Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF-LIT LOG0210E" ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 20:53:04 +1300 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Jenn Martin Subject: Re: Tepper Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Hi Pamela, I agree that Tepper's message gets in the way of her story some of the time. I've actually given up reading her new books because of it. The last one I read was Singer from the Sea. Which is probably why I've given up. Does anyone feel that she gives men a bad run? that she has a tendancy to paint them as pathetic or nasty creatures, or do you think she has as many likeable male characters as not. Two things I like about Tepper, I like the ecological skew in her books, especially the way she incorporates ecological systems into her worlds, the other thing I like about her is that she's wacky, things are always just a little different in a way that is entirely refreshing. I should keep reading her for this, if for nothing else. > >Hi all, > >I love Tepper, she's one of my favorite authors, but her message does >get in the way in a lot of her books. I though Singer from the Sea was >especially flawed in this manner. The scenario was excellent, but in the >end I found it unbelievable that the entire society of noble men would >conspire to the degree that they did just to attain a few more decades of >life. Surely there would have been some who rejected it. > >The Fresco was also a little heavy handed. Loved Plague of Angels and >Six Moon Dance. Can't wait to read The Visitor. > >Pamela > > > >Pamela > > > > >_________________________________________________________________ >Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online >http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 _________________________________________________________________ Get a speedy connection with MSN Broadband. Join now! http://resourcecenter.msn.com/access/plans/freeactivation.asp ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 08:20:32 -0800 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Lyla Miklos Subject: Re: BDG Voting Results and Schedule Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20021021204238.0124a020@incoming.verizon.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Could I get the names of the authors along with the titles? Thanks Lyla > Hi everyone! > > The votes have been counted and the results are: > > Babel-17 (Nov. 4) > The Saga of the Renunciates (Dec. 2) > Perdido Street Station (Jan. 6) > The Silver Metal Lover (Feb. 3) __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search new jobs daily now http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 12:29:23 -0500 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: "Janice E. Dawley" Subject: Re: BDG Voting Results and Schedule Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: <20021029162032.69177.qmail@web13803.mail.yahoo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 08:20 AM 10/29/2002 -0800, Lyla Miklos wrote: >Could I get the names of the authors along with the >titles? > >Thanks >Lyla The names of the authors and all other book information is available at the BDG web site, the URL for which I have included in just about all of my BDG announcements. Are people having trouble loading the web site? If so, we may need to rethink it. Its purpose was to provide a central location for this information so it doesn't have to be posted over and over. Once again, this is the address: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Comet/1304/ ----- Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT http://therem.net/ Listening to: Coldplay -- A Rush of Blood to the Head "I've built my white picket fence around the Now, with a commanding view of the Soon-to-Be." -- The Tick ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 10:12:11 -0800 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: Gender, Myth and Star Wars Comments: To: Feminist SF/F Lit In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 08:27 AM 10/27/2002 +0000, Art McGee wrote: >Right. So what WE seem to be talking about in this thread is >BOURGEOIS or LIBERAL feminism, a feminism that simply gives >women the power to destroy on an equal plane with men, which >is cool, for what it's worth, but maybe we need to start a >new thread that would try to identify the strains of RADICAL >or REVOLUTIONARY feminism in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and >Speculative Fiction. Where is the more wholistic brand of >feminism manifest? Where is the evidence of WOMANISM? I'm unsure exactly what you mean, or indeed what can be meant, by bourgeois and liberal feminisms, since they must by definition be vastly different things. I'm assuming that you mean by "bourgeois" a concern for material success and social respectability, the standard definition, although you might also mean that viewpoint in which commerce and industrialization reign supreme. Exactly how these relate to traditional liberalism, a concern for more or less "rugged" individuality, social and economic freedom, and individual participation in government, isn't terribly clear. I can imagine a bourgeois feminism as being the sort of "do me" "feminism" that sells "ladies" cigarettes, while liberal feminism would necessarily be concerned with equal access to political and economic power, progressive social ideas, and so on. But both words are so often used to mean "inspired by Satan" that they're slippery concepts indeed. "holistic" is also slippery, since few people would characterize their own viewpoint as fragmented or limited, and the word tends to be sly shorthand for "my grand vision of the sublime interrelatedness of everything worth knowing is far too subtle and complex for a clodhopper like you to fully comprehend." It's more often thrown into the word soup to convey a vaguely approving but ultimately amorphous flavor than to actually mean anything that one could pin down. To the argument that comprehension of "whole systems" is a necessary first step toward solving any problem, an argument with which *everyone* agrees, one must always answer "How much is enough?" Does one need to take into account the effect of astrology and the movement of the Gulf Stream before one can treat tonsillitis? The Universe is arguably the *only* "whole" system and we simply must get on with our lives *before* we manage to comprehend the Cosmic All. In every endeavor we necessarily leave some things outside our realm of investigation and experiment. But all theories are holistic in the sense that they account for everything the author thinks is actually important. Even the most ardent "holistic" theoretician can be stumped by a simple "But what about..." question. Womanism is slightly easier to identify, since it has essentially a single point of origin, but this viewpoint is specific to female African-American Christians and doesn't translate well to universal applicability. Indeed, it posits the inapplicability of almost any generality to specific persons. Or at least specific groups. It's hard to argue a position like that, since it logically proceeds in exactly the opposite direction to "holistic" theories, becoming ever more particular and refined to the point that one can only truly feel solidarity with oneself, or at least that version of oneself that exists today. Radical feminism is much more transparent, but is sadly de trop in academic discourse nowadays. While I personally would be glad to argue the radical feminist viewpoint, my first order of business would necessarily be to deny the possibility of any man saying anything of interest about any feminist issue and to insist that every discussion deal with the reality of racism, sexism, colonialism, and pervasive patriarchy before