From LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Tue Oct 19 13:30:14 1999 Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 11:10:05 -0500 From: "L-Soft list server at University of Illinois at Chicago (1.8c)" To: Laura Quilter Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF-LIT LOG9909E" ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Sep 1999 16:37:56 -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: BDG: Slave and Free -- Bek and the Man Problem Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" -- There are spoilers for *The Furies* in this post. -- Looking back at the first message I wrote about *The Slave and the Free*, I am dissatisfied by my comment that it feels somehow shameful to admit that Eykar Bek is one of my favorite fictional characters. Having just finished rereading *The Furies*, I better understand my original hesitation. On the one hand, the Holdfast series is an investigation of the relationships women might have amongst one another in a world free of male oppression. Margaret Atwood's comment about men's and women's stories makes evident how many more of these sorts of investigations we need. And in a way, characters like Eykar Bek seem almost like a distraction from the business at hand. But on the other hand, we are not Riding Women; for the foreseeable future, men are not going away. And I don't like to imagine that in order for women to break free of oppression we will need to become oppressors ourselves. Behavior, not identity, is what ought to judged. But must we make generalizations that may be unfair to particular individuals in order to take any truly effective action? I am struck by how these books toe the line between these two positions. The anger that Alldera and the other Free Fems feel is fully justified, but what ought they to do about it? It's easy to say that genocide is never warranted, even in response to genocide, but I thought Charnas did a great job of showing how emotions that have built up over years of abuse simply cannot be banished for moral reasons. Something must be done about them. One of our oldest means of processing such emotions is to exact "an eye for an eye", and that is precisely what some of the Free Fems wish to do. I have to agree that there are some offenses that may never be forgiveable. If I were given the opportunity to kill someone who had killed my loved ones, I would be tempted to do it. But then there are all the more questionable scenarios. What if the culprit is already dead? If they encouraged him in his wrongdoing, is revenge against his friends or peer group warranted? What if they didn't encourage it, but didn't prevent it either? What if they didn't know about his plans, but SHOULD have known and didn't take the trouble? What if they somehow benefited by his actions, even though they had no control over them, and might even have prevented them if they did? These questions hovered in my mind throughout *The Furies*. When the Free Fems return from the Wild, the men they face are for the most part not the same men as the ones they knew. For fems, conditions have changed for the better in the Holdfast (though apparently not through any moral agency on the part of the men -- fems are merely scarcer, more valuable resources), but the Free Fems relate to the men as if everything were the same. They need to "spend their ocean of old poisons," and this batch of men are MOSTLY guilty. Though I winced at the treatment of the prisoners and the use of epithets like "muck", after the impalement of the three fems, I too felt there was something justified about Reprisal Day. It was exactly the younger fems' trust in their kinder, gentler men that led to their deaths. Better then to trust in no man. But... then there is Bek. By most accounts, he is an amazing character. He begins *Walk to the End of the World* filled with the same ridiculous notions and prejudices about fems as the rest of the men. He rapes Alldera in response to her defiance. But then, miraculously, he begins to change! I can't express how affected I was by this section of the book when I first read it. Alldera, angry, despairing and reckless, speaks the truth of her experience to Bek. He listens, questions, and understands. Even in the present day, this almost NEVER happens; in the context of the Holdfast, it is even more remarkable. By the end of the book, when Bek helps Alldera escape from 'Troi, they have forged an undeniable bond. And in *The Furies* they meet again. Now Alldera is the master. A less realistic author may have found a way to affirm their bond, to make everything all right. But not Charnas. Alldera cannot afford to treat Bek like an equal. Her followers will not allow it. And she herself is conflicted. The best she can do is try to keep him alive. And so she addresses him as "muck" and forces him to kiss the ground at her feet. It hurts me to think of it. I want them to meet as equals, but... in the midst of all the badness, what can this one positive relationship mean? As Alldera says, "It's only because of you that I ever hoped we could all do better together. But you're a sport, a freak among your own sex, or maybe just a man so far out ahead of his fellows that your existence is as good as meaningless." (p. 277) Is it meaningless, though, if it motivates Alldera to resist becoming the sort of monster she despises? Perhaps E.M. Forster was naive in *Howards End* when he implied that if we "only connect..." in defiance of entrenched divisions, we will see our way to a better future. Economic and physical equality must be ensured in the public realm as well as the personal. But these books have affirmed for me (though sometimes painfully!) that no positive relationship can ever be meaningless. Thank you, Suzy. