> From: Laura Quilter <lquilter@IGC.APC.ORG>
> *** SPOILERS ***
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> the book poses this intriguing moral dilemma: if we *knew*, really
*knew*,
> that a particular trait caused all these problems and it could be
> eliminated, would it be moral to do so? In my opinion, Tepper thinks the
> answer is yes. But the question is ambiguously answered if at all, and
> there are examples in the book that you could point to as reasons for NO.
> Such as the too-casual elimination of homosexuality. Whether Tepper saw
> that as a problem with the society or not I have no idea - there's no
> textual evidence to suggest that she did.
De-lurking to make a comment on this, which won't, I hope, be very long
because I have a published article on precisely this issue and don't want
to rehash the whole argument here. (If anyone is interested, it's in the
July 1996 issue of _Science-Fiction Studies_ and is called "After the
(homo)sexual".)
I'd agree that there's no textual evidence to read the text as ambiguous or
satirical. It presents a problem, a potential solution and a method to
achieve that solution. In the case of men, the basic argument says that
men are violent, that men's violence must be eliminated so that women can
be safe, and that the best way to achieve that solution is through
controlled breeding and by using men's violence against them. In the case
of homosexuals, the inference is not genetic per so, but hormonal and again
the people with the offending trait are eliminated. Despite everything
that I have come to see as positive about this novel -- and there are
several very interesting and important things here -- the elimination of an
identifiable group of people is simply genocide.
On the plus side of this (if genocide can have a positive side, which I am
somewhat dubious about), SF has a fairly long tradition of feminist
thought-experiments in which women and men are separated, sometimes by the
elimination of men, in order to think about what life without men would be
like. As a thought-experiment, I have no problem with this; in the sense
that _Gate_ is generally referred to as a "utopia" (and I've no idea
whether Tepper sees that society as utopian or not), I have a problem
because of the way in which utopias are often taken as potential
blueprints. While I can open my own jars, I would also prefer not to live
in a world from which men have been eliminated. As a lesbian, I would
certainly not want to live in Women's Country -- but then I wouldn't be
given that option,would I?
As far as the homosexual issue is concerned, I have to agree with the
person who pointed out that they (we) are eliminated because the novel
cannot otherwise work. But I think the issue goes beyond eliminating the
specific identity group; the whole novel seems to me to be profoundly
anti-sexual. At the same time, and at the risk of contradicting myself, I
would have had a more positive reaction to the novel without the few scenes
in which homosexuals are brought up in order to be dismissed. Simply
ignoring the existence of an alternative sexuality would have been
heteronormative enough in its implications; bringing gay people into the
book in order to get rid of them at a time when anti-gay homophobic AIDS
rhetoric was at its height is intensely problematic.
I read this book for the first time in 1989, shortly after the death of a
close friend from AIDS, and it came very close to making me physically ill.
I found it impossible, under those circumstances, to construe the
introduction of homosexuality into the novel as anything but yet another
way to create that fundamentalist utopian vision of a world in which gays
don't exist and women stay in their place (if you read the novel from a
certain perspective, you could, I think, although I've not tried to do so,
construct an argument that it's not about the freedom of women but about
their containment inside the Gate to Women's Country).
In the intervening years, I've read the novel any number of times and,
while the physical reaction has worn off, I still am very ambivalent about
it as a model for feminist writing. As Laura says, the essentialism is
dangerous; it simplifies what should be complex and it ends up advocating a
very unpleasant kind of final solution to the "problem" of men and gay
people.
>
> Of course I also think that essentialist constructs are really harmful to
> the feminist project, so in that sense the book is not helpful. But it
> works for me on the level of: "I don't believe in a god but if there were
> a god I wouldn't like him because he behaves like a jerk." From a
logical
> & scientific perspective, I don't like the concept of biological
> essentialism - but if it could be proven (as in Tepper's novel) I
wouldn't
> like any society that could control our biology.
>
Wendy
Wendy Pearson Email: wpearson@trentu.ca; silk@pipcom.com
Cultural Studies Phone: (705) 745-0637
Trent University
Peterborough Mailing Address: Box 228, Trail College
Ontario K9J 7B8 Trent University, Peterborough, Ont. K9J 7B8
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