granting legitimacy to the conversation. This makes it hard to include those who don't agree with the reality (or applicability) of any (or all) of these issues to the case in point. And as for revolutionary feminism, I think one could argue that it's a logical impossibility in practice, however attractive in theory. Almost every woman has a list of pet men who have to be exempted from adverse impact, a list which includes in aggregate the entire male population of the planet, more or less. So recruiting more than two or three comrades for one's anarchist/separatist conspiracy might prove to be a slight problem. While it might be tempting to argue, echoing Dick the Butcher in Henry VI, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the [men]," there seems to be no practical way to produce this desirable result without gravely impacting the survival of humanity. While we see this used as a plot device quite often, the exercise is in most cases patently absurd. There's no conceivable way to get from here to there without invoking divine intervention. A nice thought experiment, perhaps, like Einstein's little man riding on a beam of light, but physically, socially, impossible. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 13:23:17 -0500 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Pamela Taylor Subject: Re: Tepper Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Hi all, Jenn, I think Tepper often gives men the short shrift, although not always and it varies from book to book, but she certainly has a lot of male characters who are not very nice. (Of course, the world has a lot of male characters who are not very nice...) Pamela _________________________________________________________________ Unlimited Internet access for only $21.95/month. Try MSN! http://resourcecenter.msn.com/access/plans/2monthsfree.asp ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 11:56:25 -0800 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Christina Del Porto Subject: Re: Tepper Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >Hi all, > >Jenn, >I think Tepper often gives men the short shrift, although not always and >it >varies from book to book, but she certainly has a lot of male characters >who >are not very nice. (Of course, the world has a lot of male characters who >are not very nice...) > >Pamela > >_________________________________________________________________ >Unlimited Internet access for only $21.95/month. Try MSN! >http://resourcecenter.msn.com/access/plans/2monthsfree.asp The first and only book by Tepper I've read thus far is The Fresco. In terms of male roles, something I'm chewing on right now is the evolution of the main character's son (whose name escapes me at the moment). He seemed polluted by his father's influence, turning lazy, disgruntled, and generally demanding of what he thought everyone owed him. I'm fuzzy on the details here, but as I recall after getting on board the Interstellar Quality Control Aliens' (names?) spaceship, being placated by some chemical-or-other provided by a parenting alien to reverse the effects of his emotional/psychological baggage, and given something productive to do, the son then turns more accepting, caring, and satisfied. I'm curious how much of his negative, if you will, behavior is being laid on his gender, considering his sister's near-perfection. Or is the disparity there because the father wasn't trying to influence the daughter to follow his path, favouring the son? What I find troubling is the lack of explanation from Tepper regarding _why_ the father was so abusive and self-centered. Any thoughts?? As I recall both the bookstore owner and Chad, secret service security I think, were fairly decent guys. It seems to me that Tepper prefers to take down the patriarchs in the patriarchy. As eventually a few considerable imperfections of that quality control alien group get exposed, is Tepper critiquing the impulse to inspect, judge, and enforce change from _any_ assumed position of moral superiority? Is she indulging a cheeky eradicate-the-good-ol-boys-worldwide fantasy only to remind us how eradication works? Or am I suffering wishful thoughts? Is there any evidence of this sort of critique in her other books? I will say I'm astounded by how very much Tepper manages to take on in The Fresco. It's a good 6-8 sf plotlines tossed in a blender with a few feminisms. This is my first post to the list, so bear with me whilst I get the hang of mass communication re: feminist sf lit ;) -Christina ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 20:27:15 -0000 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Heather Stark Subject: Re: BDG Voting Results and Schedule Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit if there is any way of having this address tagged onto messages sent to list, it might be helpful - sorry to post all on this but not sure who right audience for this suggestion is for those who are annoyed by wasting bits perhaps this would be a regular hassle but given the number of queries which are answerable via ref to website might be as well to promote its address a bit more regards, heather ----- Original Message ----- From: "Janice E. Dawley" To: Sent: 29 October 2002 17:29 Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] BDG Voting Results and Schedule > At 08:20 AM 10/29/2002 -0800, Lyla Miklos wrote: > >Could I get the names of the authors along with the > >titles? > > > >Thanks > >Lyla > > The names of the authors and all other book information is available at the > BDG web site, the URL for which I have included in just about all of my BDG > announcements. Are people having trouble loading the web site? If so, we > may need to rethink it. Its purpose was to provide a central location for > this information so it doesn't have to be posted over and over. > > Once again, this is the address: > http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Comet/1304/ > > ----- > Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT > http://therem.net/ > Listening to: Coldplay -- A Rush of Blood to the Head > "I've built my white picket fence around the Now, > with a commanding view of the Soon-to-Be." -- The Tick ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 21:09:52 -0500 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Pamela Taylor Subject: Re: feminisms Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Hi all, Art, seems like you are trying to differentiate between a populist/media vision of feminism in which the goal is a woman who can destroy as well as a man, or be as intellectual, scientific, powerful in a business or political sense, but which lacks a coherent vision for what is particularly feminine and how that might affect the way that a woman kills, competes, thinks logically/scientifically, her drives, her relationship with others, her career, her family, and the choices she might make in life to the point that one says "how is this vision of what a woman might be any different than the vision of what a man?" and a feminism which seeks to "liberate" women to be as they are -- human and female -- and which validates the vast range of personalities, choices, intellectual, artistic, political, economic ability and interests that women make/have/choose. I think that Octavia Butler's Wild Seed series seeks to do this. Lilith is strong and crafty, a fighter, a fierce mother, a shaman. Some of the choices she makes don't have particularly happy outcomes, but they are presented as her making the choice to sacrfice herself for the sake of her children, rather than being carted off by a more powerful being. Also a lot of LeGuin's later works move in this direction. Pamela _________________________________________________________________ Choose an Internet access plan right for you -- try