Dear Mala- so you've been reading Tiptree, huh? Maybe "The Screwfly
Solutiion" or "The Women Men Don't See?"- where the only possible solution
for the problems of "invisible" (ie not beautiful) women is to escape to
another planet...Yes, Tiptree is increbibly bleak- there is a great
article by Lillian Heldreth on the link between sex and violence in Tip's
work. I did my MA thesis on her- and Tiptree never saw any way out for
women, seeing our present freedom's as an optical illusion. Sisterhood was
not powerful in the least. There was an article by someone named something
like "Julie Ludetke-Seal" which tried to argue for some kind of
transcendence in tragedy in Tiptree's work, but I found it unconvincing.
The fate of Margaret Omali in Up the Walls of the World seems emblematic
to me- the only way for happiness as (in this case) a gnetially mutilated
woman is to become a computer. The body seemed to Tiptree to be a site of
enormous pain- and when sex is added to the equation, things become much
worse......
Yours, in gloom,
Tanya
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