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Sep 1999 18:59:34 -0400 Reply-To: asaro@sff.net Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Catherine Asaro Subject: Comments on Ascendant Sun cover (X Post) Comments: To: FEMINISTSF@listserv.uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I would be interested in comments you all have on the cover for =Ascendant Sun.= Tor chose the same artist for this book as they did for my last book, The Radiant Seas, that we talked about last year. I had liked =The Radiant Seas= cover because it showed a woman in such a strong position, active, dressed in realistic clothes (no chain bikinis here ), and in a position of strength, leaping out the center of the cover. In this one, the artist (Julie Bell) did some coolly provocative things with role reversal. Normally in art, both old and new, the focus of a picture is the male character, even if he's not present. By that, I mean that the picture is presented with the male's view in mind. So women are shown looking off into space or in sexualized poses. When men appear, they tend to dominate the picture, or else they stare straight out of the picture at the viewer. Julie turned that all upside down in this picture. It leaves no doubt that the woman controls the situation and the man is the figure of beauty. This cover has startled people and created some controversy. I would be interested to know what you all think. I'm also interested what the guys here about it. Would you be put off by such a cover? Half my readers are men, so I'm wondering if they will pick up this book. Not that I'm saying Tor should play it safer on future books; I think it's cool that they are willing to take chances. But I do wonder how male readers will respond to the art. A message board for posting comments has been set up for responses, or you can reply to me in email if you prefer. Also, I really do plan to put up the responses folks sent for me to post about =The Radiant Seas= cover, which I promised to do last year! Thanks for you input. -- Best regards Catherine Asaro http://www.sff.net/people/asaro/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Sep 1999 17:39:38 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Keith Subject: Re: Slave and Free and Eykar Bek In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Sun, 26 Sep 1999, SMCharnas wrote: >snip< > One of the things that struck me in researching pastoralist and other rural > societies was their deep conservatism, and I wanted to portray a conservat- > ism based not so much in the Women's clone-reproduction (a facile SF > assumption, I think) as in the caution of subsistence societies about > changing what they know works for something they are promised will work > better. A reminder, too, that this well-founded scepticism about new ways > is with us still in many parts of the world, and is by no means irrational > or stupid, either. I knew I was getting more out of this than I was aware of! This must have become unconsciously at least part of how I thought of agrarian societies from then on, although not with anything near that level of reasoning. But then that's what good books do - yet another reason fiction (and visual art!) should be assigned with any dry fact oriented general course such as history, law, civics, etc. >snip< >> there just seemed > >to be no place for these books to go in the eighties and nineties. >> > Precisely. That was why I took such a long time-out of the Holdfast. >snip< Whew! I was very nervous about how my lit-major style would come across to an actual living author. In school, our papers generally assumed all authors were deaf, dead, or capable of writing but not reading and it can be a shock when it's brought home that none of these conditions is true ;). > >The only valid duties of government are providing for children and > >supporting artists :-) ! > > Great -- but don't hold your breath. > An attempted parody on the "collecting taxes and supporting defense" line, but it would be soooo nice if it were true. Kathleen (Now off to read The Conquerer's Child - prehaps just a wee bit late) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Sep 1999 18:46:42 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Keith Subject: Re: BDG: Slave and Free -- Bek and the Man Problem In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19990929163756.00696050@together.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Apologies for the misleading subject line in my previous post. I decided not to combine the replies and forgot to change the header. On Wed, 29 Sep 1999, Janice E. Dawley wrote: >> snip very well-reasoned consideration of problems of justice for oppressed<< > But... then there is Bek. By most accounts, he is an amazing character. He > begins *Walk to the End of the World* filled with the same ridiculous > notions and prejudices about fems as the rest of the men. He rapes Alldera > in response to her defiance. But then, miraculously, he begins to change! I > can't express how affected I was by this section of the book when I first > read it. Alldera, angry, despairing and reckless, speaks the truth of her > experience to Bek. He listens, questions, and understands. Even in the > present day, this almost NEVER happens; in the context of the Holdfast, it > is even more remarkable. By the end of the book, when Bek helps Alldera > escape from 'Troi, they have forged an undeniable bond. I was also impressed by the realism in Bek's comment, "I know you almost as well as you know me. But it's worth nothing while I have the power of death over you." and a little further: "Only