MSN! http://resourcecenter.msn.com/access/plans/default.asp ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 21:34:27 EST Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Joy Martin Subject: Re: Gender, Myth and Star Wars Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit At 08:27 AM 10/27/2002 +0000, Art McGee wrote: >Right. So what WE seem to be talking about in this thread is >BOURGEOIS or LIBERAL feminism, a feminism that simply gives >women the power to destroy on an equal plane with men, which >is cool, for what it's worth, but maybe we need to start a >new thread that would try to identify the strains of RADICAL >or REVOLUTIONARY feminism in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and >Speculative Fiction. Where is the more wholistic brand of >feminism manifest? Where is the evidence of WOMANISM? In a message dated 10/29/02 12:26:29 PM Central Standard Time, leeanne@LEEANNE.COM writes: << While I personally would be glad to argue the radical feminist viewpoint, my first order of business would necessarily be to deny the possibility of any man saying anything of interest about any feminist issue and to insist that every discussion deal with the reality of racism, sexism, colonialism, and pervasive patriarchy before granting legitimacy to the conversation. >> Everybody has their definitions, but historically radical feminism is feminism that goes to the roots, or sees women's oppression as a root oppression; in some versions, this means seeing women's oppression as the first oppression, which all others were modeled upon. Some radical feminists emphasized the importance of identifying with those women at the bottom of the pyramid or by saying that advancing the interests of women at the bottom of the social pyramid was/is the best rule of thumb for radical practice. Later on, some radical feminists began to call themselves cultural feminists, and vice versa, but there is a distinction between talking about women's culture as it exists worldwide, in various forms, and in 'creating ' a new culture, which is what a lot of 'cultural feminism' was/is about. (As far as I can see, denying the possibility that any man has anything of interest to say about any feminist issue , has nothing to do with radical feminism, except in some people's personal interpretation. Men can have all kinds of interesting things to say and all kinds of feminists discuss things with men. What men can't do is define the movement or set its agenda .) Revolutionary feminism is more related to revolutionary practice. In general revolutionary feminists defined themselves as revolutionaries in the sense of overthrowing governments, but historically it seems the term developed with women who primarily identified themselves as revolutionaries, of one sort or another, but wished to expand into feminism. Or, so it seems. Often the terms revolutionary feminism and radical feminism have been used interchangeably. The original differences between the two groups depended, as far as I have ever been able to tell, upon where on the original political spectrum feminists started out, and whether they sought to separate into a distinct political movement or remain within their specific political groups but agitate within those groups towards (radical) feminism. In that sense, revolutionary feminists tended to remain within various political movements not in themselves feminist, whereas radical feminists were feminists who insisted it was necessary to form a separate, radical feminist movement, putting feminism first. However, these distinctions were relatively fluid, if you actually look at who did what , where and with whom. Some of this probably seems like ancient history to younger women, but if you don't know the history (or herstory, if you will), I think the distinctions become even more confusing.( Figuring out the history however, even if you lived through part of it, isn't always easy.) In any case, any of these political and theoretical positions, can be applied to science fiction, or the analysis of science fiction. IN practice, in real life, there are far fewer differences in these positions and in what they can or do actually do in the world than one might think from the discussions and analyses (or, at least, that's my view), but at critical junctures the analysis can make a difference in what directions , tactics or strategies feminists take, in both personal lives and in political action. But science fiction can be discussed from any of these angles, and of course beyond. However, I don't really think this 'list' as such takes a position that's liberal, bourgeois, or anything else. People on it take all kinds of positions, and it's not always easy to tell what exactly their feminist identity is, esp. since, at least in my view, the way different individuals define different kinds of feminism is often contradictory. (That is, I can say radical and someone else can say radical and apparently we mean two different things by it, at least, as far as I can tell.) I've kind of lost track of the 'thread' itself though, so whether the thread discussion was taking a liberal etc position, is beyond me, at this point.-Joy "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-Benjamin Franklin ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 22:35:38 -0500 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Lori Errico-Seaman Subject: Re: Gender, Myth and Star Wars Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Joy wrote: > But science > fiction can be discussed from any of these angles, and of course beyond. IMHO, some of the most interesting work done in/on feminist sci-fi (and mainstream sci-fi) currently takes more of a "gender studies"/postmodern feminist approach, rather than working within a liberal or radical framework. Not that there aren't positive points to both of those frameworks, but (and I could be totally wrong here), it seems to me that the "liberal versus radical" debate in feminism is something that a lot of feminist theory (and feminist sci-fi) has kind of moved beyond . . . ? Lori ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 23:25:50 EST Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Joy Martin Subject: Re: Gender, Myth and Star Wars Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 10/30/02 9:36:06 PM Central Standard Time, lerrico@UMICH.EDU writes: << "liberal versus radical" debate in feminism is something that a lot of feminist theory (and feminist sci-fi) has kind of moved beyond >> perhaps moved beyond. The main thing I know is that as a debate it doesn't terribly interest me. OTOH some of the core issues - that is, what needs to be changed exactly and how - are still important, but the framework for debating them has changed. OTOH, I'm not terribly impressed by the idea of postmodern feminism. Gender is of course an interesting topic. Postmodern feminism sounds to me even less interesting than debating liberal vs radical, a kind of begging the question. But then I consider myself a radical feminist. Radical feminism and it's various permutations I continue to find very interesting.