questions Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" SOPHIA NOTED: >I wonder if the Lord was pleased that Lot slept with his daughters. That >just creeped me out. It's like one of the earliest recordings of child >molestation, and the father justified it by saying, "You have to do this so >we can preserve my seed." I wonder why he was considered so holy? because he >kept it in the family rather than seeing prostitutes? Why didn't he just >remarry if he wanted to preserve his seed so badly? > >Feeling a little shaken, >sophia Amazing what one finds when one starts questioning things in the Bible. F'r instance, who the heck did Cain and Abel marry anyway? Musta been their sisters..... THis reminds me of the time an innocent little question of mine about the historical construction of marriage led to a 20 minute impassioned debate among my composition students about whether or not Adam and Eve were married....... Robin ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 13:45:13 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: N Clowder Subject: *FSFFU-LIT* - Grim fiction Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I haven't read Wild Seed in a number of years, but I have been very interested in the recent thread about "grim" fiction. Not long ago I had a conversation with a friend who had just finished the latest Kindred book and was having a hard time resurfacing after her immersion in the Butler universe. And I can remember experiencing this myself while reading the Xenogenesis books. What was hardest for me was Butler's pessimism about human nature. I have admired and identified with her protagonists, but I'm not sure that I've ever liked them - if they were "real" people, I don't think I could take being around them much, though, of course, it's very difficult to think of these people disassociated from the grueling environments in which they exist. So why do we read Butler, when we come away from her gasping for air, or clutching our stomachs? (I understand that women have both fainted and thrown up from reading Alice Walker's Possessing the Secret of Joy. It may or may not be more feminist or uplifting than Butler's work, but I don't recall that that emerges until you get to the end of the book - so why do readers hang in there through the horrific events which occur about halfway through?) I think I read Butler for the shock, or the validation (or maybe both), of recognition. She takes me back to the time in my past when I was neither feminist nor free nor empowered in any sense of the word. We have all made our humiliating compromises. These are not things we like to relive, and odds are, not things that we allowed ourselves to fully/mindfully/honestly experience at the time. I feel resonances of the person-I-was when I read Butler's characters who are neither more enlightened nor empowered nor successful nor politically correct than I was. It's icky icky icky, AND it's a relief to know both that other people like that exist and that they are not so shameful that they have to be banished from literature. And for that I am grateful to Butler - but I have to take her in small doses. There are two stages to making the world a better place. One is seeing it as it is, and the other seeing it as we want it to be. Butler is working largely in the first stage, despite the fact that she's writing "speculative fiction." If you look at it this way, the question of whether or not we can "find a solid defense" for Wild Seed seems less urgent. Granted, many of us are heart-sick of the first stage. Butler's characters, over the years, have grown more conscious of the fact that there may be a stage two. In the early books, there may be no awareness of stage two at all. (This is the emphasis on "survival" that Charnas addressed in her post.) In Xenogenesis, stage two is formulated as: we aren't going to get what we want, but what's the best we can obtain? In the Kindred series, the protagonist actually dreams and (I presume, not having yet read the second Kindred book) actualizes her vision. (Butler scholars, please correct me.) She's a difficult writer and many will not like to see the universe (human nature) through her eyes. But she's also brilliant and utterly convincing and RUTHLESSLY honest within the parameters that she sets herself. No matter how horrid her fictional situations are, I can get through them because I sense the author's integrity. She doesn't fudge, doesn't lie, doesn't pretend about human nature (as SHE sees it) - and if she can stand to do that, I can go along with her for the ride. This is something that keeps me fascinated with Charnas's work as well. Nell Clowder ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 18:52:32 GMT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Robin Reid Subject: Re: *FSFFU-LIT* - Grim fiction Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" NELL WROTE: In the Kindred series, the protagonist actually >dreams and (I presume, not having yet read the second Kindred book) >actualizes her vision. (Butler scholars, please correct me.) IS there a second one? I missed