========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 09:35:27 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Laura Quilter Subject: yes, list is still here! Comments: To: feministsf@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII several people have written to me asking why is the list so quiet? i have no answers but can assure everyone that nobody has been dropped from the list ... that said, i'll throw out one book that i recently read and loved: alice nunn's ILLICIT PASSAGE (from Women's Redress Press in Australia - great press name). great revolutionary work. re: feminist content, all throughout the book i kept thinking, ok, strong protagonist does not a feminist work make; where is the feminist analysis? but at the end of the book i shut it, thought, whoa. the feminist content sneaks up and bites you. * list announcement: i'm archiving list discussions off the feminist-sf/f/u web pages at http://www.uic.edu/~lauramd/femsf/listserv/ * web-site announcement: i'm looking to move the fem-sf web pages (http://www.uic.edu/~lauramd/femsf/) off my personal account. My preferred location would be an academic site -- somewhere with a strong SF/utopian or gender/women's studies program. Second choice would be an ISP, with a domain name, and a variety of server features. Ideally the server would have a database server on it -- Access or whatever -- and the site could be converted to a fully searchable database. If any of you have ideas or leads, let me know. Laura M. Quilter / lauramd@uic.edu Electronic Services Librarian University of Illinois at Chicago http://www.uic.edu/~lauramd/ "If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution." -- Emma Goldman ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 12:07:15 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: DAVID CHRISTENSON Subject: Re: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here!) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii -- [ From: David Christenson * EMC.Ver #2.5.3 ] -- To help alleviate the quiet, I thought I'd quit lurking and shotgun- blast-out a batch of potential topics for the more learned members of this list (just about any member is more learned than I). This is all stuff I've been wondering about anyway. - Recommended summer reading. (BTW, if summer reading must be "light," is there such a thing as "light" feminist SF?) - Who's feminist and who ain't among pre-1970s SF/fantasy writers? That is, is there detectable feminism in the earlier works of C.L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, E. Mayne Hull, Shirley Jackson, Miriam Allen DeFord (digging deep here), J. Hunter Holly, Rena Vale, Margaret St. Clair, A.M . Lightner, Katherine MacLean? (I think Andre Norton was discussed recently here, and Judith Merril at Wiscon 20 of course.) - Current stuff: Which current SF writers are laudably feminist, and which are unapologetic swine (or sheep)? - Media: though there's plenty enough Trek talk around, I wouldn't mind a good long discussion of Trek feminism (or lack of it), if anybody's interested. -- David Christenson - ldqt79a@prodigy.com Ray Goulding: "Suppose someone on the radio said, "What are you doing now, in this Atomic Age?'" Bob Elliott: "And you would answer, 'No.'" "You'll say reality is under no obligation to be interesting. To which I'd reply that reality may disregard the obligation but that we may not. " - Jorge Luis Borges ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 10:14:54 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Neil Rest Subject: a tangential citation Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm cleaning up my last few months' accumulation of The Scout Report, and found: _Feminist Collections_ World Wide Web Reviews and Computer Talk http://www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/WomensStudies/fcmain.htm _Feminist Collections: A Quarterly of Women's Studies Resources_, provided by the Women's Studies Librarian's Office at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (discussed in the February 6, 1996 Scout Report), contains two sections on the Internet that are very useful to women's studies researchers. World Wide Web Reviews (available from the home page or individual issues), is a new feature offering web essays on a variety of topics. To date, three reviews are available, on the subjects of funding sources, breast cancer, and women and computer technology. Computer Talk (also available from the home page or individual issues) is an ongoing column by Linda Shult of the WSLO that lists and briefly describes women's studies-related email lists, electronic journals, and websites. Together, they make a formidable Internet awareness resource in Women's Studies. [JS] ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 13:47:35 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Susan Marie Groppi Subject: Re: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here!) In-Reply-To: <199706101607.MAA11350@mime3.prodigy.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > - Media: though there's plenty enough Trek talk around, I wouldn't mind > a good long discussion of Trek feminism (or lack of it), if anybody's > interested. Or feminism on Babylon 5... I'm fascinated by the changes we've seen in Delenn, who I've considered something of a role model for feminism on television. -- Susan groppi@hcs.harvard.