in dreams can a man be an all-purpose hero. I don't have an extra lifetime to spend helping to heal up the horror between men and fems - or even just between us two." Although he does free Alderra, he is very clear before that that his own mission of justice preempts hers. This is all I would have expected of anyone of his intelligence and perception in that context - no man to whom an idea alien to the whole society in which he has lived will drop the focus of his life in a week or two and adopt the new idea wholeheartedly. > > Perhaps E.M. Forster was naive in *Howards End* when he implied that if we > "only connect..." in defiance of entrenched divisions, we will see our way > to a better future. I've probably said this before, but I've always thought the ending of _Passage to India_ was as appropriate to the situation between men and women: as long as inequity exists, it is the controlling factor, in spite of the decency of people on both sides and the sincerity of their desire for friendship. Kathleen ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Sep 1999 22:03:36 -0400 Reply-To: asaro@sff.net Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Catherine Asaro Subject: Well, I'm a dolt Comments: To: FEMINISTSF@listserv.uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In my last post about the cover for my book, =Ascendant Sun,= I forgot to put the web address for the cover (duh ). To find the cover, go to: http://www.sff.net/people/asaro/ and click on the link that say ASCENDANT SUN cover. Thanks! -- Best regards Catherine Asaro http://www.sff.net/people/asaro/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Sep 1999 23:32:31 EDT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Phoebe Wray Subject: Re: BDG: Slave and Free -- Bek and the Man Problem MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/29/99 8:35:59 PM, JDawley wrote: <> Thanks for this post... I concur with a lot that you say, and pondered the questions you pondered. Are there things that are truly *unforgiveable.* Well, personally, I think there are, and think further that some things *ought not* to be forgiven, that those stand as markers for the future. I felt that in the Holdfast books. There was no way the Free Fems could just forgive and forget, nor should they. And the fact that Charnas didn't take an easy way out was a satisfying way of handling the conundrum. Thanks, too, to Suzy for the comments about your process in writing these books. Very much appreciated and interesting. best wishes, phoebe Phoebe Wray zozie@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 18:27:05 0100 Reply-To: mayerhofer@usf.uni-kassel.de Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Petra Mayerhofer Subject: BDG: The Slave and the Free In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19990908002855.00711814@together.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT After our review meeting is (successfully) over I find time again to post. I am glad that the BDG discussion on _The Slave and the Free_ is apparently not yet over and I can still add my comments. Let me start saying that I liked the 3 Holdfast books I've read so far very much. I admire especially that we are never offered an easy escape or a romanticized view, unflinching describes it best (Others have said this (better) before). For this discussion I've reread the first 2 books and (for a change) I admired books even more on the second run. I remember that it was not easy for me to relate to _Walk to the End of the World_ (WEW) when I've read it for the first time. I think, the reason for my 'difficulties' with WEW was that it was so different from what I'd expected. The book is _not only_ a feminist dystopia, a criticism of a male-dominated society from the female perspective. It focuses much (more?) on the men - Kelmz, Servan, Eyker - who have a completely different agenda, different problems they are worried about. I read the book because it was recommended as feminist sf, probably because of that focus I had difficulties to connect to this second agenda. I wanted to be more open on rereading but succeeded only partially. I am afraid that I still do not take in big chunks of the book. I hoped for the discussion on the list but so far that other agenda is more or less ignored. I wondered whether I am imagining things. So, it was enligthening for me when Suzy Charnas wrote (on 23 Sep 99): > this book did begin as > an intentional, not to say gleeful, satire of the whole Nixonian ethos > of the time. > It was only as I got into things that I recognized the subtext about > sexism, and it could well be that I never got the meld of these two > approaches exactly balanced in the final draft. If you see seams > there, it's the incompletely covered evidence of this change of > approach. For me the books falls into 2 parts. The first part is mostly concerned with the 3 men: Kelmz, Servan, and Eykar. The second (shorter) part focuses on the situation of the women. The 3 men all rebel against the Holdfast society. However, I think that Kelmz and Servan are not appreciated enough (and I like Eykar very much, too). On 23 Sep 99, SMCharnas wrote: > And I'm glad you like Eykar (you too, Janice); I'm very fond of him > myself, > Now that I think of it, he and Servan are > the mirror pair, found in so much fiction especially adventure and > buddy stories, to the female pairing of Virgin and Whore, ie the Man > of Action and the Man of Thought. In the Strange Word's Review the 3 men are characterized as 'Honorable Warrior, Magnetic Cad, Sensitive Thinker' I somehow don't like these characterizations of Servan (Honorable Warrior fits Kelmz rather well IMO, what do people think of