On Sat, 19 Apr 1997 10:06:00 -0800 Emily Hackbarth wrote:
> > 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
> >
>
> Care to elaborate?
>
> Emily Hackbarth
> emily@exo.com
> http://exo.com/~emily/beadworker.html
> "In a sheet of paper is contained the infinite."
> Lu Chi
Unfortunately, with great pleasure. The Dispossessed is set in a
kibbutz like society (talk to some kibbutzim some day, many of the
kibbutz are very patriarchal). The social debate is the classic one
about can utopia cope and nurture the individual and the creative
force; the creative force being defined as the desire to work as an
individual not a team, with the need to lock oneself away from all
distractions -- a classically male definition of creativity which wants
to see individual genius not collective endeavour. We see much the
same debate in Star Trek: This Side of Paradise. The argument
usually runs that a peaceful world cannot be a creative world. Le
Guin may later try to feminise the ideology by going back to the
founder, but my sense is still a very masculinist ideology underlying
it all which associats conflict with creativity.
The bit in the story which really annoyed me was the stuff about child
care. Shevek's mother is made to seem neglectful for leaving her
child in a creche whilst she goes off to pursue her career. His father
is given no such guilt trip for doing the same thing, and neither is
Shevek who is happy to abandon his child to the care of his wife
assuming that she will be happy with this arrangment.
In addition, one of the *implied* faults of this utopia is its lack of
beauty (it *is* a harsh world) but the loss seems to be focussed on
the loss of feminity. Why? What was LeGuin trying to say?
In the end, Shevek's wife (and I apologise deeply for not being able
to remember her name, but she is *so* colourless) is subsumed
beneath the personality and creativity of the great man. I can't see
much difference for women before or after the revolution.
Farah
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