From LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Tue Oct 19 13:30:22 1999 Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 11:10:08 -0500 From: "L-Soft list server at University of Illinois at Chicago (1.8c)" To: Laura Quilter Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF-LIT LOG9910B" ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 11:42:56 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Robin Reid Subject: CRP: FEMSPEC SPECIAL ISSUES/Jewish Magic Realism/International Women's Horror (2000) Comments: To: cfp@english.upenn.edu, iafa-l@ebbs.english.vt.edu, owner-melus-l@listserver.TAMU-Commerce.edu, h-pcaaca@h-net.msu.edu, sfuf@csd.uwm.edu, SFRA-L@ebbs.english.vt.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" FEMSPEC, an interdisciplinary, international feminist journal dedicated to creative and critical works in the realms of magic realism, surrealism, science fiction and gender-challenging literature and art, is planning two special issues: CALL FOR JEWISH MAGIC REALISM ISSUE: focusing on Jewish women's magic realism, fantasy and speculative works. We are looking for works that explore and transcend the boundaries between dream and reality in any media and form--from poetry and photography to personal essays and critical interpretations. Deadline: March 1, 2000. Contact the guest editor, Ruth Knafo Setton, directly for more information: RKSetton@aol.com ________________________________________ INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S HORROR Essays are invited on all forms of women's horror- texts, films, TV and other forms, from a variety of international contexts. Essays can concentrate on establishing ways in which women have been figured in horror and the kinds of cultural practices and beliefs which this springs from. They should also concentrate on examples of women's writing back against stereotypical horror representations of women, how contemporary women writers re-configure the vampire, werewolf, mummy, witch and Medusa figures among others. What kinds of social sexual and cultural messages are being sent in some of the lively contemporary women's vampire writing? in popular fiction? in comics? in TV episodes e.g. Buffy the vampire slayer and Xena , the X files and so on ? Essays will be refereed supportively and then authors will be invited if necessary to resubmit after alterations. Inquiries and outlines to : G.Wisker@Anglia.ac.uk copy will be needed November 2000 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 14:43:18 0100 Reply-To: mayerhofer@usf.uni-kassel.de Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Petra Mayerhofer Subject: Anthology _Women of Other Worlds_ MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT In the newest issue of Science Fiction Weekly is a (favourable) review by A.M. Dellamonica about the anthology _Women of Other Worlds_, edited by Helen Merrick & Tess Williams (University of Western Australia Press, AUS $29.95, Trade Paperback, Oct. 1999, ISBN 1-876268-32-8) (see http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue130/books.html ). Quote: 'Women of Other Worlds is a feminist science fiction collection that includes stories, book excerpts, critical articles, poetry, memoirs, and even a recipe (by Eileen Gunn) for an Ideologically Labile Fruit Crisp. Conceived at WisCon 20 (WisCon is an annual convention that's billed as "the gathering of the feminist SF community"), many of the pieces were read--in first draft form--at panels. The result is a book that conveys the energy of a good convention to readers who were unable to attend. Edited by Helen Merrick and Tess Williams, Women of Other Worlds contains stories by (among others): Kelley Eskridge, Nalo Hopkinson, Suzette Haden Elgin, Candas Jane Dorsey, and Karen Joy Fowler. [...] It also has essays by writers including Nicola Griffith, Pat Murphy, and Jessica Amanda Salmonson. The non- fiction topics range from the history of feminist fandom to gender identity and the many personas of James Tiptree Jr. The information is presented in formal academic essays and in excerpts from on-line discussions. Ursula Le Guin's guest of honor speech addresses her identity as an older woman in a youth- worshipping world.' I post this as I cannot remember that this anthology was already mentioned on the list. My apologies if there is a redundancy. The anthology is not yet included in the Amazon database and I also could not find further information on the WisCon website. The publisher's website (http://www.general.uwa.edu.au/u/uwap/) yields no further information. Does anybody know why it was published in Australia? I mean after all WisCon takes place in the US. Does anybody have a list of the exact titles of the stories included? I'd like to know how much overlap there is to stories I already have (by now I've got _The Women Men Don't See_ 3 times and I want to avoid such multiplications in the future), although the price and the logistics alone probably prohibit buying it anyway. Petra Petra Mayerhofer mailto:mayerhofer@usf.uni-kassel.de -- BDG website http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Comet/1304/ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 08:18:32 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Lindy Subject: Re: BDG--RoS MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Petra