>
> I'd be interested to know, Farah, Joel or anyone else, what you feel
is
> lost with decreasing numbers of 'desexualized' female characters?
>
> Robin
> *************************
> Dip me in honey and throw
> me to the lesbians.
(one of my favourite quotations!)
What has been lost I feel is the right to be gender and sexuality
neutral. Celibacy is seen as an interim stage and one cannot live
with a woman without sexuality being assumed. For three months I
lived with a very straight friend of mine. Because I am gay and
people new that I loved/love her very much they assumed a sexual
relationship (many told me so out right).
Men have on the whole enjoyed the right to chosen singleness to a
far greater degree than women, whose identity has traditionally been
bound up with sex, but I think men too are losing this right (I find it
unsurprising that the western is apparently declining in popularity - it
was the quintessential single sex genre).
Interestingly, I think American society has placed much more
premium on inter-sex friendships than much of Europe (apart from
sex I mean) most of the US rejected single sex public education
(pre-college) towards the end of the nineteenth century and the
marriage manuals of the turn of the century are very hot on the
companionate aspects of marriage. In early sf, what is fascinating is
that only the baddies get to stay single. Goodies, both male and
female, must be either married or be paired off at the end. It is in the
forties and fifties (that low point for US feminism) that single sex sf
becomes the norm.
Farah
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