On Tue, 22 Jul 1997, Robin Gordon wrote:
> 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.
>
This is something that bothers me about Tepper as well, what appears to
be a gut-level belief that men are incapable of controlling their
propensity for violence, and that things can only be improved by a)
selectively and secretly breed the violence out (Gate) or b) finding
some kind of deus (or fungus) ex machina to reduce male violence (Raising
the Stones). Of course Tepper isn't the only writer to consider this a
possibility. Butler deals with the issue in the Xenogenesis trilogy and
it's a continuing theme in the fiction of Joe Haldeman--see especially
his forthcoming *Forever Peace* in which scientists create a way to make
humanity incapable of violence. Joan Slonczewski reaches somewhat
different conclusions in several of her novels though.
Mike
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