Mayerhofer wrote: > I liked this book very much. It is one of my favorites. Arnason's characters tend to be very real to me. > The gender concepts presented > intrigued me, e.g. men on the perimeter fighting, women in the > center doing the 'real thing', homosexuality as the norm, women > being on average larger than men. I am curious what list members > have to say about this. I rather got the impression that both men and women felt they were doing the "real" thing when performing their respective duties. > It was written in a very detached way. At least I didn't get > emotionally involved with the story, even in the end when a lot is at > stake. Strangely, I did become emotionally involved with the characters and the story. It never dawned on me that RoS was written in a detached manner. I will have to reread to discover why I connected with RoS when I could not become emotionally involved with "Mission Child," which also seemed to be written in a detached style. > IMO, Nicholas is the most > likeable character, he has a lot of charm. Nicholas and his Hwarhath lover (no book on hand, and I cannot remember the names!) are those I felt I knew best, probably because of the Nicholas's journal and his lover's comments on what Nicholas wrote: a marvelous choice on Arnason's part to expose some of the story in this manner. Such a complicated relationship! It seems an excellent example of how love can exist between those who are unequal in power/social/military positions. > Although most is told > from Anna's viewpoint, I did not get such a clear picture of her, > probably because while she tells a lot about Nicholas he in his > parts mentions her not so often (at least as I remember). I got much of my sense of Anna's character, and her society's structure, from her reactions to events and people: her satisfaction and joy in studying the cephalapod-type life forms, her curiosity about Nicholas, her anger with and fear of the military personnel who used her to further their agenda of gaining the advantage of their enemies, her choice to protect an "enemy" because she disbelieved in the "the ends justify the means" mentality of her military, the fact that she liked Nicholas and many Hwarhath people. I enjoyed very much Arnason's description of "Anna's" life forms, and I felt the grief Anna experienced being separated forever from seeing, being among, and studying them. > What do you think about the issue in the end, when the Hwarhath > decide whether humans are people? How did you react to that? It's always scary to consider not being "people" or "sentient" to another. I found the switch from my society's perspective of "it's wrong to kill 'people/sentients" to the Hwarhath perspective of "we can only kill or fight 'people/sentients' intriguing. (Or am I remembering this incorrectly?--as usual, I don't have a copy on hand to consult.) > In _Ring_ the > Hwarhath rules are not questioned by the Hwarhath despite their > contact to another culture. Until the extensive contact between the two peoples on the space station, the Hwarhath had only the information from Nicholas. What is the name of the Hwarhath character who is the storyteller/ playwright and who is also considered sexually deviant? Those who live on the social margins are usually those who question culture mores and rules. I think we meet few such characters because of the setting of the contact between the peoples: a manufactured station housing mostly military personnel. Lindy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 17:35:02 0100 Reply-To: mayerhofer@usf.uni-kassel.de Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Petra Mayerhofer Subject: BDG Ring of Swords MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT > > The gender concepts presented > > intrigued me, e.g. men on the perimeter fighting, women in the > > center doing the 'real thing', homosexuality as the norm, women > > being on average larger than men. I am curious what list members > > have to say about this. > > I rather got the impression that both men and women felt they were > doing the "real" thing when performing their respective duties. I've got a different impression, mostly from what is said in the last third in the book by the Hwarhath women. They expressed their uneasiness with respect to what to do with the men now that there are no enemies left to keep them from the center. The women fear that male aggressiveness will disrupt the society and hope for an appropriate new enemy in space. That means men are not the protectors of society but a danger that has to be neutralized. In the 'human' concept warriors protect their group from 'real' dangers (although that idea has often been challenged). In the Hwarhath society men only fight against each other, they never kill women from another group, even when one group wins against another. As I remember it only dishonest acts by the men of one group lead to the destruction of their family (and then the women and (small) children are not killed but forced into other families), i.e. even a group without warriors/men is not really endangered. So, while the men may think they do something worthwhile, it looks more like an illusion created by society/the women to keep them out. More tomorrow. Petra ------- End of forwarded message ------- Petra Mayerhofer mailto:mayerhofer@usf.uni-kassel.de -- BDG