On Fri, 18 Apr 1997 12:49:27 -0500 Heather Whipple wrote:
> How about Le Guin's _The Dispossessed_ as a utopia/dystopia
that doesn't
> blame all problems on men?
>
> Although it's not a utopia/dystopia story, I want to mention Eleanor
> Arnason's _Ring of Swords_ in relation to this topic. It does offer
> another view (but not quite a critique) of gender
roles/responsibilities,
> and there's a matter-of-fact-ness in the culture clash, expressed
along
> the lines of "Why the hell would you want to set things up *that*
way?!?"
> It implies an arbitrariness to "the way things are" that allows for
> thinking about change without assigning blame.
>
> this question also leads to (the larger than the scope of this
listserv)
> questioning of what "feminist" means here. Does a feminist
> utopia/dystopia have to address gender? If it's about social
equality or
> environmental disasters, and doesn't blame patriarchy or take
place in an
> all-women culture, could it be feminist? Is _The Sparrow_ a
feminist
> work? (these are all open-ended discussion-type questions as far
as I'm
> concerned; I can think of arguments on several sides to this topic.
they
> are not meant to be rhetorical questions)
>
> ***************
> Heather Whipple
> hwhipple@script.lib.indiana.edu
Apologies to anyone on the SFRA list as well who has already heard
this. Le Guin's The Dispossesses is not a feminist utopia. Instead, it
is a classic "when the revolution comes everything will be ok
dearie". It is quite sexist and from a radical feminist point of view
could be seen as ignoring the real difficulties in favour of trivial
wrangling between masculinists.
Farah
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