Anitra E. Heiberg Lykke wrote:
>
> 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)."
>
> This discussion on body size and height, reminded me of a short story in
> where men or women could change their sex. By cloning they had a body
> "grown" for them of the other sex. Then they "just" put the old brain in the
> new body.
> It made for interesting episodes when the main character, a woman, came
> home to her husband as a man.
> The story explored gender-roles a little, but could probably have made more
> out of it.
> It did give us (women)a feeeling of what the difference in body meant for
> how one is treatad, seen from both sides.
>
> I'm sorry I can't remember who wrote it, or the title unfortunately, it is
> probably located in one of the 6 stored boxes of sci-fi books.
> -Anitra
This is my first posting to FEMINISTSF, I've enjoyed reading ya'll's
conversations on size and gender this past week.
I find XENA entertaining on various levels, and I love the size
difference between the powerful (butch?) Xena and her diminuitive female
companion -- who Xena almost always defers to on matters of heart/spirit
(true power?).
I think in this society power is represented as/by size: men are
SUPPOSED to be BIGGER than women (more powerful, more intellectually
capable, braver in the face of danger, etc) and what we often see is
either what is projected or what we perceive -- and not necessarily what
is reality in terms of weight, body mass, etc.
Women's power is also represented by size: thin, petite, compact women
are praised. A facet of what we call "eating disorders" is the
inability to SEE one's own body (and I suggest often the bodies of
others) as they really are in terms of weight, body mass, etc. In this
sickness, a woman might FEEL more powerful the thinner, smaller she is,
even as she is physically weak and dying. She is SUPPOSED to be
smaller....
Anne McCaffrey's short story "The Ship Who Sang" (Women of Wonder: The
Classic Years) is fascinating in many respects, and particularly in it's
exploration of society's use of people whose bodies it finds completely
unusable and the development of other aspects of their (nonphysical)
being.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:40 PDT