website http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Comet/1304/ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:12:21 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Lyla Miklos Subject: Babylon 5 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Hello Everyone! This is completely off topic, but I really really wanted to share. This weekend I finished the last book in a trilogy by J. Gregory Keyes. It was a blast! It was all about the history of the PSI CORPS in the Bab 5 universe. In the Bab 5 universe Telepaths came in to being because a very powerful and ancient alien race called the Vorlons needed a weapon to fight their greatest enemy - The Shadows. That weapon was telepaths. So suddenly telepaths start popping up all over Earth and the first book is about how Earth reacts to this new breed of people and how they control them - hence the title The Birth of The PSI CORP. The second book is all about the history of Alfred Bester. The coolest reoccuring charcter in the Bab 5 universe. He is a PSI COP. The last book is about what happens to Bester and the PSI CORP after the fallout from the Telepath War and the Drakh Plague. If you love BaB 5 this book is most certainly for you. Even if you aren't into Bab 5 this is stil a riveting series and just a really good read. I know it isn't even slightly feminist, but it was a lot of fun to read and I haven't read any books based on TV shows that were this well done in a long while. Lyla Miklos ===== __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 14:44:50 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Robin Reid Subject: cfp: Personal Narrative/Women & Weight (Anthology; 2/10/2000) Comments: To: cfp@english.upenn.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Aloha, I am putting together an anthology of women's personal accounts of their relationship to food, weight and body image. The book will focus on how it feels to be in a female body in our appearance-obsessed culture. As a psychotherapist specializing in women's body image issues, I have brought to this work my personal struggle and success with an eating disorder. Would you please consider writing your personal story for my book? I am looking for honest, heartfelt writings. If you know others who may be interested in contributing, please share this information. Stories must be double-spaced and may run any length. Please type your name, address, phone, fax & e-mail in the upper left-hand corner of the first page. You may submit by mail, on disk, or e-mail. Please use Microsoft Word for e-mail attachments or disk submissions, if possible. Deadline is February 10, 2000. Please send your writing and a one-paragraph biography to: Sande Greene 435 Kalalau Place Kihei, HI 96753 (808) 879-0657; FAX (808) 891-1094 E-mail: oceanbrz@maui.net (Please use Microsoft Word for attachments). Also, if you have or find any quotes that would work for this book, please send them along as well. May I receive your story soon? Thanks for taking the time. I am convinced this book will help many of us to end the isolation, hatred and shame we have felt about our bodies, and end the silence and competition between women around food, weight and body image issues. Mahalo, Sande Greene/Editor "What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open." Muriel Rukeyser ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 17:17:43 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: SMCharnas Subject: Re: cfp: Personal Narrative/Women & Weight (Anthology; 2/10/2000) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Aloha, > >I am putting together an anthology of women's personal accounts of their >relationship to food, weight and body image. (snip) >Would you please consider writing your personal story for my book? I am >looking for honest, heartfelt writings. If you know others who may be >interested in contributing, please share this information. Just a note, from a professional point of view: people need to ask the editor what/how she plans to pay her contributors, and then decide whether they wish to send material on that basis. Novice editors (which I assume this person to be on the evidence at hand) have a tendency to space the issue of payment, and while that may not prove an issue here upon further inquiry, it never hurts to ask. In my view, writing about your own life is a) work and b) valuable in itself, and deserves compensation -- unless you specifically waive personal recompense, for whatever reason; unless the editor proposes to distribute the completed book free of charge for the good of readers at large, which is not a situation I have encountered be- fore. Suzy Charnas ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 09:40:53 +1000 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Nicole Bourke Organization: Griffith University Subject: Women of Other Worlds Anthology MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT In particular to Peta, but ... I have a copy of the 'women of Other Worlds' anthology, which I bought recently while in Perth. As far as why it was published in Aus ... ?? Can't say really, except that Tess and Helen apparently went to WisCon specially and were so excited and inspired they decided to put it together ... if you want to know what's in it let me know. Some really damn interesting stuff ... mostly *not* fiction, but commentary and interviews and other stuff Nike ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 08:14:55 +0100 Reply-To: billinger@enterprise.net Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Elizabeth Billinger Subject: Re: Anthology _Women of Other Worlds_ In-Reply-To: <199910121243.OAA11824@cserv.usf.uni-kassel.