On Tue, 9 Sep 1997, joanna goltzman wrote:
> Nalo Hopkinson wrote:
>
> "To bring this back on topic, one of the more appealing speculative aspects
> of feminist sf for me is the times when the literature allows me to imagine
> what it would be like to be in a female body that is comfortable exercising
> physical
> mastery. For which you don't necessarily need superior strength, just
> good training. That was one of the things I loved about the martial art
> in Elizabeth Lyn's books. Men and women sparred together."
>
> and Edrie J Sobstyl wrote:
>
> "I too have found in sf an exploration of what it would be like to be a woman
> and to have a body that you could actually USE - as something OTHER
> than a thing to seduce or reproduce (not that those aren't perfectly
> good uses, but they do tend to limit women)."
>
>
> I am interested in what other people on this list have found SF lets them
> imagine about women. One of the reasons I am so interested in feminist SF is
> that it creates new female identities. Imagining women in non-traditional
> ways is one step along the way to changing traditional views of women.
>
> Joanna
>
This, I think, is one of the great strengths of Charnas's Motherlines
trilogy, particularly the 2nd and 3rd volumes. Charnas portrays women who
have either been born into a society or adapted to societies where women
are expected to participate in the full range of human activities,
including many physical activities generally handled by men in our society.
One of the problems with many female warrior stories, it seems to me, is that
the female characters act pretty much like men when it comes to accomplishing
physical activities. This doesn't strike me as entirely realistic. I know
from experience, for example, that my wife, who is a small person and
doesn't have a lot of physical strength even though she works out
regularly, will often set out to accomplish a physical task (digging up a
garden, flipping a matress, moving the refrigerator, sewing on a button)
completely differently from how I, who am much stronger but much more clumsy,
would do it. She'll do the job just as well, sometimes less quickly, sometimes
more quickly, but she'll break it down into different parts or
sub-routines than I would, use different tools, etc. I think we see some
of this in Charnas's riding women and particularly in Alldera's invasion
force in Fury. We see some of this in Eleanor Arnason's work as well.
Mike Levy
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