it! Could someone give me the title! (I'm teaching KINDRED in my 202 class this fall and need to know.) THANX. > >NELL AGAIN: She's a difficult writer and many will not like to see the universe (human >nature) through her eyes. But she's also brilliant and utterly convincing >and RUTHLESSLY honest within the parameters that she sets herself. No >matter how horrid her fictional situations are, I can get through them >because I sense the author's integrity. She doesn't fudge, doesn't lie, >doesn't pretend about human nature (as SHE sees it) - and if she can stand >to do that, I can go along with her for the ride. This is something that >keeps me fascinated with Charnas's work as well. > >Nell Clowder Wonderful post overall on Butler. I completely agree with what you said, and it's probably why I keep reading Butler (although I do not reread her compulsively or at certain times). I'll also add to this: she does NOT "erotocize" these horrid situations. There are lots of books out there which deal with the same type of situation (sometimes with African American progagonists, but sometimes with women of other cultures in similar situations), and those books present the whole slave/master thing as erotic, and dwell lovingly on the rapes that ensue. If Butler does nothing else (and I say she does LOTS else), her work completely undercuts that kind of book. (I don't want to give names of the authors I have in mind because I don't want to give them any credit, but if you want them, email me offlist). Robin ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 14:27:56 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: N Clowder Subject: *FSFFU-LIT* - Grim fiction- Correction! Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I meant the "Parable" books where I wrote "Kindred." Oops. Nell At 06:52 PM 8/19/99 GMT, you wrote: >NELL WROTE: >In the Kindred series, the protagonist actually >>dreams and (I presume, not having yet read the second Kindred book) >>actualizes her vision. (Butler scholars, please correct me.) > >IS there a second one? I missed it! Could someone give me the title! (I'm >teaching KINDRED in my 202 class this fall and need to know.) THANX. > >> >>NELL AGAIN: She's a difficult writer and many will not like to see the >universe (human >>nature) through her eyes. But she's also brilliant and utterly convincing >>and RUTHLESSLY honest within the parameters that she sets herself. No >>matter how horrid her fictional situations are, I can get through them >>because I sense the author's integrity. She doesn't fudge, doesn't lie, >>doesn't pretend about human nature (as SHE sees it) - and if she can stand >>to do that, I can go along with her for the ride. This is something that >>keeps me fascinated with Charnas's work as well. >> >>Nell Clowder > >Wonderful post overall on Butler. I completely agree with what you said, >and it's probably why I keep reading Butler (although I do not reread her >compulsively or at certain times). > >I'll also add to this: she does NOT "erotocize" these horrid situations. >There are lots of books out there which deal with the same type of situation >(sometimes with African American progagonists, but sometimes with women of >other cultures in similar situations), and those books present the whole >slave/master thing as erotic, and dwell lovingly on the rapes that ensue. >If Butler does nothing else (and I say she does LOTS else), her work >completely undercuts that kind of book. (I don't want to give names of the >authors I have in mind because I don't want to give them any credit, but if >you want them, email me offlist). > >Robin > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 17:28:01 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: teragram Subject: Re: BDG: Wild Seed In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I wonder if the Lord was pleased that Lot slept with his daughters. That just >creeped me out. It's like one of the earliest recordings of child >molestation, and the father justified it by saying, "You have to do this so >we can preserve my seed." Sorry - my fault. The story is that Lot's daughters, believing that their only family trio has survived, get their father drunk, go into his tent while he's sleeping, leave while he's still asleep, and he doesn't know anything about it. I don't think it's really that plausible, but that's the way it's written. meg *************** "When you drink from the river, remember the spring." ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 15:10:18 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Jocelyn & Sheryl Denton-LeSage Subject: Re: WAS (BDG: Wild Seed), NOW Biblical questions MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >SOPHIA NOTED: >I wonder if the Lord was pleased that Lot slept with his >daughters. That >just creeped me out. It's like one of the earliest >recordings of child >>molestation, and the father justified it by saying, "You have to do this so >>we can preserve my seed." I wonder why he was considered so holy? because he >>kept it in the family rather than seeing prostitutes? Why didn't he just >>remarry if he wanted to preserve his seed so badly? >> >>Feeling a little shaken, >>sophia > >Amazing what one finds when one starts questioning things in the Bible. F'r >instance, who the heck did Cain and Abel marry anyway? Musta been their >sisters..... >Robin Or how about the story of Jephtha's daughter? Jeptha was away at some war or other, and he made a deal with God that if God would help him win his battle, he would sacrifice the first person or animal who came through his front door to greet him when he returned home. That turned out to be his only child, a daughter. When he burst into tears and told her the deal he had made, she simply asked for a couple of months' delay so she could hang out with her friends and come to terms with the fact that she would never marry. At the end of the time period, she showed up at home, and her dad sacrificed her to God. Now: this is a little different from the sweet and benevolent story of Abraham and Isaac, isn't it? Is it ok because Jephtha's child is a girl? Is it a warning against making rash promises? Is it a hint that God does, in fact, prefer human sacrifice to goats or some such? Help me out here, Christians. Sheryl, who still has her trophies for verse-memorization from church camp.... ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 16:21:56 -0400 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Frances Subject: Re: BDG: Wild Seed Sophia wrote: > I wonder if the Lord was pleased that Lot slept with his daughters. That just > creeped me out. It's like one of the earliest recordings of child > molestation, and the father justified it by saying, "You have to do this so > we can preserve my seed." I wonder why he was considered so holy? because he > kept it in the family rather than seeing prostitutes? Why didn't he just > remarry if he wanted to preserve his seed so badly? > As I recollect, and am quite open to correction (sorry, I don't have a bible in the office, though I always mean to bring one in to refer to during the discussions that do pop up in the best regulated environments): Lot and daughters ended up somewhere rather isolated, and in fact it was the daughters' idea to sleep with him, after getting him drunk. I suppose it was tribal as much as anything. There was an obligation on the males of a family to impregnate a brother's widow, to "raise up children to his name": the actual sin of Onan was in refusing this obligation, not in "spilling his seed upon the ground". The rest of that story is quite fascinating: I believe the widow disguised herself as a prostiture and ended up seducing her father-in-law, claiming (I think) his seal in payment so that she could prove the bloodline of her child. Frances ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 21:39:40 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Big Yellow Woman Subject: Re: BDG: Wild Seed: Biblical questions MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > > Or how about the story of Jephtha's daughter?....snip... this is a little different from the sweet and > benevolent story of Abraham and Isaac, isn't it? Is it ok because Jephtha's > child is a girl? Is it a warning against making rash promises? Is it a> hint that God does, in fact, prefer human sacrifice to goats or some such?> Help me out here, Christians. > Sheryl, who still has her trophies for verse-memorization from church > camp.... There is an excellent book for any of you who are interested in a feminist reading of these kinds of texts (I believe the Jepthah's daughter story is one of them). It's called _Texts of Terror: Literary Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives_ by Phillis Trible. There is also a book called _Slavery, Sabbath, War, and Women: CAse issues in Biblical Interpretation_ by Willard M Swartley that examines how the Bible has been used to argue on both sides of the 4 issues the title refers to. Susan (who got a good seminary education and then ceased to be a Christian and, most unfortunatley, still has a crucifix tattooed on her shoulder :)) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 21:52:05 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Big Yellow Woman Subject: Re: BDG: Wild Seed- Taboos MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Frances wrote: > > Lot and daughters ended up somewhere rather isolated, and in fact it was the daughters' idea to sleep with him, after getting him drunk. I suppose it was tribal as much as anything. Doro doesn't seem to need any such persuasion to have sex with his daughters, does he? Do you all think that Butler is making an argument that some taboos are there for good reasons? Isn't the fact that Anyanwu in forced into violating her cultural taboos about sex and food (the milk) and probably other things is a significant way in which she is violated? Is there a distinction for Butler or for us between taboos that are "superstitious" and those that should be honored? For example, it seems like religion is largely regarded as useless superstition at some points in the book, not only by Doro but apparently by his people in General.Of course with a