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > no further information. Does anybody know why it was published in > Australia? I mean after all WisCon takes place in the US. Does Presumably because Helen and Tess are Australian - it was launched at Aussiecon III last month. > anybody have a list of the exact titles of the stories included? I'd > like to know how much overlap there is to stories I already have (by > now I've got _The Women Men Don't See_ 3 times and I want to > avoid such multiplications in the future), although the price and the > logistics alone probably prohibit buying it anyway. Fiction in the book: Handwork, Rebecca Marjesdatter The small black box of morality, Eleanor Arnason And she was the word, Tess WIlliams And Salome danced, Kelly Eskridge The kidnapping of Baroness, Katherine MacLean Home by the sea, Elisabeth Vonarburg A habit of waste, Nalo Hopkinson Hush my mouth, Suzette Haden Elgin The universe of things, Gywneth Jones The Marianas Islands, Karen Joy Fowler Dvorzjak symphony, Candas Jane Dorsey She undoes, Greer Gilman But what about all the essays and other non-fiction in the collection? I've not read it all yet, but I think it would probably be worth it, even if you do have all the stories already. I did start typing out the rest of the contents, but it was turning into a massive post. I could email a list if you/anyone wants. Lizbeth ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 06:36:38 PDT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Daniel Krashin Subject: BDG: ROS Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed >Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 17:35:02 0100 >From: Petra Mayerhofer >Subject: BDG Ring of Swords Someone, not Petra, said: > > > The gender concepts presented > > > intrigued me, e.g. men on the perimeter fighting, women in the > > > center doing the 'real thing', homosexuality as the norm, women > > > being on average larger than men. I am curious what list members > > > have to say about this. Interesting, but I would point out that it is not particularly new, even for us humans... other than the matriarchy and the size difference between men and women, the other features of society could be found in ancient Greece, say, in Sparta: all Spartan men were in the army from adolescence to old age, and might be called upon at any time to defend their home. Spartans were proud of the fact that no Spartan woman had seen the smoke from an enemy's campfire in centuries. Sounds kind of like a Ring of Swords, eh? Same-sex love relationships, too. > > I rather got the impression that both men and women felt they were > > doing the "real" thing when performing their respective duties. > >I've got a different impression, mostly from what is said in the last >third in the book by the Hwarhath women. They expressed their >uneasiness with respect to what to do with the men now that there >are no enemies left to keep them from the center. The women fear >that male aggressiveness will disrupt the society and hope for an >appropriate new enemy in space. That means men are not the >protectors of society but a danger that has to be neutralized. Well, sort of. The Hwarhath males don't seem that dangerous to me where they are; but if they were brought into the center of society from the periphery, they might demand more say in how civilian society is run. That is the threat the males pose to female power, and another reason for the females to keep them busy at the periphery. (I was half expecting them to get the males fighting each other, as in _Gate to Women's Country_, but I suppose that would be too dangerous with interstellar war.) Did anyone else think that both the human and Hwarhath military establishments were as dumb as two bags of hammers? Danny K ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 15:51:34 0100 Reply-To: mayerhofer@usf.uni-kassel.de Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Petra Mayerhofer Subject: Re: BDG Ring of Swords In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT In the last week it happened 2 times that list members _unintentionally_ sent responses to messages from me not to the whole list but only to me. I checked: for some reason in my postings to the list (and not in those by others) my address is given as reply address and not the list address. I will check how this comes about, but ask you, too, to check the address when you reply to my messages. On 12 Oct 99, Lindy wrote (in response to me): > > What do you think about the issue in the end, when the Hwarhath > > decide whether humans are people? How did you react to that? > > It's always scary to consider not being "people" or "sentient" to > another. I found the switch from my society's perspective of "it's > wrong to kill 'people/sentients" to the Hwarhath perspective of "we > can only kill or fight 'people/sentients' intriguing. Sentient as far as I know only refers to whether somebody can feel something, most notably pain. That means mammals