him?). IMO Eykar is also a Man of Action. After all, he escapes from Endpath, overthrows his father, advices Alldera on how to escape, etc. When we discussed _Wild Seed_ we stressed the importance of surviving. Servan is certainly a survivor, Eykar would never come so far without him, Servan does the dirty work for him (out of a sort of love). Why should surviving be a virtue when A... (name?) does it, and a bad thing when Servan does it? In addition, both times I read the part of the book told from Eykar's perspective I was shocked by how he despises his body, tries to overcome it, punishes it. Servan doesn't. Eykar cannot really enjoy anything (books excepted perhaps), Servan certainly can. That does not mean that I don't think that Servan is one of the bad guys in the book. Servan does not have any scruples, Eykar certainly has, Kelmz, too, but he is set very much in his opinions, not all admirable. What did others think of Servan? Did you perceive him only as bad? Have other list members understood the Holdfast economy? To me it is not completely clear. The juniors serve hoping to become seniors with all the attached privileges someday. Apparently some seniors are richer than others. How does this come about? And what's the exact difference between dark dreaming and the organized drug rituals? My experience with non-alcoholic drugs is nil, perhaps that's why I did not completely understand it. On 23 Sep 99, SMCharnas wrote: > The Strange Worlds review of WALK goes for the "the message is that > men are evil" and "radical agenda" line. This just makes me shake my > head and wish I'd done a better job in this book. For me that review was an example of how differently books can be interpreted. I wonder from what parts of the book the reviewer derived that message. It eludes me. Petra Petra Mayerhofer mailto:mayerhofer@usf.uni-kassel.de -- BDG website http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Comet/1304/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 19:22:18 0100 Reply-To: mayerhofer@usf.uni-kassel.de Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Petra Mayerhofer Subject: Meredith in _Dreamsnake_ MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT When I read _Dreamsnake_ by Vonda McIntyre for the BDG last year I missed completely that the gender of the character Meredith is never clarified. Others had to point it out to me. At that time I wondered about the German translation. Meredith first appears in the book with the paragraph: 'The rider urged the horse toward her. Meager light from bioluminescent lanterns and the cloud-covered moon glistened on droplets as the bay horse splashed through the shallows of the oasis. It breathed in heavy snorts through distended nostrils. The reins had worked sweat to foam on its neck. Firelight flickered scarlet against the gold bridle and highlighted the rider's face.' Now 'rider' cannot be translated gender-neutrally into German. It's either 'Reiter' (male) or 'Reiterin' (female). So, how to translate it? Somehow indirectly? Nothing comes to (my) mind. Introduce a footnote? As far as I can see only the first paragraph poses a problem, otherwise it can be handled similar to English (avoiding all s/he or his/her by saying Meredith all the time). In French I imagine it would be a bit more difficult to handle. A few weeks ago the German edition of _Dreamsnake_ was reissued (it was already published in 1979, the translation is the same). So, I looked it up. Surprise, surprise. The translator obviously did not notice the absence of gender signals and assumed that Meredith is male. He translated 'Ryder' with 'Reiter' and introduced a lot of er (he) and sein (his) where McIntyre deftly omitted them (subordinated clauses are usually not so much shortened in German as in English, thus there is the need for more subjects in the clauses where the translator then used he or even 'Mann' (man)). As I myself by default assumed that Meredith is a man I unfortunately ;-) cannot become impassioned about the translator's mistake but it's a great pity. Now I wonder whether Meredith's unclarified gender was not generally known when the book was published for the first time. If that device was discussed in the American SF community the German translator certainly would have heard and heeded it. Wasn't it? Was it more or less unnoticed? And does anybody know how it was handled in the translations to other languages? Petra Petra Mayerhofer mailto:mayerhofer@usf.uni-kassel.de -- BDG website http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Comet/1304/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 13:35:43 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: SMCharnas Subject: Re: women without men Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Jessie wrote: >the fact that women are never >able/allowed to live their lives without thinking of men, while the reverse >certainly isn't true. Some SF has come fairly close (I'd suggest that SF is >the only area where this can be done -- since it's so unreal! :) Exactly -- this is the great value of SF not only to feminists/women but to any group subordinated to the dominant group -- a value that it's hard even to perceive, let alone exploit and exploit well. >it's a tiny and difficult segment. Perhaps because the authors who come >close are those who want to talk about who women might be without men--and >it's hard to talk about that without explaining, or at least showing, how >much of the popular concept of "woman" is created in relationship to men. >Or to put it another way, it's difficult to describe "only women" without >resorting to "women without men" -- for better or worse. I'd be interested >in other suggesting