At 11:33 AM 8/2/97 -0400, Tanya wrote:
>An exception (to 'niceness') is a novel I just read called "The Jigsaw
Woman" by Kim
>Antineau (?).
This sounds fascinating. I don't see it on the bibliographies at this site.
Can you post more specific information?
>Someone asked for a utopia where people are rude and fail- I can
>think of no better example than Delany's _Triton_, where the
>protagonist, Bron, definitely does not fit in, and the technical
>sophisication of this society (he can change sex at will) does not help at
>all.S/he is really a total prick: and what can any utopian society do
>about that?
Exactly. You don't have to be a man to be a prick (re: "honorary men" -- do
they really advance the cause of feminism?). I can get ahold of this book,
but I'm intrigued. In your opinion, how is this mis-fitting resolved, how
do the utopians defend themselves against him/her? To me, this is one of
the biggest stumbling block of making ideal feminist utopias real.
Joan Slonczewski in "A Door Into Ocean" has an interesting resolution for
dealing with infractions of the society's mores: "unspeaking" (socially
isolating) the individual. This, however, assumes that the individual cares
about community and is thus deeply affected, and is nonviolent and so
doesn't just force her way back in. It also seems to me that in Le Guin's
"The Dispossessed" there's an insightful solution, but I don't have the
book with me and can't recall the details.
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