are sentient but not insects (to our knowledge). Another important distinction is whether somebody has consciousness (if you use that term in English). All this is ad nauseum discussed around the questions who has the right to live and who (also animals) can be killed (Peter Singer & Co.). The Hwarhath make another distinction: only those who adhere to a certain ethic are people. They modify this definition at the end of the book because for them humans are obviously people although we are amoralic from their ethical viewpoint. It's intriguing to imagine how this perspective came about. Some months ago I've read Barbara Ehrenreich's _Blood Rituals_ (that's the English titel I think). Ehrenreich stresses that early hominids were not hunters but hunted (I don't think that the idea is completely new, but it's most often downplayed or ignored). From that follows a lot in our mental make-up. Humans have the experience that they are hunted, killed and eaten by non-conscious beings, animals. And they fight back. So, we have never developed the ethic that it is not allowable to fight, to make war against non-conscious beings. We are a bit more reluctant with people with consciousness. An important strategy in many wars (not all) was to 'dehumanize' the enemy, to reduce him to the status of an animal, and thus to kill him like vermin. The Hwarhath certainly _don't_ do that. So what different experiences do they have? From Ehrenreich's thesis I conclude that they cannot have the experience to be hunted by others. That they always were the strongest and biggest on their planet. What do you think? On 12 Oct 99, SMCharnas wrote: > Petra wrote (responding to someone, lost the name, sorry), I am sorry. It was my oversight. It was in response to Lindy. > Compare this basically anti-feminist, > anti-humanist platform (we are all helpless little machines run by our > genetic programming, so nobody's to blame for our un- changeable > imbalance of power which just happens to massively favor males) with > Arnason's formulation, which I read as, "Men are inherently war-like, > so women must distance males and their societally disruptive behavior > in order for society to prosper." Beautifully said. I always wonder when people state that men are inherently much more aggressive than women and that women simply have to live with that (and bear the results). If one really believes that (and I don't) one would HAVE TO DO something about it, like e.g. keeping men in concentration camps as the aggressive animals they are (from that viewpoint). That's how I understood _The Gate to Women's Country_. Men are actually imprisoned (without realizing it) and their aggressiveness is bred out of them. Arnason presents another option. Petra Petra Mayerhofer mailto:mayerhofer@usf.uni-kassel.de -- BDG website http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Comet/1304/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 10:00:20 -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 Ring of Swords Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Petra wrote (responding to someone, lost the name, sorry), >> I rather got the impression that both men and women felt they were >> doing the "real" thing when performing their respective duties. > >I've got a different impression, mostly from what is said in the last >third in the book by the Hwarhath women. They expressed their >uneasiness with respect to what to do with the men now that there >are no enemies left to keep them from the center. The women fear >that male aggressiveness will disrupt the society and hope for an >appropriate new enemy in space. (snip) >So, while the >men may think they do something worthwhile, it looks more like an >illusion created by society/the women to keep them out. I agree with Petra here -- the impression I got was that the whole reason for the military "ring" of armed males was to keep the men *busy,* to divert their inbuilt aggression away from the actual society, which was females and children. It's as thoughtful re-visioning of the usual fictional explorers' question to the aliens they meet, "Where are your women?" meaning, you men are the society; where are your ornamental breeding stock?" The humans in this story have to learn to ask, "Where is the familial society that main- tains you breeding appliances out here, where your aggressiveness can do *them* no harm?" What's interesting to me is that this second formulation is exactly what the sociobioligists tend to insist is the "truth" of human society: that women (or, somehow, their genes) do all the real choosing (not for them- selves, of course -- there are no "selves" in this supposed science, only genetic pushes and pulls) on behalf of their proposed progeny, so that men's worst behavior is the result of *women's* choices. Compare this basically anti-feminist, anti-humanist platform (we are all helpless little machines run by our genetic programming, so nobody's to blame for our un- changeable imbalance of power which just happens to massively favor males) with Arnason's formulation, which I read as, "Men are inherently war-like, so women must distance males and their societally disruptive behavior in order for society to prosper." In other words, put the people who are family-positive -- i.e., social -- in charge of society, and remove the people who are anti-social to