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------ i found god in myself and i loved her i loved her fiercely -- n.shange ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 16:27:18 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: CMUNSON Subject: Re[2]: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here!) Comments: To: Susan Marie Groppi Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: Re: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here!) Author: Susan Marie Groppi at Internet Date: 6/10/97 1:47 PM >> - Media: though there's plenty enough Trek talk around, I wouldn't >>mind >> a good long discussion of Trek feminism (or lack of it), if anybody's >> interested. Susan wrote: >Or feminism on Babylon 5... I'm fascinated by the changes we've seen in >Delenn, who I've considered something of a role model for feminism on >television. First of all, let me make some recommendations for summer reading. Right now I'm reading Le Guin's *Four Ways to Forgiveness* and would heartily recommend it. In fact, I wouldn't mind seeing a discussion in this forum. Some books relevant to this list that I've read and recommend: Marge Piercy: *He, She and It* and *Woman on the Edge of Time* Joan Slonczewski: *Door Into Ocean* (I can't recommend Daughter of Elysium) I'd also like to see a discussion of feminism on Babylon 5. I run a web site on B5 called The Bab5 Zone I also run a tiny list on Babylon 5 and anarchy. Contact me for more details. So what do people think about Ivanova's character? Compared to Captain Janeway or Major Kira? Chuck0 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 16:21:42 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Sean Johnston Subject: Re[2]: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here!) In-Reply-To: <00069600.1205@aaas.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > I also run a tiny list on Babylon 5 and anarchy. Contact me for more > details. > > So what do people think about Ivanova's character? Compared to Captain > Janeway or Major Kira? > > Chuck0 What about Dax? -Sean ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 17:00:05 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bonnie Gray Subject: Re: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here!) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > - Media: though there's plenty enough Trek talk around, I wouldn't mind > a good long discussion of Trek feminism (or lack of it), if anybody's > interested. > >Or feminism on Babylon 5... I'm fascinated by the changes we've seen in >Delenn, who I've considered something of a role model for feminism on >television. Oooo... Babylon 5, one of my favorites. Susan, I'd like to hear you elaborate on that. What "changes" do you refer to? Her metamorphosis to half-human and the resulting changes, or more recent changes? Bonnie ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 17:03:14 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bonnie Gray Subject: Re: Re[2]: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here!) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > So what do people think about Ivanova's character? Compared to Captain > Janeway or Major Kira? In short, I think she's pretty well done. However, one of these days I would like to see Marcus get called out of bed in his lingerie instead of Ivanova. :) Bonnie ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 20:35:12 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Susan Marie Groppi Subject: Re: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here!) In-Reply-To: <199706110000.RAA28308@tarpon.ece.ucdavis.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > Oooo... Babylon 5, one of my favorites. Susan, I'd like to hear > you elaborate on that. What "changes" do you refer to? Her > metamorphosis to half-human and the resulting changes, or more > recent changes? Both, actually. The metamorphosis to half-human had such an amazing effect on her personality--Delenn was suddenly uncertain, full of doubt, she even started crying with talking to ISN. And it took her a long time to get her self-confidence and strength back; she needed the crisis of B5 breaking with EarthGov to restore her ability to kick some booty on the Grey Council. I was specifically referring to the last season or so, though. Falling in love with Sheridan has had at least as large an effect on her personality as becoming half-human, and she went through a similar loss of self-assurance. I was actually quite disappointed in Delenn's character for a while--when she thought Sheridan had died at Z'ha'dum, and even after he came back, she was all floppy and whatnot. But she's managed to find a balance between being Sheridan's partner and being Delenn in her own right, and the last few episodes have made me very happy. -- Susan groppi@hcs.harvard.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------ i found god in myself and i loved her i loved her fiercely -- n.shange ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 21:14:46 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jill Gillham Subject: Re: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here!) In-Reply-To: <199706101607.MAA11350@mime3.prodigy.