for books that do fit this catagory. You know, the inference here is that the concept of "men" is popularly conceived of as created without necessary reference to women, and I think that is true -- but it's also a damned lie, a lie that masculinist culture has fabricated to separate and exalt itself above women. One of the things feminist fiction of all kinds addresses -- by intention or inadvert- antly -- is the enormous degree to which men *are* defined and in fact de- fine themselves in relation to women. In our focus on trying to get past the false social construction that women are defined exclusively by their relationships to men, we sometimes neglect to work the other half of the equation: getting past the false social construction that men are de- fined without significant relationship to women. It happens automatically, really -- we accept the masculine insistence that men are not significant- ly related to women (except by dominating sexuality, which is not a rela- tionship so much as a style of politics) when we create male characters. I did this in WALK: Eykar scarcely thinks of his mother but pursues his father come hell or high water. Kelmz barely considers that he a mother, let alone sisters, daughters, etc. This attitude is built into the cul- ture, of course, but still -- the only one of the bunch of them who con- siders any variety of relationship with "fems" is Servan (at least until Eykar is reached by Alldera), and that's because he's a natural rebel and an outcast anyway, and being outrageous is a point of pride with him. Even by the end, in CHILD, the men are still not thinking of themselves as de- fined in any way by relations with women, except in the brute politics of slavery which are subject to political change. Maybe because they must first redefine their view of themselves as men with other men . . . beyond the rigid heirarchies of the Old Holdfast. I can now see a couple of things I wish I'd done about this . . . except it would have made another book! Suzy ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 13:35:51 -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: Slave and Free -- Bek and the Man Problem Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Janice wrote: >-- There are spoilers for *The Furies* in this post. -- >Alldera, angry, despairing and reckless, speaks the truth of her >experience to Bek. He listens, questions, and understands. Even in the >present day, this almost NEVER happens; It happens often in our fiction, but usually among male characters from dis- parate backgrounds -- one up, one down -- thrown together under gruelling circumstances. Many "buddy" pictures fit, in a watered-down form, but the clearest example I can think of is that old movie with Sydney Poitier and Tony Curtis as fugitives chained together as they run -- THE DEFIANT ONES. >Alldera says, "It's only because of you that I ever hoped we could all do >better together. But you're a sport, a freak among your own sex, or maybe >just a man so far out ahead of his fellows that your existence is as good >as meaningless." (p. 277) Is it meaningless, though, if it motivates >Alldera to resist becoming the sort of monster she despises? His existence is crucial, but she's justified, in the light of her exper- ience, in doubting that his apparently anomolous humanity can be trusted as an indicator of the capacity of the other men to change. She's speaking still in the raw space of the war, which brought out the worst in men in- furiated (and terrified) by armed opposition from people they had always abused and despised, so it's not a calm, rational assessment. >these books have affirmed for me >(though sometimes painfully!) that no positive relationship can ever be >meaningless. Thank you, Suzy. The gratitude is all mine, believe me -- for readers patient, alert, and committed enough to stay a tough course through some hard, painful stories. A lot of readers can't, won't, and have told me so. Suzy ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 13:35:57 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: SMCharnas Subject: Re: Slave and Free and Eykar Bek Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Kathleen wrote: >>> there just seemed >> >to be no place for these books to go in the eighties and nineties. >>> >> Precisely. That was why I took such a long time-out of the Holdfast. > >Whew! I was very nervous about how my lit-major style would come across to >an actual living author. In school, our papers generally assumed all >authors were deaf, dead, or capable of writing but not reading and it can >be a shock when it's brought home that none of these conditions is true >;). So, vot makes you tink I'm alife, dollink? The net could be channeling me . . . hmm. Story, anyone? Nah, it's undoubtedly already been done. I wish more authors would get into this kind of discussion with lit. academics of all levels; it would be good for everybody. Suzy ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 13:36:00 -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: Slave and Free -- Bek and the Man Problem Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Kathleen wrote: >I've probably said this before, but I've always thought the ending of >_Passage to India_ was as appropriate to the situation between men and >women: as long as inequity exists, it is the controlling factor, in spite >of the decency of people on both sides and the sincerity of their desire >for friendship. I think there's a lot of art -- fiction, scripts -- making this point (about institutionalized inequity, not personal ones of course) very clearly on the subject of race relations in America (I like the way you put