-Joy "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-Benjamin Franklin ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 02:45:32 -0800 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: Gender, Myth and Star Wars Comments: To: Feminist SF/F Lit In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 09:34 PM 10/30/2002 -0500, Joy Martin wrote: >At 08:27 AM 10/27/2002 +0000, Art McGee wrote: > >>Right. So what WE seem to be talking about in this thread is >>BOURGEOIS or LIBERAL feminism, a feminism that simply gives > >In a message dated 10/29/02 12:26:29 PM Central Standard Time, >leeanne@LEEANNE.COM writes: > ><< While I personally would be glad to argue the radical > feminist viewpoint, my first order of business would > necessarily be to deny the possibility of any man > saying anything of interest about any feminist issue > >Everybody has their definitions, but historically radical feminism is >feminism that goes to the roots, or sees women's oppression as a root >oppression; in some versions, this means seeing women's oppression as the >first oppression, which all others were modeled upon. It does seem so even now, although of course modern analysis has made it difficult to argue that the other oppressions based on class, nationality, ethnicity, sexuality, and the rest of the enormous range of manners in which people justify their position in society or relationships to the world are as easy to separate out a unique and universal "female" experience untrammeled by other burdens. But it does seem suspicious that, as the culture of the USA becomes more stereotypically masculinized, what with beating the drums for war and glorification of (mostly white) macho "heroes" who shoot first and ask questions later, the victims of "real men" who lack ready access to the machinery of war and "real" enemies have been women and children. There is an interesting article by Nancy Ehrenreich in the current (Nov-Dec) issue of Tikkun, Masculinity & American Militarism, which analyzes our experience in the past fifty years as one of steady escalation of male excoriation of women, of increasing characterization of "enemies" as being effeminate or otherwise similar to women, and of the rise of a national politics based on the twisted logic of the wife-beater projected onto the world stage. So Osama bin Laden is lampooned by a poster showing him being sodomized by the WTC, with the legend, "You like skyscrapers, bitch?" equating him simultaneously with (hated) femininity and (hated) faggotry. So our ever-increasing choice of non-white, non-christian, non-wealthy nations to invade with escalating demonstrations of overwhelming power can be seen as the logic of the abuser; if she "disrespects" you, show her who's boss. It is a commonplace in both feminist and racial analysis that persons of color are seen as feminized or child-like in the eyes of their (white) oppressors, a status not terribly distinct in the minds of many abusers. And our use of devastating violence against the weakest possible victims while crowing about our physical (and macho-sexual) prowess on the flimsiest of excuses is the collective miming of cowardly bully-boy behavior. Whenever our leaders need a shot of "courage," they bomb a puny "bitch" into submission. It's probably not accidental that the word "bitch" is used to describe both an "uppity" woman and a weaker man sodomized by a man with greater power. In both cases, the reference is to sexual submission, or the possibility of force being used to enforce sexual and physical dominance. >Later on, some radical feminists began to call themselves cultural feminists, >and vice versa, but there is a distinction between talking about women's >culture as it exists worldwide, in various forms, and in 'creating ' a new >culture, which is what a lot of 'cultural feminism' was/is about. Actually, one could argue that all sorts of feminisms have that as their ultimate goal unless they are so happy with the way things are that they see nothing left worth changing, a position I would term "pseudo-feminism." And I don't think cultural feminism was entirely about creating a "new" culture, since a central theme was that women already have a culture but that this innate culture has been suppressed and distorted by our existence in a world dominated by men. The "new" culture then would represent a freeing of women to express their inherent superior nature by either overthrowing tired old patriarchal structures that limited women or by minimizing their adverse or deleterious effects on women. The extent to which this was possible was evidenced in such "science fiction" scenarios as imagining that women's intellectual capacity was sufficient to warrant being *given* the vote, that our need to be free of utter dependence on male householders and "pater familii" was weighty enough that women should be able to work in public employment, and the host of social innovations we now see in our little portion of the modern world. For all its flaws, Herland was true science fiction in the era it sprung from, the ideas expressed therein were radical, perhaps even revolutionary, and the existence of this list, the very idea that a story can be more or less "feminist," which at its heart is the radical proposition that women matter, is also proof that Herland's thesis is not, perhaps, fully realized even in our part of the world, much less the vast areas for which Herland is *still* science fiction. The Gate to Women's Country, Daughters of a Coral Dawn, The Door Into Ocean, and countless other "feminist" visions of the future in which masculinity has been or is being in some way controlled or even eliminated as a desirable way in which to liberate women (and many men) from hyper-masculine aggression and violence. >(As far as >I can see, denying the possibility that any man has anything of interest to >say about any feminist issue , has nothing to do with radical feminism, >except in some people's personal interpretation. Men can have all kinds of >interesting things to say and all kinds of feminists discuss things with men. Not all kinds. Some kinds are separatists. Some just aren't interested, the vast majority of men having demonstrated to their personal satisfaction that they are part of the problem and not working toward a solution. In fact, Separatism is one of the few feminisms with a philosophy and plan of action that can be expressed both succinctly and coherently. It's not coincidental that Herland and Whileaway both describe Separatist visions of what women *could* be. It's far easier to imagine a world without men as being good for women than the opposite. Adrienne Rich once said in her poem, Natural Resources, part of the collection entitled, evocatively, "The Dream of a Common Language:" 4. Could you imagine a world of women only, the interviewer asked. Can you imagine a world where women are absent. (He believed he was joking.) Yet I have to imagine at one and the same moment, both. Because I live in both. Can you imagine, the interviewer asked, a world of men? (He thought he was joking.) If so, then, a world where men are absent? Absently, wearily, I answered: Yes. The "common laguage" of which she dreamed was, of course, that expression of our (imagined) common experience and expression of womanhood, the language dreamed of in Laadan, Herland, and Rich's poetry and prose. >What men can't do is define the movement or set its agenda .) Indeed. >Revolutionary feminism is more related to revolutionary practice. In general >revolutionary feminists defined themselves as revolutionaries in the sense of >overthrowing governments, but historically it seems the term developed with >women who primarily identified themselves as revolutionaries, of one sort or >another, but wished to expand into feminism. Or, so it seems. Often the >terms revolutionary feminism and radical feminism have been used >interchangeably. The original differences between the two groups depended, as >far as I have ever been able to tell, upon where on the original political >spectrum feminists started out, and whether they sought to separate into a >distinct political movement or remain within their specific political groups >but agitate within those groups towards (radical) feminism. In that sense, >revolutionary feminists tended to remain within various political movements >not in themselves feminist, whereas radical feminists were feminists who >insisted it was necessary to form a separate, radical feminist movement, >putting feminism first. However, these distinctions were relatively fluid, if >you actually look at who did what , where and with whom. Some of this >probably seems like ancient history to younger women, but if you don't know >the history (or herstory, if you will), I think the distinctions become even >more confusing.