On Mon, 21 Jul 1997, Robin A. Dubner Dubner wrote:
> On the other hand, I discovered Sheri S. Tepper a couple of months ago
> and I've been devouring everything of hers I can get my hands on. The first
> her books read by everyone. Her feminism, great character development and
> lyrical writing are without comparison. I heartily enjoy the repeated themes
> of ecological disaster due to uncontrolled human breeding and the evils of
> religious fundamentalism. I love the development of her female protaganists
> into strong independent women.
> Anyone out there who wants to talk Sheri S. Tepper with me?
>
Hi Robin, I'm the other Robin (or there may be more), and that sound you
hear may be the groans of others on the list remembering that I am, it
seems the Tepper critic on the list.
The only Tepper I've read is Gate and just finished Gibbon's Decline and
Fall, which looked interesting and I thought, hey, everyone on the list
seems to love her so I should give her another chance. I did enjoy
Gibbon's, how refreshing to have a sf novel where the main characters are
older women! And the characters were very well drawn, the ideas
interesting and the mystical elements enchanting. I liked it a great deal
more than I did Gate. But some of the same Tepper elements continued to
bother me.
Warning- spoilers about Gibbon's Decline and Fall:
I won't repeat my concerns here about the homophobia in Gate, if you're
interested check the archives. In Gibbon's Tepper has come a fair ways,
including a strong lesbian character, and another (probably) suppressed
lesbian character. I liked the way she portrayed these women and their
sexuality, especially the sculpter. Unfortunately the treatment of gay
men is not so great.
Despite the fact that a great deal of the plot deals with a plague of the
loss of sexual appetite and layers of repercussions which flow from this,
never in the discussions of the plague does she address what's happening
to gays and lesbians, except a brief note that the lesbian character is
also suffering a libido loss.
And in one passage about the church, one character knowledgably offers the
explanation that priests don't know how to deal with women because they're
mostly homosexual men. I know it's not a big part of the novel, but I
find it disturbing, given a similar, but worse, lapse into homophobia in
Gate. There's a lot to unpack there, why suggest most priests are gay?
And then claim this is the root of their inability to deal with women?
Sure there are misogynist gay men, but they didn't invent it, and don't
have a monopoly on it.
The other thing that I was really hit by in Gibbon's was Tepper's
continued biological essentialism. It seems to me that Tepper, like many
feminists (I respect a diversity of feminisims, but just don't necessarily
agree with them all) seems to feel that there is some 'essential'
difference between men and women (women are overall more gentle, caring,
nurturing, less agressive, violent, warlike, ant that this is natural or
inherent not just a product of social construction).
This is particularly evident in her discussion of the 'plague', where she
places a great deal of emphasis on the reduction in men's testosterone
levels as being the central ingredient to a whole host of radical social
changes. The message is clear that behaviour is, at least largely,
biologically driven, and that the important biological differences are
between men as a category and women as a category.
As you can probably tell, I'm a realtively radical social constructionist
(socialist feminst) myself, and disagree with some of her basic
philosophy.
OK, enough for now,
Robin Gordon
------------------------
Resistance is Fruitful.
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