it, by the way). A TV show worth watching, because it proposes a pair of women whose friendship *does* escape this control, is "One of the These Days," about a black woman lawyer and her white working class best friend. Also the recent film THE GREAT DIVIDE, with Steve Martin and Danny Glover, and even, more clumsily, BULLWORTH. I sometimes see this conflict (between egalitarian and generous ideals and inequitous realities), specifically in regard to race, as the backbone (acknowledged or not) of America's national dis- course. suzy ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 13:36:04 -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: Slave and Free -- Bek and the Man Problem Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Phoebe wrote: >There was no way the Free Fems could just >forgive and forget, nor should they. And the fact that Charnas didn't take >an easy way out was a satisfying way of handling the conundrum. All it takes is authorial willingness to step back out of the way and let the characters hammer out an answer for themselves, instead of deciding an an- swer for them and then forcing them to conform to it. This is only a problem for authors whose characters never have enough life in them to move without authorial puppetry; or authors who can't stand the answers "autonomous" characters come up with. >Thanks, too, to Suzy for the comments about your process in writing these >books. Very much appreciated and interesting. Aw, c'mon -- this is the only fun we get, after the book is published! Besides, it only hurts authors and their interests when people see them through a veil of mystery and distortion. I like to throw a little light on the scene when I can (and please, people, tell me to shut up if you think I'm yakking too much here). Suzy ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 14:52:27 -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: : ANY DAY NOW & GRAND CANYON\\was: BDG: Slave and F ree -- Bek and the Man Problem: Kathleen MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" You're referring, I believe, to ANY DAY NOW, the often quite good (shockingly good for a Spelling production) dramatic series on the Lifetime cable channel in the US (Saturdays 11pm ET/Sundays 10pm ET); on Global (Saturdays 9pm ET) in Canada. Likewise, the film you're referring to is, I think, GRAND CANYON, starring Glover, Martin, and Mary McDonnell, Alfre Woodard, and Kevin Kline. Having all these references on hand is a good thing... -----Original Message----- From: SMCharnas [mailto:suzych@SOCRATES.NMIA.COM] Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] BDG: Slave and Free -- Bek and the Man Problem A TV show worth watching, because it proposes a pair of women whose friendship *does* escape this control, is "One of the These Days," about a black woman lawyer and her white working class best friend. Also the recent film THE GREAT DIVIDE, with Steve Martin and Danny Glover, and even, more clumsily, BULLWORTH. I sometimes see this conflict (between egalitarian and generous ideals and inequitous realities), specifically in regard to race, as the backbone (acknowledged or not) of America's national dis- course. suzy ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 17:28:19 -0400 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Frances Subject: Re: women without men: probably OT This may be a tad off topic (I do apologize if it's too far off base!) but I've had that odd niggle at the back of my mind as to where I had read fiction taking place in worlds without men. It suddenly dawned on me: all the way back to childhood, the "girls' boarding school" genre. Not 100% man-free, admittedly, but about as close as it could have come in the "real" world at that time (though I suppose an excellent case could be made for treating the genre as fantasy). A couple of other titles that have come to mind: Dorothy Sayers's "Gaudy Night" and Josephine Tey's "Miss Pym Disposes". Very much women running their own world, despite male incursions. Frances ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 17:16:01 EDT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Phoebe Wray Subject: Re: women without men MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/30/99 7:37:00 PM, Suzy wrote: <> So -- are you workin' on it???? phoebe ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 18:01:44 EDT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Stephanie Dumoski Subject: Marion Zimmer Bradley MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit For those of you who have not heard, Marion Zimmer Bradley died last weekend. There is board for those who wish to share rememberances at www.phantastes.com/forums.html ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 18:53:19 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: SMCharnas Subject: Re: : ANY DAY NOW & GRAND CANYON\\was: BDG: Slave and F ree -- Bek and the Man Problem: Kathleen Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >You're referring, I believe, to ANY DAY NOW, the often quite good >(shockingly good for a Spelling production) dramatic series on the Lifetime >cable channel in the US (Saturdays 11pm ET/Sundays 10pm ET); on Global >(Saturdays 9pm ET) in Canada. > >Likewise, the film you're referring to is, I think, GRAND CANYON, starring >Glover, Martin, and Mary McDonnell, Alfre Woodard, and Kevin Kline. > >Having all these references on hand is a good thing... HA HA HA HA HA -- ! Bring on the Alzheimers' meds! Thanks, of course you are right and I am -- browning out, or something. Actually, I kind of prefer GREAT DIVIDE to GRAND CANYON, so I guess some part of my mind just said, "Make it so," and hey, presto -- Suzy