( Figuring out the history however, even if you lived through >part of it, isn't always easy.) In my experience, women in "radical" or "revolutionary" movements were required to postpone of suppress their own desire for autonomy and freedom in favor of "solidarity" with the ideas of the "oppressed" (male) leadership. It helped a lot if one also had sex with the male leadership (and selected followers) so as to relieve them of "tension" when their entire focus had to be the coming happy day when Paradise would appear on Earth. Radical and Revolutionary Feminism were both (in my experience) reactions to the oppression women felt within radical and revolutionary movements, and our collective dithering about whether we were "class traitors" and/or "counter-revolutionaries" and/or "malcontents" was an important factor in diluting and confusing women's contributions to radical and left-wing thought. >In any case, any of these political and theoretical positions, can be applied >to science fiction, or the analysis of science fiction. IN practice, in real >life, there are far fewer differences in these positions and in what they can >or do actually do in the world than one might think from the discussions and >analyses (or, at least, that's my view), but at critical junctures the >analysis can make a difference in what directions , tactics or strategies >feminists take, in both personal lives and in political action. But science >fiction can be discussed from any of these angles, and of course beyond. Science fiction makes possible thought experiments which don't work in real life. While ordinary radical feminists are limited to passing out pamphlets (if they don't, as is much more common among male radicals, blow up buildings and politicians), women in science fiction can be blessed with a mysterious disease which magically kills all the men, or a fortuitous rift in space which drops them into an alternate reality, and continue on without messy discussions of what to do about one's brother, or lover, or son. >However, I don't really think this 'list' as such takes a position that's >liberal, bourgeois, or anything else. People on it take all kinds of >positions, and it's not always easy to tell what exactly their feminist >identity is, esp. since, at least in my view, the way different individuals >define different kinds of feminism is often contradictory. (That is, I can >say radical and someone else can say radical and apparently we mean two >different things by it, at least, as far as I can tell.) I've kind of lost >track of the 'thread' itself though, so whether the thread discussion was >taking a liberal etc position, is beyond me, at this point.-Joy Me too, although it's fairly clear that one of the initial questions on this thread, is Star Wars (and works of that ilk) "feminist," can be one of those questions whose answer depends on what one thinks of the status quo. So if Princess Leia "kicks butt" like Arnold Schwarzenegger, is she fulfilling *any* sort of "feminist" ideal? If one believes that real men need to "stand up for their rights" and not "take shit from anyone," perhaps "blowing away" one's enemies with automatic weapons and bombs is not a bad idea, even when women do it. To me, it seems obvious that Princess Leia with a light saber, Ripley (Aliens) with a blaster, and Lara Croft (Tomb Raider) with a machine gun are all male fantasies projected onto the "big screen" of pseudo-reality. All are ways in which male adolescents can fulfill two desires at once, look at pretty girls in scanty outfits and watch people being blown up at the same time. This is not, of course, "obvious" to all. The ability to blow people away as an indicator of maturity and agency is what we would have termed "male-identified" back in the olden days and the terminology seems mystifying. What one really means by this euphemism, I suppose, is killing or murdering people, maiming their bodies and blighting the lives of their families, but reduced to a phrase one might use to describe snuffing out a candle, or whisking a fly from one's plate at a picnic. How apropos of a nihilistic sociopathology. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 03:13:23 -0800 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: Gender, Myth and Star Wars Comments: To: Feminist SF/F Lit In-Reply-To: <114.19e659ca.2af20ace@cs.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 11:25 PM 10/30/2002 -0500, Joy Martin wrote: >In a message dated 10/30/02 9:36:06 PM Central Standard Time, >lerrico@UMICH.EDU writes: > ><< "liberal versus radical" debate in feminism is something that a lot of > feminist theory (and feminist sci-fi) has kind of moved beyond >> > >perhaps moved beyond. The main thing I know is that as a debate it doesn't >terribly interest me. OTOH some of the core issues - that is, what needs to >be changed exactly and how - are still important, but the framework for >debating them has changed. I would agree in many ways, although I share your suspicion of "post-modern" feminisms. The early debates (wars) were similar to Medieval quibbling over the number of angels potentially dancing on the heads of pins, and were a serious impediment to progress on any front, our own (minor) dissensions from each other looming larger (in our minds) than the reality of our common disability in the eyes of the law and (male) society. >But then I consider myself a radical feminist. Radical feminism and it's >various permutations I continue to find very interesting.-Joy As do I. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 07:39:27 EST Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Joy Martin Subject: Re: Gender, Myth and Star Wars Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 10/31/02 4:46:28 AM Central Standard Time, leeanne@LEEANNE.COM writes: << Separatism is one of the few feminisms with a philosophy and plan of action that can be expressed both succinctly and coherently. >> And exactly what might that plan be, other than fantasy?-Joy "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-Benjamin Franklin ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 07:39:29 EST Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Joy Martin Subject: Re: Gender, Myth and Star Wars Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 10/31/02 4:46:28 AM Central Standard Time, leeanne@LEEANNE.COM writes: << Can you imagine, the interviewer asked, a world of men? (He thought he was joking.) If so, then, a world where men are absent? Absently, wearily, I answered: Yes. >> I do think Adrienne Rich was a bit weary of the question, but I don't think she espouses separatism in the sense you seem to be talking about. Separating to integrate, that is to change society, is a radical feminist principle, different however from being a separatist with the idea that somehow in the future all society will be such. -Joy "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-Benjamin Franklin ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 07:39:27 EST Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Joy Martin Subject: Re: Gender, Myth and Star Wars Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 10/31/02 4:46:28 AM Central Standard Time, leeanne@LEEANNE.COM writes: << The "new" culture then would represent a freeing of women to express their inherent superior nature >> Now see, this is the kind of extension that I think is a problem. 