master like Doro, who needs God? Susan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 22:19:44 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Big Yellow Woman Subject: Re: BDG: Butler, Grim fiction MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Nell wrote: > There are two stages to making the world a better place. One is seeing it as it is, and the other seeing it as we want it to be. Butler is working largely in the first stage, despite the fact that she's writing "speculative fiction." If you look at it this way, the question of whether or not we can "find a solid defense" for Wild Seed seems less urgent. Granted, many of us are heart-sick of the first stage. Butler's characters, over the years, have grown more conscious of the fact that there may be a stage two. In the early books, there may be no awareness of stage two at all. (This is the emphasis on "survival" that Charnas addressed in her post.) In Xenogenesis, > stage two is formulated as: we aren't going to get what we want, but what's the best we can obtain? In the [Parable]series, the protagonist actually dreams and (I presume, not having yet read the second Kindred book) actualizes her vision. Thank you for the great post, Nell. I keep wanting to comment about _Parable of the Talents_ but don't know if I can say what I mean without spoilers. Here's my attempt to do so: r.e. Nell's point that the Parable books may go more to the second stage, and also to Suzy's post that in those books perhaps Butler starts to write past slavery issues--I am not so sure. I actually don't think that it's necessary or even desirable to move past survival/slavery issues because I think that such a notion reflects a hierarchy of need where no one gets to have any kind of culture, including art and ethics, until survival is assured. As women our survival has never been assured but we have not been always limited to "mere" survival issues. Anyanwu makes a lot of compomises to survive, but she does a hell of a lot more than "just" survive. So the way I read the Parable books is that Butler is still very interested in survival and the kind of slavery that still happens all the time and she takes the logical consequences of that kind of slavery into the future. For example, she describes a new version of the corporation town that evolves in which people virtually enslave themselves willingly to corporations for jobs and a safe place to live--the caring corporations, naturally never allow thier "employees" to ever get in a financial position to leave. The threat to survival (the way the world is) in this series is still so great that the small steps taken toward Olamina's vision of the way she wants the world to be are squelched, or at least changed drastically. Others who have read the book may disagree, but without giving away the ending I'll just say that, in my opinion, Olamina gives up her vision in favor of a truly empty escapist venture. This is more grim to me than even the compromises Anyanwu makes. Doesn't Butler have any faith at all in our power to make changes, short of a genetic shift? Is Tepper equally cynical? Or is it that they still have hope, but not optimism? I'm not exactly an optimist, but I just want someone to say "Never Give up!" Susan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 22:25:41 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Big Yellow Woman Subject: Re: BDG; Butler MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Nell wrote: > There are two stages to making the world a better place. One is seeing it > as it is, and the other seeing it as we want it to be. Just one more thing :) Once we begin seeing the world as we want it to be, even if that vision is not perfectly clear, WE MUST TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR WORKING WITH OTHERS AND *MAKING* IT THAT WAY!!! "Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul" --Edward Abbey and I'll say no more today, Fight the power, Susan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 10:05:03 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Jessie Stickgold-Sarah Subject: Re: ARSLAN: Charnas In-Reply-To: <874BCFAAE5A4D211BA020008C70D100501484129@tvgradpo1.tvguide .com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 07:14 PM 8/18/99 -0500, Todd Mason wrote: >Mason: I've wondered, since reading about Kirk/Spock porn in Joanna Russ's >essay, why this mode flourished as thoroughly as it did (does?), beyond >simple TREK fandom on the part of the creators...it seems almost too obvious >to suggest that the fannish writers may have had the same sort of mental >block, and a scary one, that you diagnose in Engh--the notion that only men >could be actors in the world, politically/dramatically as in ARSLAN, >sexually as in the Slash fiction. A great deal of the slash fiction I've seen, or heard referred to, *is* specifically fan-fiction, and as such has to stay in the bounds of the original story. Most SF worlds that have large followings have predominantly or only male characters; if you want to write a love (or sex) story you've got to use the characters you're given. I've