the far distance, with games (war) to occupy their energies. That way it doesn't matter how hard-wired anyone's behavior is or isn't: the goal of more-than- mere-survival, as a society, is served. ROS is a brilliant, pragmatic end- run around the whole argument over gender-essentialism, centered on this goal: a society with enough "humanity" and stability to make it worth liv- ing in, *without* having to first redesign or try to retrain the males into socially positive, rather than destructively aggressive, beings. And then, because she's smart and not a propagandist, the author raises the kinds of conflicts this arrangement would create inside the male sphere when not all males conform to Hwarhath expectations. Suzy Charnas ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 18:23:30 0100 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Petra Mayerhofer Subject: Re: Women of Other Worlds Anthology In-Reply-To: <199910122340.JAA02818@kraken.itc.gu.edu.au> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT I've modified the options in my mail program so that there is no reply address provided any longer. I hope that fixes the problem with the reply address in my postings (thank you, Janice, for the tip). Also thank you to all who privately and on the list responded to my questions concerning the anthology. I've ordered it after I checked the exchange rates (30 AUS$ has a very different meaning than 30 US-$) and expect it in some weeks/months. Petra On 13 Oct 99, Nicole Bourke wrote: > In particular to Peta, but ... > > I have a copy of the 'women of Other Worlds' anthology, which I > bought recently while in Perth. As far as why it was published in Aus > ... ?? Can't say really, except that Tess and Helen apparently went to > WisCon specially and were so excited and inspired they decided to put > it together ... if you want to know what's in it let me know. Some > really damn interesting stuff ... mostly *not* fiction, but commentary > and interviews and other stuff > > Nike ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 13:38:09 -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: BDG Ring of Swords Comments: To: Chris Taylor , Beth McCann , Bill Artz MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ROS is a brilliant, pragmatic end- >run around the whole argument over gender-essentialism, centered on this >goal: a society with enough "humanity" and stability to make it worth liv- >ing in, *without* having to first redesign or try to retrain the males into >socially positive, rather than destructively aggressive, beings. > >And then, because she's smart and not a propagandist, the author raises >the kinds of conflicts this arrangement would create inside the male sphere >when not all males conform to Hwarhath expectations. > >Suzy Charnas But best of all, to me anyway, was the "obvious," biologically-essentialist explanation the Hwarhath came up with for their society's compulsory homosexuality. Of COURSE heterosexuality is the norm amongst animals--they can't choose a more civilized way of ordering their societies! But humans (or Hwarhath, as the case may be) DO have intelligence and free will, and would never leave something as important as the propagation of the species to mere lust, or worse, chance! This made me giggle at the time and it still does, every time some fundamentalist tells me that I can't really be gay because nature "obviously" intends only heterosexuality. Sheryl ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 18:16:59 -0400 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Frances Subject: Re: Linguistics and Science Fiction Since the list is fairly quiet, may I pass on a personal recommendation (certainly relevant fo feminism & science fiction!) For any who may not know about Suzette Haden Elgin's "Linguistics and Science Fiction" newsletter, which is a very interesting potpourri (with, of course, a strong feminist viewpoint), details are available from ocls@ipa.net I've subscribed to this for some years, and always find it quite engrossing. She is preparing to switch to email distribution, except for those who can only use the printed version. Frances ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 17:59:16 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Susan Hericks Subject: Re: BDG Ring of Swords MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I just read a bunch of posts at once, so I hope you all will forgive me if I can't remember exactly who said what. I also really liked this book and think there is a wealth of ideas in it, not to mention some wonderful humorous moments. I don't think I will ever forget the moment when Anna asks herself whether someone who gives you a flannel nightgown could then kill you! And some of the interpretations of human expressions (i.e. look what the cat dragged in) were very funny. On the down side, I was less interested in the book as it went along, partly because I didn't feel I was getting to know the characters better, with the exception of Nicholas. Some of the sections that had a lot of potential to be interesting, especially the meetings between Anna and the Hwarhath women, didn't hold my interest as much as I hoped they would. They seemed to describe things rather than to involve me in the experience Anna was having. The development of Nick's character and his