'Superior nature' is as much an error as any kind of elevation on a pedestal to be put down in real life etcetc thinking of the misogynist sort. Some parts of radical feminism say, there is a women's culture, and not all of it is particularly good, but it comes out of women's oppressed situation. That is, it's not 'inherent nature' of women, it's what human beings are when they have to survive within an oppressive situation. This analysis was an extension of various radical analysis of the effects of oppression on all people (such as Fanon, if I remember correctly, I haven't read him, just the references in feminist literature), and came from saying, in a nutshell, oppressed people take on what are considered 'feminine' traits, such as high degrees of intuition and the like, because they have to be especially aware of sensitive to the needs of their oppressors. And so forth. Now, the political agenda of all feminism is to improve women's place in the world. The variation is in what you think it takes to do that and how big a change is needed. Radical feminism says a very major change - what would be revolutionary change- is needed, because the basis of society is oppression, of women and of various other groups, which vary over time in different societies and types of social structures (e.g. capitalism changes the forms of oppression somewhat from feudalism, and imperialism imposes oppression on entire peoples, whatever their situation in their own societies,e tc). The change would indeed change the culture, but it would change the entire culture, not just the 'women's culture'. Socalled cultural feminism, as it has developed, seems (I say seems, because in many cases the consequences are not thought out at all; in other cases, there is no particular political agenda other than creating selfaffirmative cultural artifacts, which is fine, but not the same as what I'm talking about) to take a position that a liberated women's culture can somehow exist within or separately from (But still within) an otherwise oppressive society. -Joy "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-Benjamin Franklin ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 07:39:30 EST Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Joy Martin Subject: Re: Gender, Myth and Star Wars Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 10/31/02 4:46:28 AM Central Standard Time, leeanne@LEEANNE.COM writes: << In my experience, women in "radical" or "revolutionary" movements were required to postpone of suppress their own desire for autonomy and freedom in favor of "solidarity" with the ideas of the >> This was where radical feminism separated from revolutionary feminism. Radical feminists got fed up with expecting revolutionary movements to take women's liberation seriously, so they left. Thus began the fullfledged radical women's liberation movement, which , although not particularly a movement as such any longer (although radical feminists still exist), began almost every aspect of note of concrete changes in women's oppression. ALthough, I should add, they weren't alone - socalled liberal feminists or reformists of the NOW variety (which has many radical factions) - were a big part of those changes. But radical feminism galvanized a huge breadth of women's initiatives, many of which still live on (primarily in the areas of women's health, abortion rights, and violence against women, although not only those). Radical feminism I think I'd have to say saw women's bodies (concretely, with all the attendant spiritual and psychological consequences) as the territory men (or, male institutions) were occupying. , and the major battles over that 'territory' are still going on. Whether you are sexually involved with men or not, your body is still considered territory and the fight is still going on about that. OK, gotta go, I'm rambling, ....have to go earn the paycheck.-Joy "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-Benjamin Franklin ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 07:39:31 EST Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Joy Martin Subject: Re: Gender, Myth and Star Wars Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 10/31/02 5:14:53 AM Central Standard Time, leeanne@LEEANNE.COM writes: << "post-modern" feminisms. >> Actually not sure what postmodern feminism means. Is it a political position or is it just an academic description of somebody's idea of feminism as if the battles have all been won? (Which is I suppose a political position, although masking it's politics somewhat). It's not a term that means a lot to me. But then, I'm not an academic. I'm a feminist, of radical lineage let's say (whatever that amounts to today), as well as a lot of other things. -Joy "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-Benjamin Franklin ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 08:27:42 -0500 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Lori Errico-Seaman Subject: Re: Gender, Myth and Star Wars Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: <122.19c3be11.2af27e83@cs.com> Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit On 10/31/02 7:39 AM, "Joy Martin" wrote: > In a message dated 10/31/02 5:14:53 AM Central Standard Time, > leeanne@LEEANNE.COM writes: > > << "post-modern" feminisms. >> > Actually not sure what postmodern feminism means. Is it a political position > or is it just an academic description of somebody's idea of feminism as if > the battles have all been won? (Which is I suppose a political position, > although masking it's politics somewhat). It's not a term that means a lot to > me. But then, I'm not an academic. I'm a feminist, of radical lineage let's > say (whatever that amounts to today), as well as a lot of other things. -Joy > > "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety > deserve neither liberty nor safety"-Benjamin Franklin > While I have my own reservations about "postmodern feminism," and I agree that it's political positioning is shaky (as many postmodern feminists realize and are trying to work through), it's definitely not mean as a claim that "all the battles have been won." It's not "post-feminist," which I guess is another way to say it. I was referring to "postmodern" feminism in the sense of people doing "gender studies," where the idea is not so much arguing that women are either better than men or equal to men, but questioning what is meant by women and men at all. I was referring to a feminism that takes "gender" as its central question (which is inseparable from categories like "race," "sexuality," or "class"), rather than taking "women" as some sort of homogenous group as its central concern. While there are certainly problems with that (problems that postmodern feminists are attempting to work through and which postcolonial and more recently realist feminists are also responding to), there are also problems with both radical and liberal feminism, which tend, in positing women as a unified group, to make issues of race and sexuality and class secondary, which as you of course know was extremely divisive to the feminist movement for decades and still continues to be something feminists have to negotiate. But, in the very broad way I used the term, I was (reductively) putting *all* feminisms that question the category of women as part of their project (postmodern, postcolonial, queer theorists) under the umbrella category of "postmodern feminisms". While it *is* in many ways an "academic" feminism, it's also, I think, the kind of thing a lot of people who consider themselves "Third Wave feminists" are doing. Lori ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 07:39:23 -0800 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: Gender, Myth and Star Wars Comments: To: Feminist SF/F Lit In-Reply-To: <133.16e18385.2af27e7f@cs.