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 10 Jun 1997, DAVID CHRISTENSON wrote: > -- [ From: David Christenson * EMC.Ver #2.5.3 ] -- > > To help alleviate the quiet, I thought I'd quit lurking and shotgun- > blast-out a batch of potential topics for the more learned members of > this list (just about any member is more learned than I). This is all > stuff I've been wondering about anyway. > You pulled me out of lurkdom as well :) > - Recommended summer reading. (BTW, if summer reading must be "light," > is there such a thing as "light" feminist SF?) > I've been having a lot of fun with Laurell Hamilton's "Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter" series lately. Probably no Big Messages contained within, but one of the best take-no-prisoners female characters in print these days. Hamilton's got a great way of writing, but it might not be the best thing to read if you're squeamish. She describes things pretty graphically, and the body count tends to be pretty high. (LH has said that one of the reasons why she created Anita was because female detectives in stories never got to kill as many people as their male counterparts did.) > - Media: though there's plenty enough Trek talk around, I wouldn't mind > a good long discussion of Trek feminism (or lack of it), if anybody's > interested. Honestly, I haven't watched the seri (serieses? what's the plural, anyways?) since they killed off Tasha Yar, and the character I could most closely relate to was Wesley Crusher. (Yeah, I know. I was in high school at the time) Deanna Troi and the female doctors were just never allowed to do anything interesting, in my view. On a related rant, why aren't the strong female characters ever allowed to live? Tasha Yar was written out early in the series, and other characters in other popular movies that were seen as strong are all dead by the end credits. (Thelma and Louise and Catwoman come to mind) It's like there's a message that strong women are fated to face a very high cost for daring to be who they wanted to be.) Jill Gillham jilkey@grfn.org jillmari@aol.com http://members.aol.com/ferndock2 -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.1 GG d s+ a-- C+++ U P+ L E--- W++ N+++ K+ w--- O M+ V PS++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5+++ X R tv+ b++++ DI+++ D--- G e+++ h--- r+++ x+++ ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 22:31:25 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: DAVID CHRISTENSON Subject: Re: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here!) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii -- [ From: David Christenson * EMC.Ver #2.5.3 ] -- Jill Gillham wrote: > Honestly, I haven't watched the seri (serieses? what's the plural, anyways?) > since they killed off Tasha Yar, and the character I could most closely relate > to was Wesley Crusher. (Yeah, I know. I was in high school at the time ) Deanna > Troi and the female doctors were just never allowed to do anything interesting, > in my view. In my view, they killed off Tasha Yar not in the final episode of the season, but in the scene where Picard tells her, patronizingly, "officers are allowed to cry on the bridge." How humiliating. My recollection is that the Tasha actor quit partly because of such scripting, and I don't blame her. Unfortunately what remained were even weaker female roles (filled by decent actors), and the producers saw no reason to elevate a woman to a more active position. Then came DS9, apparently conceived originally as sort of a troupe thing , but the female characters quickly became dominant. So do they go with this feminist flow? Hell no - they bring in Worf (that's the point where I stopped watching every episode), they mate Dax with Worf, and they impregnate Kira, all of which serves to radically tip the testosterone balance. (I'm oversimplifying, but hey, this is a rant, not an essay.) Then came Voyager, run by the idiot (that is, very badly written) character Janeway, who not only makes poor decisions but also spends her spare time with romance novels... Well I started this, so here's my last $.02 worth: the Star Trek universe represents classical liberalism, *not* progressivism, and thus should be viewed with great suspicion by feminists, IMO. (BTW, Catwoman is *not* dead!) -- David Christenson - ldqt79a@prodigy.com Ray Goulding: "Suppose someone on the radio said, "What are you doing now, in this Atomic Age?'" Bob Elliott: "And you would answer, 'No.'" "You'll say reality is under no obligation to be interesting. To which I'd reply that reality may disregard the obligation but that we may not. " - Jorge Luis Borges ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 08:41:37 BST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: farah mendlesohn Subject: Re: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here!) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII On Tue, 10 Jun 1997 13:47:35 -0400 Susan Marie Groppi wrote: > Or feminism on Babylon 5... I'm fascinated by the changes we've seen in > Delenn, who I've considered something of a role model for feminism on > television. > > > -- Susan > come to the Babylon 5 conference in York in December! Details can be requested from me. fm7@york.ac.uk Farah ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 08:44:06 BST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: farah mendlesohn Subject: Re: Re[2]: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here!) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII On Tue, 10 Jun 1997 16:21:42 -0500 Sean Johnston wrote: > > > > I also run a tiny list on Babylon 5 and anarchy. Contact me for more > > details. > > > > So what do people think about Ivanova's character? Compared to Captain > > Janeway or Major Kira? > > There really isn't a comparison. You can imagine Ivanova running the space station herself (maybe she is! we haven't had series four here yet) whereas Janeway is more interested in posing on the bridge. Most importantly, Ivanova is a person with flaws and failings, not some kind of godess, and for all her sexual appeal this is not the emphasis of her role (unless she, like Dax, is wearing padding). Farah ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 08:45:40 BST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: farah mendlesohn Subject: Re: Re[2]: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here!) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII On Tue, 10 Jun 1997 17:03:14 -0700 Bonnie Gray wrote: one of these > days I would like to see Marcus get called out of bed in his lingerie > instead of Ivanova. :) > > Bonnie OK, so we haven't seen series 4 in the UK yet, but please, tell me that Ivanova has *not* gone to bed with that ill-behaved puppy! Farah ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 08:51:14 BST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: farah mendlesohn Subject: Re: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here!) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII On Tue, 10 Jun 1997 21:14:46 -0400 Jill Gillham wrote: > Honestly, I haven't watched the seri (serieses? what's the plural, > anyways?) since they killed off Tasha Yar, and the character I could most > closely relate to was Wesley Crusher. (Yeah, I know. I was in high school > at the time) Deanna Troi and the female doctors were just never allowed to > do anything interesting, in my view. If anything, STNG is a lot less adventuress than the original. Certainly, the women are not stretching any boundaries, and all too often its like being in a psychaiatrists waiting room. > > On a related rant, why aren't the strong female characters ever allowed to > live? Tasha Yar was written out early in the series, and other characters > in other popular movies that were seen as strong are all dead by the end > credits > Jill Gillham I maybe wrong, but I think Tasha Yar was written out for posing for Playboy but then brought back playing her Kardassian daughter. Farah ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 08:54:24 BST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: farah mendlesohn Subject: Re: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here!) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII On Tue, 10 Jun 1997 22:31:25 -0500 DAVID CHRISTENSON wrote: > > Then came DS9, apparently conceived originally as sort of a troupe thing > , but the female characters quickly became dominant. So do they go with > this feminist flow? Hell no - they bring in Worf (that's the point where > I stopped watching every episode), they mate Dax with Worf, and they > impregnate Kira, all of which serves to radically tip the testosterone > balance. (I'm oversimplifying, but hey, this is a rant, not an essay.) Thanks for the warning, I will stop watching in the UK *now*. I only watch iot to fill the gap left by the continued absence of B5 in this country. > > > Well I started this, so here's my last $.02 worth: the Star Trek > universe represents classical liberalism, *not* progressivism, and thus > should be viewed with great suspicion by feminists, IMO. > > David Christenson - ldqt79a@prodigy.com The problem with liberalism (and with liberal feminism) is that underneath it all is the belief that if x can make it so can y, even if x had all the advantages bequeathed by privilige. Dangerous stuff when used to oppose positive action, Farah ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 10:30:04 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Susan Marie Groppi Subject: Re: Re[2]: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here!) In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > There really isn't a comparison. You can imagine Ivanova running > the space station herself (maybe she is! we haven't had series four > here yet) whereas Janeway is more interested in posing on the > bridge. Ivanova has run the station all by herself, back at the beginnning of season two, in the interim between Sheridan and Sinclair. And she did a damn good job of it, given the circumstances. (I still think that her briefing of Sheridan when he arrived was one of the best short speeches in the show...) > Most importantly, Ivanova is a person with flaws and failings, not > some kind of godess, and for all her sexual appeal this is not the > emphasis of her role (unless she, like Dax, is wearing padding). Right. I started watching Babylon 5 midway through the series--a friend had a bunch of episodes on tape, and the first B5 I ever saw was "Severed Dreams". I was extremely impressed, but what I found most compelling about the show was the female characters. Delenn and Ivanova--right on hand, not only one strong and positively-portrayed female character, but two! (when I went back and watched the first season or so, I was also really impressed with Na'Toth and Sakai, but they were never as pivotal.) They're so very different from each other, but each is, in a way, a good feminist role model. -- Susan groppi@hcs.harvard.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------ i found god in myself and i loved her i loved her fiercely -- n.shange ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 21:24:08 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Kelley Subject: Re: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here!) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Bonnie Gray wrote: > > > So what do people think about Ivanova's character? Compared to Captain > > Janeway or Major Kira? > > In short, I think she's pretty well done. However, one of these > days I would like to see Marcus get called out of bed in his lingerie > instead of Ivanova. :) > > Bonnie I have no idea who Ivanova is- I am not a fan of Babylon 5. It just never tweeked my curiosity. Janeway, however, has gotten better. Instead of the 'dominatrix' that the writers had her playing in the beginning of the series, she now shows emotion, has gained some softer sexuality, and remains a firm but understanding leader. Kelley. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 21:26:51 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Kelley Subject: Re: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here!) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit DAVID CHRISTENSON wrote: > > -- [ From: David Christenson * EMC.Ver #2.5.3 ] -- > > Jill Gillham wrote: > > > Honestly, I haven't watched the seri (serieses? what's the plural, > anyways?) > > since they killed off Tasha Yar, and the character I could most > closely relate > > to was Wesley Crusher. (Yeah, I know. I was in high school at the time > ) Deanna > > Troi and the female doctors were just never allowed to do anything > interesting, > > in my view. > > In my view, they killed off Tasha Yar not in the final episode of the > season, but in the scene where Picard tells her, patronizingly, > "officers are allowed to cry on the bridge." How humiliating. My > recollection is that the Tasha actor quit partly because of such > scripting, and I don't blame her. Unfortunately what remained were even > weaker female roles (filled by decent actors), and the producers saw no > reason to elevate a woman to a more active position. > > Then came DS9, apparently conceived originally as sort of a troupe thing > , but the female characters quickly became dominant. So do they go with > this feminist flow? Hell no - they bring in Worf (that's the point where > I stopped watching every episode), they mate Dax with Worf, and they > impregnate Kira, all of which serves to radically tip the testosterone > balance. (I'm oversimplifying, but hey, this is a rant, not an essay.) > > Then came Voyager, run by the idiot (that is, very badly written) > character Janeway, who not only makes poor decisions but also spends her > spare time with romance novels... > > Well I started this, so here's my last $.02 worth: the Star Trek > universe represents classical liberalism, *not* progressivism, and thus > should be viewed with great suspicion by feminists, IMO. > > (BTW, Catwoman is *not* dead!) > -- > David Christenson - ldqt79a@prodigy.com > > Ray Goulding: "Suppose someone on the radio said, "What are you doing > now, in this Atomic Age?'" > Bob Elliott: "And you would answer, 'No.'" > > "You'll say reality is under no obligation to be interesting. To which > I'd reply that reality may disregard the obligation but that we may not. > " - Jorge Luis Borges The reason Tasha Yar was taken off of the show was because the actress was offered a role in a movie, and she left the series thinking that she would have a much more successful movie career. Unfortunately, the movie flopped and she was left to do 'nudie' shots in low-budget films. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 21:45:58 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Kelley Subject: Re: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here!) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit CMUNSON wrote: > > ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ > Subject: Re: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here!) > Author: Susan Marie Groppi at Internet > Date: 6/10/97 1:47 PM > > >> - Media: though there's plenty enough Trek talk around, I wouldn't > >>mind > >> a good long discussion of Trek feminism (or lack of it), if anybody's > >> interested. > > Susan wrote: > >Or feminism on Babylon 5... I'm fascinated by the changes we've seen in > >Delenn, who I've considered something of a role model for feminism on > >television. > > First of all, let me make some recommendations for summer reading. Right now > I'm reading Le Guin's *Four Ways to Forgiveness* and would heartily > recommend it. In fact, I wouldn't mind seeing a discussion in this forum. > > Some books relevant to this list that I've read and recommend: > > Marge Piercy: *He, She and It* and *Woman on the Edge of Time* > Joan Slonczewski: *Door Into Ocean* (I can't recommend Daughter of Elysium) > > I'd also like to see a discussion of feminism on Babylon 5. I run a web site > on B5 called The Bab5 Zone > > > I also run a tiny list on Babylon 5 and anarchy. Contact me for more > details. > > So what do people think about Ivanova's character? Compared to Captain > Janeway or Major Kira? > > Chuck0 My first encounter with Ursala LeGuin was the Earthsea Trilogy. I fell deeply inlove with Sparrowhawk the Sage, and felt compelled to write LeGuin about the series. She wrote me back, (one of my most prized possessions!)and told me about the fourth book in the series, Tehanu. Wow- what a wonderful ending to the series. Neither character was 'magical,' nor powerful in any other way than in human spirit. In the end it was Tenar's strength that saved Sparrowhawk. I remember how much I wanted her character to stay with Sparrowhawk during the Tombs of Atuan, but after reading Tehanu I agree that it was best for her character to be more realistic. It's true that not all women have to get married and have children; Goddess knows no woman deserves the life of drudgery, but to choose that life is something different. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 08:50:19 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Maryelizabeth Hart Subject: Anita Blake and Strong series women Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Jill Gillham shared: >I've been having a lot of fun with Laurell Hamilton's "Anita Blake, >Vampire Hunter" series lately. Probably no Big Messages contained within, >but one of the best take-no-prisoners female characters in print these >days. Hamilton's got a great way of writing, but it might not be the best >thing to read if you're squeamish. She describes things pretty >graphically, and the body count tends to be pretty high. (LH has said that >one of the reasons why she created Anita was because female detectives in >stories never got to kill as many people as their male counterparts did.) I like these books a lot as well, although they could be improved if her prose would improve. I think she's a great storyteller, but for me, these are airplane books, (or light summer reading) where I don't have time to count how many times she uses exactly the same pronouns or adjectives to describe something. I think the worst offender in the last book was that EVERYONE's hair "foamed" over their shoulders. (minor spoiler) Well, that and she ruined my SOD with the wet jeans.:) Of interest in a similar vein (heh heh) I might suggest Tanya Huff's "Blood" books. Just read the first one in Seattle last weekend, and thought it was pretty good entertainment. > >Honestly, I haven't watched the seri (serieses? what's the plural, >anyways?) since they killed off Tasha Yar, and the character I could most >closely relate to was Wesley Crusher. (Yeah, I know. I was in high school >at the time) Deanna Troi and the female doctors were just never allowed to >do anything interesting, in my view. That's the same time I quit watching, despite Crusher being a red head which usually is an asset in a hero of mine. :) > >On a related rant, why aren't the strong female characters ever allowed to >live? Tasha Yar was written out early in the series, and other characters >in other popular movies that were seen as strong are all dead by the end >credits. (Thelma and Louise and Catwoman come to mind) It's like there's a >message that strong women are fated to face a very high cost for daring to >be who they wanted to be.) I like to call this the "Travis McGee" syndrome, after the fictional amateur PI's illfated girlfriends. Maryelizabeth Mysterious Galaxy 619-268-4747 3904 Convoy St, #107 800-811-4747 San Diego, CA 92111 619-268-4775 FAX http://www.mystgalaxy.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 12:32:33 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Sean Johnston Subject: Re: Anita Blake and Strong series women In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >>On a related rant, why aren't the strong female characters ever allowed to >>live? Tasha Yar was written out early in the series, and other characters >>in other popular movies that were seen as strong are all dead by the end >>credits. (Thelma and Louise and Catwoman come to mind) It's like there's a >>message that strong women are fated to face a very high cost for daring to >>be who they wanted to be.) >I like to call this the "Travis McGee" syndrome, after the fictional >amateur PI's illfated girlfriends. > Well, let's see: Dax is still around (I -love- that she's paired off with Worf. She can really help this guy. Nothing wrong with that). So's Kira. Going to a different movie, what about Sarah Connor (played by Linda Hamilton) from the Terminator movies? She's still around. Indeed, the strong "male" (in quotes because the Terminator was a cyborg) "died". Then there was Angela Bassett's character in "Strange Days", a pillar of strength (especially for sticking by not her "man", played by Ralph Fiennes, but for sticking by her -friend-). The point is, these strong women are not all dead by the end credits. There is hope and things are getting better for women in movies. Perhaps what's needed is a definition of "strength". -Sean ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 12:39:27 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Sean Johnston Subject: Re: Anita Blake and Strong series women In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >>Honestly, I haven't watched the seri (serieses? what's the plural, >>anyways?) since they killed off Tasha Yar, and the character I could most >>closely relate to was Wesley Crusher. (Yeah, I know. I was in high school >>at the time) Deanna Troi and the female doctors were just never allowed to >>do anything interesting, in my view. >That's the same time I quit watching, despite Crusher being a red head >which usually is an asset in a hero of mine. :) > If you quit watching then, you quit -way- too soon. Check out episodes from seasons three through seven, especially seasons three and four, maybe five, too. Gates McFadden (Crusher) and Marina Sirtis (Troi), but mostly McFadden, noted that they really had to struggle to get anything interesting to do, but they eventually did and it showed up later in the series. Troi got her