also heard people say that they used to bring in new characters of the "appropriate" sex, but that no one cared about them. I suspect that a lot of this genre is piggybacking on the original work, getting more out of the writing than you put in, because someone else has already done the character development, created the personal relationships, etc. Is there a substantive body of slash fiction involving original characters? This would, obviously, put a crimp in my theory; but I haven't seen it. jessie ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 13:13:12 EDT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: "Demetria M. Shew" Subject: Re: ARSLAN: Charnas MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 08/20/1999 10:04:49 AM Pacific Daylight Time, jessiess@RESEARCH.BELL-LABS.COM writes: << personal relationships >> OK, here's my wild theory. We are not designed to live isolated lives, and one of the reasons the slash fiction may be popular is because (as in Star Trek) it extends over decades with the lives of "people" we know...kind of like a village, or tribal experience. On the order of: what happens next? And remember, a lot of us who read the first Trek were from a generation where there were not only zip people of color in the media (Uhura was a first) but NO women in any but subsidiary roles. It can be hard to learn a new story format. Madrone ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 17:53:41 GMT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Robin Reid Subject: Re: ARSLAN: Charnas Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 10:05 AM 08/20/1999 -0700, you wrote: >At 07:14 PM 8/18/99 -0500, Todd Mason wrote: >>Mason: I've wondered, since reading about Kirk/Spock porn in Joanna Russ's >>essay, why this mode flourished as thoroughly as it did (does?), beyond >>simple TREK fandom on the part of the creators...it seems almost too obvious >>to suggest that the fannish writers may have had the same sort of mental >>block, and a scary one, that you diagnose in Engh--the notion that only men >>could be actors in the world, politically/dramatically as in ARSLAN, >>sexually as in the Slash fiction. > >Jessie replied: A great deal of the slash fiction I've seen, or heard referred to, *is* >specifically fan-fiction, and as such has to stay in the bounds of the >original story. Most SF worlds that have large followings have >predominantly or only male characters; if you want to write a love (or sex) >story you've got to use the characters you're given. I've also heard people >say that they used to bring in new characters of the "appropriate" sex, but >that no one cared about them. I suspect that a lot of this genre is >piggybacking on the original work, getting more out of the writing than you >put in, because someone else has already done the character development, >created the personal relationships, etc. Here's my question--I don't follow slash fiction, but had a friend who did. And we had an interesting discusison about how (at that point, about four years ago), none of the slash writers she knew were interested in picking up with female/female fiction using the TREK characters who were in DS9--she said the ones she knew were primarily heterosexual women (and Russ points out that the sex in k/s is not specifically homosexual/male despite the bodies both being masculine) who got all *squeamish* at the thought of female/female. Does anyone know if this has changed? Or is it still primarily male/male. Hey, I almost wanted to start writing it--good grief, think of the possibilities of Yar/Deanna, or Kira/Dax! Yum! Robin > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 15:37:16 EDT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: "Demetria M. Shew" Subject: Re: ARSLAN: Charnas MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 08/20/1999 10:54:48 AM Pacific Daylight Time, Robin_Reid@TAMU-COMMERCE.EDU writes: << Kira/Dax! >> This is a vague recollection but...when the last Star Trek started, you know, the one with the female captain (well, I haven't been watching!) it seems to me that the first adds had a female whose life span was only six years or so and I thought it suggested there was a female-female relationship going to be shown...anybody else remember this? Madrone ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 16:04:18 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Jessie Stickgold-Sarah Subject: Re: would you believe ... Jaran In-Reply-To: <199908180424.AAA08520@mailbox.syr.