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 07:39 AM 10/31/2002 -0500, Joy Martin wrote: >In a message dated 10/31/02 4:46:28 AM Central Standard Time, >leeanne@LEEANNE.COM writes: > ><< The "new" culture then would represent a > freeing of women to express their inherent > superior nature >> >Now see, this is the kind of extension that I think is a problem. 'Superior >nature' is as much an error as any kind of elevation on a pedestal to be put >down in real life etcetc thinking of the misogynist sort. I'd agree that it's a problem. But it is, I think, a fair representation of the historic claims of cultural feminism, at least in terms that can be expressed while standing on one leg. >Some parts of radical feminism say, there is a women's culture, and not all >of it is particularly good, but it comes out of women's oppressed situation. And indeed it does. Adrienne Rich (and many others) have expressed that very eloquently and at length. The possibility of survival in an inherently oppressive situation is dependent on deceit, overt prevarication, "disloyalty," and other unsavory behaviors. All these and more, stereotypically attributed to women as inherent flaws, are also attributed to oppressed peoples of any sort and for any reason, making the victim in some sense responsible for her own subjugation and abuse. >That is, it's not 'inherent nature' of women, it's what human beings are when >they have to survive within an oppressive situation. This analysis was an >extension of various radical analysis of the effects of oppression on all >people (such as Fanon, if I remember correctly, I haven't read him, just the >references in feminist literature), and came from saying, in a nutshell, >oppressed people take on what are considered 'feminine' traits, such as high >degrees of intuition and the like, because they have to be especially aware >of sensitive to the needs of their oppressors. And so forth. True. Those are the positive side of the same coin. >Now, the political agenda of all feminism is to improve women's place in the >world. The variation is in what you think it takes to do that and how big a >change is needed. Radical feminism says a very major change - what would be >revolutionary change- is needed, because the basis of society is oppression, >of women and of various other groups, which vary over time in different >societies and types of social structures (e.g. capitalism changes the forms >of oppression somewhat from feudalism, Only in that the oppression becomes mystified by the possibility, however remote, that a Horatio Alger may rise in station, and the pervasive myth that "deserving" individuals *will* so rise. Feudalism was in most cases also colonial in nature, with foreign invaders taking positions of power within existing cultures and rigidly stratifying society along perceived racial or ethnic lines. But even there, a "safety valve" existed in the from of the Church, at least in Europe, that allowed intelligent and ambitious serfs to choose an alternative and more rewarding (on some levels, at least) lifestyle. >and imperialism imposes oppression on >entire peoples, whatever their situation in their own societies,e tc). The >change would indeed change the culture, but it would change the entire >culture, not just the 'women's culture'. Socalled cultural feminism, as it >has developed, seems (I say seems, because in many cases the consequences are >not thought out at all; in other cases, there is no particular political >agenda other than creating selfaffirmative cultural artifacts, which is fine, >but not the same as what I'm talking about) to take a position that a >liberated women's culture can somehow exist within or separately from (But >still within) an otherwise oppressive society. -Joy I'd have to agree. Indeed, thus far we seem to be in rough agreement. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 07:47:43 -0800 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: Gender, Myth and Star Wars Comments: To: Feminist SF/F Lit In-Reply-To: <122.19c3be11.2af27e83@cs.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 07:39 AM 10/31/2002 -0500, Joy Martin wrote: >In a message dated 10/31/02 5:14:53 AM Central Standard Time, >leeanne@LEEANNE.COM writes: > ><< "post-modern" feminisms. >> >Actually not sure what postmodern feminism means. Is it a political position >or is it just an academic description of somebody's idea of feminism as if >the battles have all been won? (Which is I suppose a political position, >although masking it's politics somewhat). It's not a term that means a lot to >me. But then, I'm not an academic. I'm a feminist, of radical lineage let's >say (whatever that amounts to today), as well as a lot of other things. -Joy In my experience, the word means whatever the speaker wishes it to mean, with the caveat that social "deconstructions" have played some part in the effective stripping of agenda, outlook, or reality from the word "feminist." Many "post-modern" feminists seem to treat the word as synonymous with "woman," a word (and a gender) anyone may lay claim to and impose a definition upon. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 08:36:13 -0800 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: Gender, Myth and Star Wars Comments: To: Feminist SF/F Lit In-Reply-To: <45.1f84b5f6.2af27e81@cs.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 07:39 AM 10/31/2002 -0500, Joy Martin wrote: >In a message dated 10/31/02 4:46:28 AM Central Standard Time, >leeanne@LEEANNE.COM writes: > ><< Can you imagine, > the interviewer asked, a world of men? > (He thought he was joking.) If so, then, > a world where men are absent? > Absently, wearily, I answered: Yes. >> > >I do think Adrienne Rich was a bit weary of the question, but I don't think >she espouses separatism in the sense you seem to be talking about. Separating >to integrate, that is to change society, is a radical feminist principle, >different however from being a separatist with the idea that somehow in the >future all society will be such. -Joy I don't think even the most radical separatists believed, or believe, that men were going to go away, except in fantasy, of which many exist, human reproduction being what it is. But the three men in Herland were ashamed of their own societies when confronted by that of the women, and lied to them every time they thought about telling the real story. And the world is a very large place, and certainly *many* separatist (in the larger sense) groups have found it possible to escape at least in part from the strictures placed on them by society as a whole. The institution of female religious orders was in the beginning a separatist movement, and was brought back under the control of the male hierarchy only after centuries of struggle and periodic rebellions. The disaffection of individual groups of religious women in orders continues to this day and their relationship with their official "authorities" is often strained. The Amana and Oneida communities, although now reduced to brand names for consumer goods, were separatist communities of both men and women, and the Amish and other "German" movements are still around, if increasingly impinged-upon by "the English," and flourishing in their own unique ways. There are still plots of women's land, and women's communes, however difficult a time they are having now, and the struggle goes on. In sisterhood, Lee Anne ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 08:21:52 -0800 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: Gender, Myth and Star Wars Comments: To: Feminist SF/F Lit In-Reply-To: <1a3.b0921af.2af27e7f@cs.