relationship with Gwarha also seemed uneven to me. For example, in the first section, when the assumption was made that Nick was Gwarha's lover because of the form of language they used, I didn't buy it and thought it was going to be another example of how the humans were misreading the other culture. When it turned out to be true, it took me awhile to be able to see the tenderness between them since the reader never gets to know how that problematic (for Anna--because of the torture, not the homosexuality) relationship grew. Anyway, back to the stuff that seemed really good to me: After thinking about it, two aspects of the novel have risen to the surface for me. First, the question of what is the difference between an animal and a person. (Considering Arnason's comment in the excerpted interview that she wanted to address the religious right's view of heterosexuality as the only moral option--sorry, not her words)...This has everything to do with sexuality in both cultures and that conversation is added to by the presence of Anna's aliens on Reed, who she clearly believes are "people" but everyone else denies. Nick thinks that the presence of language is one of the determining factors in whether a creature is intelligent (?) For the Hwarhath, a person is only a person if they can make moral distinctions, which leads to the second question of the novel (for me) that asks how the ability to make moral distincitons relates to one's personhood. As a feminist ethicist, I think this is a great question! (Lindy said that for the Hwarhath "only those who adhere to a certain ethic are people." At the end, when humans are accepted as "people," I think we see that what is important to them is this ability to make moral distinctions, not the adherence to the same ethics as the Hwarhath, although they clearly have a problem with human ethics.) What we know about the Hwarhath finally crystallized for me when Matsehar tells Anna that Macbeth is about "violence that has not been contained within a moral framework" (334). It seems to me that containing violence within a moral framework is the means and end of the Hwarhath culture. As some have you have already discussed, the way that violence is contained is by limiting it to the periphery of the culture and to males. I suppose this has its bright side, at least the women and children (theoretically, at least) never get harmed. That whole dynamic reminded me of _Jaran_, where in the alien culture there are specific roles for women and men that give the women a great deal of power, respect, and protection, but that are just as essentialist as human ideas of gender. Suzy wrote: > ROS is a brilliant, pragmatic end- >>run around the whole argument over gender-essentialism, centered on this >>goal: a society with enough "humanity" and stability to make it worth liv- >>ing in, *without* having to first redesign or try to retrain the males into >>socially positive, rather than destructively aggressive, beings. If I understand what Suzy means here (that Arnason avoids the problem of essentialism by accepting it as truth and marginalizing the always "destructively aggressive" men?) I really don't agree. I mean, I think that this is basically what the Hwarhath have done in order to "contain violence within a moral framework," but I would also argue that one of the issues Arnason(Nick) raises is that how having done this creates a necessity for war and violence in order to maintain the culture. There are no options for integrating that violence OR males into the central Hwarhath culture. This seems like a reverse scapegoating that makes men have to bear the burden of the culture's destructive qualities just as, in our human culture, women have been made to bear the culturally undersirable and insignificant duties of home and children. Whatever the "center" deems important is the province of the most powerful (in RoS, the women) and those pesky survival tasks are taken care of by those on the margins. (R.e Jaran, it seems to look like this may be happening in the Chapalli culture in the later books. That is, it seems like the women may hold the really "important" power). Suzy went on to say that Arnason "raises the kinds of conflicts this arrangement would create inside the male sphere when not all males conform to Hwarhath expectations." Yes. But what Nick sees, and the reason he spills the beans to Anna, is that this very rigid arrangement is ultimately threatening to the Hwarhath culture. In order for the arrangement to continue, the Hwarhath must find and enemy, but humans cannot be fought according to Hwarhath rules of war. If the Hwarhath play by their own rules, they will be destroyed. If they don't, taking the easy out of judging humans as nothing more than animals (someone pointed out that this is a common dynamic in war), committing genocide will destroy their integrity as people. I'm not exactly sure what Arnason wants to argue. As I read it, I think she is asking a very hard question about the equation of sexuality and morality--something like "if an unwavering rigidity toward sexuality is the foundation of your moral framework (as it is for the Hwarhath and for right wing Christians) how can you survive the inevitable challenges of people and ideas that cannot fit into that framework? And what are the requirements of that framework which will