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit At 12:26 AM 8/18/99 -0400, Rudy Leon wrote: >I was really *really* bothered by the stereotypical depictions of the >various cultures ­ it was the only place where suspension of disbelief >failed me, and it was just so vary jarring. I went through the archives to >see what the sages onlist had top say about it, and to my surprise, there >was only one reference to it, and only partial: >Way back on 22 Apr 1999, Petra wrote: >The Chappali. Their description reminded me of how Europeans and >North Americans perceive Asians, especially Japanese and Chinese. The >different set of values and rules, difficult to comprehend and to make out, >the different ways to loose face, etc.... > >does anyone have any thoughts that might help me better enjoy my >reading of these? Are Petra and I really the only ones who noticed? >Maybe I^Òm just oversensitive, but it kept slamming into me like a hockey >game or something. Or maybe the discussion just got really really >sidetracked by a discussion of liberal arts in higher education^Å. I think I had a different reaction to it because I accidentally started reading in the middle. The later books begin to move into a exploration of the Chappali that is, if not actually more sympathetic, at least somewhat less subject to the Mysterious Oriental trope. Several of the assumptions made by the non-Rhuian humans about the Chappali turn out to be bizarrely wrong. When I read Jaran after the two-volume "middle" book, it seemed to have classic first-book syndrome, where the richly described cultures are sketched out in a rather flat way; a bit of a disappointment. On the other hand, because I had all that backstory, I could fill in and get more out of it than was really there. I haven't read the later books in quite a while, so I don't know exactly what's in them, but I do know that there seemed to be a different relationship (of both human characters and the reader) to the Chappali. In the last (third/fourth) book there are some really odd twists; I don't know that they shed more light on the subject, but they certainly shake things up... However, I can't say whether you'll like the later books better. I didn't see the portrayal of the Chappali in the same light as you. This was partly because I had so much backstory (including the tenuously connected _Highroad Trilogy_, written under the name of Alis Rasmussen) and partly because I grew up having to hear a whole different set of offensive assumptions about Asians ("they're so smart they're taking school honors away from our kids", gag, choke), so the ones you mention didn't leap out at me. I agree that the "human" culture appeared to be the standard white European style. But I've grown so used to that in SF that it doesn't really hit me anymore. (Perhaps that is one answer to why we continue to read Butler's books, even when they hurt: because in more ways than one, they show us another world than that which we normally see in literature. And isn't that why a lot of us read SF?) jessie ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 19:59:01 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: "D. Stone" Subject: Re: F/F slash fic was: ARSLAN MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Robin Reid wrote: > Here's my question--I don't follow slash fiction, but had a friend who did. > And we had an interesting discusison about how (at that point, about four > years ago), none of the slash writers she knew were interested in picking up > with female/female fiction using the TREK characters who were in DS9--she > said the ones she knew were primarily heterosexual women (and Russ points > out that the sex in k/s is not specifically homosexual/male despite the > bodies both being masculine) who got all *squeamish* at the thought of > female/female. Does anyone know if this has changed? Or is it still > primarily male/male. > > Hey, I almost wanted to start writing it--good grief, think of the > possibilities of Yar/Deanna, or Kira/Dax! Yum! As one who trangresses onto the slash sites with some regularity, I'll delurk briefly to report that f/f slash is gaining slow acceptance in slash fandom. Most stories focus on the ST:Voyager universe, pairing Captain Janeway with B'Elanna Torres, Seven of Nine, or Kes (the short-lived alien referred to by Madrone, who was actually romantically paired with another male alien throughout her tenure on the show.) I've also read Dax/Janeway and Kira/Dax slash, but that's a much smaller body of work. I have seen a few f/f slash stories using Deanna Troi and Beverly Crusher as well. I have friends who currently write slash (primarily in the Sentinel and Due South universes) who insist that slash is m/m only, however -- that the pure form of the genre requires that the story focus on a m/m sexual relationship. Such purists would also insist that slash must be modelled on an existing television show or movie -- that it's no longer slash if you've created your own universe and characters. What I find interesting is that many Trek and non-Trek slashwriters have currently abandoned their usual universes to write Qui-Gon Jinn/Young Obi-Wan Kenobi slash -- the site archiving these stories has grown to 500 works in just four or five months. I haven't seen his name mentioned recently (and perhaps others have already suggested his works -- apologies if so) but for those who would like an academic analysis of the slash phenomenon, MIT prof Henry Jenkins has written extensively on slash, its writers, and popular culture. His original analysis, "Textual Poachers," published by Routledge, is probably the best place to start. dcs _______________________________ dcs@ameritech.net, dcs@cs-g.com