I've hestitated to participate in discussions here because I don't have
access to my personal library to check out facts ... but, since I initiated
the *Fifth Sacred Thing* discussion, I feel compelled to make some comments
about the comments I've read.
SC wrote:
>> > Why are all good-guys so sweeeeeet and lacking in individuality?
To me, the "good-guys" weren't like that; they were like many people I know
and love (not always sweet and never lacking in individuality). What I
noted, and appreciated, was that there were no self-indulgent jerks,
slummers, or egotistical assholes in the FST utopia. Not only because it's
"fantasy" ...there's a social/psychological reason, too. As Bruno
Bettleheim noted, compassion, sharing, and the ability to cooperate were
characteristics that most enabled Holocaust victims to survive (FST
portrays a post-holocaust society created by the previously oppressed).
This is also my take on the lack of "beer-drinking, pool-playing, rude
neighbors."
Joan wrote:
>I thought that the City Councils demonstrated how principled negotiation
>was an attempt to take account of individuality.
I agree. Not the "oddball character"-type of individuality, but the kind of
personal-rights individuality we want to protect within a democracy.
SC wrote:
>> > is it a feminist utopia because its only about spirituality?
I don't think FST is "only about spirituality." To me, it's primarily about
non-violent resistence, community, democracy, reconciliation and
personal/social transcendence of barriers of race, class, and gender. It's
a feminist utopia because women and men, in all their diversity, have equal
rights and responsibilities.
Regarding Kate's comment about "gay men and their 'fairy section'" ... I
don't recall details either, but in a egalitarian society, women as a class
don't need or necessarily want a "separate women's space." I too, however,
would take exception to any homophobic implication ... but I just don't
remember it: do ALL the gay men subscribe to this exclusivity?
SC wrote:
>How do they manage to have all the useful
>> > bits of technology they want without the manufacturing side - inventing
>> > wonderful crystals that do all the difficult bits just wont cut it.
<tho I will, snip ...>
>Are there any feminst utopias that actually "like"
>> > technology and make an effort to incorporate it sensibly into the
>story?
This brings to mind a Marian Zimmer Bradley story called, I think, "The
Changing Wave" (I'm not sure of the title, please correct me if I'm wrong):
Space sojourners return after many centuries to earth, expecting all sorts
of high-tech advances but are disappointed to find a slow-paced, apparently
pastoral low-tech society. It turns out that this society does have a
highly advanced technology, but it's not in their faces all the time
because they use it "appropriately" -- decentralized, non-commerical, as a
tool and not an end in itself. They prefer a bucolic, personalized
lifestyle (afforded by their advanced technology) to a high-tech lifestyle.
As a sometimes computer consultant/teacher in a small town in central
Mexico (I don't know that much about computers, just more than most of the
folks I work with), I understand this preference. I appreciate science
fiction ... or, excuse me, fantasy ... like FST that puts forth this
possibility. It seems to me a far more sane direction of human development
than the frantic, commericalized, impersonal and stressed-out high-tech
environment that many friends who live in the U.S. complain about. Maybe
FST is just the flip-side of the Linda Nagata society of *The Bohr Maker*
(did someone call it nanotech or something? or is it cyberpunk? What is
cyberpunk anyway?)
Joan wrote: Feminists have done a great
>deal of ground-breaking work on critiquing science and technology which
>have tended to be at the service of and under the control of male, white,
>middle class scientists with all the potential abuses that that suggests.
>For that reason, I believe that feminist science fiction is probably more
>ambivalent about "liking" science or technology.
I think this is an excellent point and want to know more!
Kate wrote:
>Why do these people praise the Goddess in all her
>> incarnations, but get queasy when it comes to violence? After all, the
>> Goddess does have her violent, blood-sacrifice side.
It seems to me that for the committed feminist pacifist community, any
incarnation of the Goddess that includes "violent, blood-sacrifice" could
not be taken as a true incarnation, but a warped militaristic, masculist
appropriation. I'm not keen on many New Age goddess ideas, but I applaud
Starhawk's rendition of a community that, holding to its spiritual and
political principles, "wins" (i.e., survives) against the "might makes
right" principle that in our bloody history of the conquerers always wins.
Kate wrote:>> And why does Southern California have to be the bad guys?
>
Joan responded:
>I don't live in the US, but I thought it was perhaps an extrapolation for a
>tendency amongst some Southern Californians to exhibit extreme paranoia
>about the threat to their lifestyles posed by illegal immigrants from
>Mexico.
I think Joan has absolutely hit the point. Not only "illegals," but also
"legals," and other "lower-class" people of color. LA has more "minorities"
-- Latino, Black and Asian -- than whites. When I lived there, I found the
pervasiveness of ethnic ghettoization very striking (not that LA has a
monopoly on racism and classism; it was just more apparent to me there than
elsewhere). However, I think it's to Starhawk's credit that not all
upper-class white Southern Californians are depicted as racist and
militaristic ... there's a wealthy white woman who runs kind of an
"underground railroad" that helps Madrone escape.
>>I should have just stuck to Octavia Butler. She may be
>>optimistic, but she's also practical.
>
>...I find her work pessimistic. And what do you mean
>by practical? To which of her works are you referring?
OK, let's talk about Butler! I found Xenogenesis neither optimistic nor
pessimistic, but realistic about xenophobia (it will be extremely difficult
to overcome, but it's possible, over generations; those who first "cross
the line" may be reviled as traitors to their race but will in fact be
saviors of another sort). Or have I opened another can of worms (bad joke).
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