eventually cause your own destruction?" What doesn't bend, breaks, so to speak. I would be very interested to see if, in the sequel, Arnason addresses the "problem" of the playwrite's "straightness" in any way. Nick seems like a trickster figure to me, like the *tli* to which he is compared. Somehow he is able to mediate and survive, even to find love. Hmm... I have said more that enough! Sorry for the long post--I blame it on the interesting book! Susan By the way, I don't think my username is coming up Big Yellow Woman anymore, but I still am :) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 15:43:17 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Lindy Subject: Re: BDG Ring of Swords MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Petra Mayerhofer wrote: > > I rather got the impression that both men and women felt they were > > doing the "real" thing when performing their respective duties. > > I've got a different impression, mostly from what is said in the last > third in the book by the Hwarhath women. They expressed their > uneasiness with respect to what to do with the men now that there > are no enemies left to keep them from the center. (snipped only to save bandwidth). > So, while the > men may think they do something worthwhile, it looks more like an > illusion created by society/the women to keep them out. I understand what you're saying here. Having the advantage of being a separate observer (reader) I too tend toward the perspective that the women were manipulating or handling the situation as you describe. However, while reading this novel, I wondered if one of the many questions/points made by the author was that the men looked upon their role as the "real" thing, with women's tasks as somehow less important, and that women looked upon their role in the same way, with men's tasks being less important. Each view their way as integral and true. Whether it is illusion or not, the Hwarhath's men's traditional duty of protecting the center (family and culture and tradition) is a very serious undertaking, and as such, is their reality. Simply because the women have a role in perpetuating the Ring of Swords, does not negate the complex culture the men experience. Regardless of who is really "in charge," (and the men do treat the women in general as very powerful) with a lack of worthy adversaries for the men to engage, there will need to be a cultural shift. If the traditional separation of duties by gender is to be continued in Hwarhath society, it will probably be the men who will evolve into performing the new tasks. As was pointed out, the women, in their governmental and personal roles, work to keep the "nature" of the men of their society on the periphery, focused away from the social center. Only having limited contact with the Hwarhath women in _RoS_, (and that small contact occurring off the women's turf), I would be very curious to read about life on the planet, about government sessions and farm life and arts and everything hinted at in the description of Nicolas's year-long exile among the women as he translates and explains. We hear about men and their intimate relationships. I'd love to hear about the women's. Lindy ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 16:56:18 -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: BDG Ring of Swords In-Reply-To: <38050B05.CE2A79AE@meer.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed >However, while reading this novel, I wondered if one of the many >questions/points made by the author was that the men looked upon their >role as the "real" thing, with women's tasks as somehow less important, >and that women looked upon their role in the same way, with men's tasks >being less important. Each view their way as integral and true. This was something I found fascinating. I've been thinking about the ways in which people are writing about cultures divided along gender lines. One popular style goes something like this. Our Hero meets an alien culture. The people "in front"--not only in the hwarhath sense but "the people who go out and meet the aliens" (ie, our hero)--are men. Later in the book we come to see that women, although more hearth-bound (literally or metaphorically), actually have equal power. In some cases, as in the jaran of the eponymous[1] series, each gender thinks the other is equally important. In other cases, as in the hwarhath, each gender thinks the other is less important. In still other cases, as in the Chapalli of the Jaran series, we have no clue who thinks what. What I wonder is this: why is this such a powerful image for us? (It is for me, anyway; and it's typically used by people who are trying to explore, and reflect and comment upon, traditional gender roles.) And why is it always set up in this fashion, so that it seems to bear out the popular gender stereotypes, but then subverts them in some way? Would it be possible to write a story in which this was flipped, where the women seemed to be in charge but then the men turned out to be equally important? Or would that only seem to reinforce mainstream gender roles? Jessie [1] I love this word and never get to use it, but since I only learned its meaning about three years ago I'll define it [loosely]: "the thing for which it is named". Ie, the jaran in the series of the same name. Thank you for your patience.