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 07:39 AM 10/31/2002 -0500, Joy Martin wrote: >In a message dated 10/31/02 4:46:28 AM Central Standard Time, >leeanne@LEEANNE.COM writes: > ><< Separatism is one of the few feminisms with > a philosophy and plan of action that can be > expressed both succinctly and coherently. >> >And exactly what might that plan be, other than fantasy?-Joy Well, you express it rather succinctly in your next post. But to elaborate, in a society founded on oppression, the more you can do to remove your tacit approval and support from that system the better. At its most extreme, removing one's self from availability to the oppressor in any way, economically, sexually, and socially, allows women's communities to evolve and flourish to some extent independently from that of the patriarchal society around it. In lesser versions, women are exhorted to buy from woman-owned businesses, to employ women at a decent living wage rather than at societal norms, and other less radical variations on separatist themes. It's actually unclear whether these actions are "meant" to change society as a whole, although they have that potential, or to simply benefit those individuals one interacts with in daily life. In the sense that society is composed of the sum total of individual actions, perhaps there is no difference in reality, just in a theoretical underpinning. But it cannot be denied that specifically lesbian separatism was intended not to integrate, as your next post states, but to set up a parallel enclave of safe spaces for women outside of the larger society, or inside, whatever metaphor one chooses. Similar movements have been used with more or less success by disadvantaged racial and ethnic groups to advance the worldly position of their own groups. Women's success has been less notable, at least partially because women are distributed pretty evenly across all racial and ethnic groups, so it's harder to measure either success or failure, since advances can easily be attributed to and claimed by men associated with the women involved while failures are, of course, more likely the women's fault. But the anti-sweatshop movement, is at it's heart, a separatist endeavor, albeit heavily disguised. The workers in sweatshops are disproportionately female, while the bosses and owners are mostly men. This movement has been successful enough that most US companies pay at least lip service to the idea, and piously claim to be following the labor laws (if any) of the country the said sweatshops exist in, and to limit the worst abuses by withdrawing contracts from them. It should be noted here that the fixed-price contract is inherently exploitive, or an inducement to exploit, since the only real disincentive to favoring greed over fairness is the remote possibility of being caught. The rapid increase in pseudo-managers and pseudo-contractors in this country is also a means of exploiting the labor of individuals in a manner reminiscent of the sweatshop, forcing workers to bid on jobs at piece-work rates and labor 80 hours or more for a theoretical 40 hours pay. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 21:37:59 EST Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Joy Martin Subject: Re: Gender, Myth and Star Wars Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 10/31/02 10:37:36 AM Central Standard Time, leeanne@LEEANNE.COM writes: << a fair representation of the historic claims of cultural feminism, >> Ok, perhaps I'm misunderstanding you - I was under the impression you were asserting the reality of such essential nature of women, not simply describing 'historical claims of cultural feminism'-Joy "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-Benjamin Franklin ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 21:37:58 EST Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Joy Martin Subject: Re: Gender, Myth and Star Wars Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 10/31/02 10:48:11 AM Central Standard Time, leeanne@LEEANNE.COM writes: << But the anti-sweatshop movement, is at it's heart, a separatist endeavor, >> How so?-Joy "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-Benjamin Franklin ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 21:38:04 EST Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Joy Martin Subject: Re: Gender, Myth and Star Wars Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 10/31/02 7:28:06 AM Central Standard Time, lerrico@UMICH.EDU writes: << but questioning what is meant by women and men at all. I was referring to a feminism that takes "gender" as its central question (which is inseparable from categories like "race," "sexuality," or "class"), rather than taking "women" as some sort of homogenous group as its central concern. While there are certainly problems with that (problems that postmodern feminists are attempting to work through and which postcolonial and more recently realist feminists are also responding to), there are also problems with both radical and liberal feminism, which tend, in positing women as a unified group, to make issues of race and sexuality and class secondary, which as you of course know was extremely divisive to the feminist movement for >> Well, this is interesting, although I'm not sure that 'gender studies' solves the problem of divisiveness in any way. But I should note that early radical feminism did in deed question what it meant to be a woman (or a man), and did not posit women as being a unified group (if we were, we wouldn't need a movement), but that women are an oppressed group as women. How that intersects with race, class or any other situations was never considered to be simple or obvious, but women's oppression was not seen as secondary to any others, in terms of the need to struggle and organize on that basis. Although there is no clearcut difference in this regard, one way of distinguishing radical feminism from liberal feminism would be that at least some, if not all, radical feminists believe that alignment of interest with women most in harms way is a priority for organizing.But of course everyone, every woman, every feminist, has work to do in terms of raising their own consciousness about other forms of oppression, esp. those they themselves do not directly experience. No analysis, ideology, academic study or political position can dispell the need for that kind of work. -Joy "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-Benjamin Franklin ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 21:38:00 EST Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Joy Martin Subject: Re: Gender, Myth and Star Wars Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 10/31/02 10:37:50 AM Central Standard Time, leeanne@LEEANNE.COM writes: << I don't think even the most radical separatists believed, or believe, that men were going to go away, except in fantasy, >> I don't know what everyone believes, but if separatism is the goal, how can one take it seriously , if those who believe in it don't really believe in it? Small pockets of women can get by with all sorts of things, but that isn't 'women's liberation'.-Joy "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-Benjamin Franklin ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 21:38:01 EST Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Joy Martin Subject: Re: Gender, Myth and Star Wars Comments: To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 10/31/02 10:48:11 AM Central Standard Time, leeanne@LEEANNE.COM writes: << Well, you express it rather succinctly in your next post. >> Well, you've lost me. Separatism as a kind of feminism is not the same as the strategy of forming womenrun feminist organizations in order to create a movement, with the ultimate goal being integration of women fully in society, unmarginalized, fully empowered, with all the transformation or revolution that would require.-Joy "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-Benjamin Franklin