Hi everybody! I just got back from my vacation to Japan and have been
catching up on the list. I just wanted to throw in my $ 0.02 on a few recent
topics:
About the Susan Calvin stories: they are horribly sexist, but I think
others on the list were right in saying that Calvin is pretty much a stock
character of pre-70's SF (and other genre literature), and as such fits in
well with the rest of Asimov's characters, especially in his earlier work.
Reading these stories as a kid, I was much more impressed with Calvin's
intellect and her acerbic manner than I was concerned about her stunted
emotional life. She seemed a type of female Sherlock Holmes to me.
I don't think it's fair to lambaste Asimov on the grounds that Simone de
Beauvoir was already available in English by that time -- from my historical
understanding (caveat:I was born in 1967 and don't remember anything prior to
Watergate) feminism, or women's lib, was off the cultural radar screen in
America until the late 60's/early 70's except for a small minority of
people...
Two:Harkening back to the discussion on coding characters as homosexual in
stories, and being seen as homosexual in real life --
I think a lot of the ambiguity can be understood purely in terms of
communication problems. In a stable, stratified society, you can "read" a
person's appearance very effectively. In the contemporary urban American
scene, the relationship of outer appearance and identity seems much more
fluid... for example, when I was young there was a widespread belief that
having an earring in the right ear, in men, meant you were straight and on
the left meant you were gay. That code broke down a long time ago, though.
Another example: I used to be a (nonracist) skinhead, as was my best
friend: living in Detroit, people thought we were thugs, and some people
thought we were Nazis. When we visited San Fransisco and had breakfast on
Christopher Street, the waiter assumed we were lovers...
The determined person can always wear a pink triangle, or the notorious
"I'm here and I'm queer" T-shirt which Army regulations specifically
prohibit...
On the literary side, In _Trouble and her Friends_, I thought it was
pretty obvious that the main characters were lesbians even before the sex
scene. I think a passionate kiss is effective, too (A la _My Beautiful
Laundrette_ -- that's the point in the movie where my dad figured out the two
guys were together). Now, I've got nothing against lesbian sex scenes and I
strongly suspect they are good for sales, but I don't think they're necessary
o get the point accross. You also lose some of the YA market by doing that,
and there are some readers who just don't like explicit sex in their stories,
for whatever reason.
Three, and finally, I wanted to point out that societies do not fall out as
points on a line ranging from "very repressive" to "utopian" -- reality is a
bit more complicated. One thing I saw in Tokyo that really impressed me was
the sight of little girls, about 8 or so, going to school via the subway
without any adult escort. I cannot imagine any western great city where such
a thing would be possible. WHen I talked with an American woman living in
TOkyo, the first thing she mentioned about living there was the sense of
safety... surely that is a good thing, that women can leave the house without
fear. On the other hand, women in general are not supposed to have careers,
are supposed to walk behind their husbands, etc. etc.
Another example: in Czechoslovakia before 1989, women got a year of paid
maternity leave guaranteed by the state. On the other hand, women were
systematically excluded from some parts of the education system.
So I think any comparison of cultures in terms of "who's got it worse"
is a gross oversimplification. Every shoe seems to pinch somewhere, and some
pinch very badly indeed.
Daniel Krashin
"My opinions do not represent or resemble the US Government in any way"
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