rank advanced above Data, who I think was third in command. Maybe fourth after Dr. Crusher. Speaking of whom, Crusher commanded the Enterprise once, stuff the old series women would never get to do (I'm thinking of Uhura and Yeoman Rand). -Sean ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 14:01:04 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Neil Rest Subject: Topics of no curiosity In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Please give posts about Babylon 5 or StarTrek headers which say so, so eccentrics who don't watch television, or who see nothing in soap operas, can more easily skip over them. thanks, Neil Rest Journeyman Curmudgeon ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 14:29:00 CST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Gabrielle Bate Subject: Re: Re[2]: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here >From: IN%"FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU" "For discussion of feminist > SF, fantastic & utopian literature" >To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU >Subject: Re: Re[2]: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here!) > >On Tue, 10 Jun 1997 17:03:14 -0700 Bonnie Gray wrote: > one of these >> days I would like to see Marcus get called out of bed in his lingerie >> instead of Ivanova. :) >> >> Bonnie > > >OK, so we haven't seen series 4 in the UK yet, but please, tell me >that Ivanova has *not* gone to bed with that ill-behaved puppy! > >Farah Am I the only one who hoped, upon hearing rumors that Ivanova was going to have a love interest, that she would end up with Lyta? Just think. Two telepaths on the run from Psicorp. They'd be perfect! I was so mad when they brought Marcus on. Happily that affair seems to be going nowhere. Ivanova doesn't need a hero. She is a hero. Lyta, on the other hand, is in a tough situation and could use some support. Which brings me to an observation/question. Potential love affair aside, why don't we ever see these two women interact? Ivanova _must_ have some feelings about Lyta's situation. Considering her reaction to Talia (& to Bester & other Psicorp people), I can't believe she feels nothing. In fact, the fact that Ivanova is a latent telepath has hardly been touched on at all this season. Gabby ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 17:04:08 +0000 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Valerie Renwick-Porter Subject: Re: topics of curiosity In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > What about Dax? Dax is my hero(ine). I think it's the wonderful blend of feminine/masculine/wholistic qualities she embodies. She wrestles before breakfast with 200-pound aliens, can hold her own on a Klingon warship, is a cultural scholar and scientist; she is sensitive, savvy and beautiful. (plus she has those elegant Trill markings) I definitely aspire to be more like Dax.... -Valerie I can be reached at valerie@twinoaks.org ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 15:39:08 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Michelle Kendrick Subject: Re: And the course winds up... In-Reply-To: <00069600.1205@aaas.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hi, I just finished teaching my summer course on women writers -- I focused on women writing speculative fiction. The books we read were: Frankenstein, Herland, The Female Man, Slow River and He, She, and It. All in all, it was a fabulous course. I had fun, responsive students who talked up a storm. (Nicola, they LOVED Slow River, btw, and the best presentations of the course were on that book). Although I didn't bill the course as "feminist" -- of course it was :-) Here are a couple of things from the course that bothered/challenged/provoked me. 1. The assumption that in terms of gender equity -- "it's all getting better." My students had a very difficult time dealing with Russ's anger and the violence of some of her characters. Their way of handling it was to historically compartmentalize this as a "70's thing." While I could get them to admit/see current, specific, inequities and the constraints of gender roles -- nothing seemed to be able to make a dent in their cheery assessment and in the myth of "progress" (things are ALWAYS getting better). Does anyone have any idea how to deal with this issue in a responsible manner? Not even my rereading Russ's passage on "THE DOCTORINE of GRADUAL CHANGE" seemed to make lightbulbs go off. 2. Their surprising puritan streak. I thought it would be the lesbian sex that would provoke outrage and I was ready to deal with that. But they objected to all the depictions of graphic sex (geez, I use to *take* courses based on the steamy sex scenes in the novels). They just didn't want explicit anyone rubbing on anyone. They took a position of -- what I believe to be) psuedo-tolerance, articulated something like this, "I don't care what anyone does in their bedroom, just don't make me read about it." I found it difficult to challenge (and I did try) that "don't ask, don't tell" philosophy. 3. How to teach in a manner that respects "difference" without letting that shut down all discussion. For instance, one student claimed that he was Morman and that, in his religious view, that homosexuality was wrong and a sin against God. Since it was his religious view -- the students in his small group thought they couldn't take this up as a topic of conversation. I came to work with them and they were deep on a tangent... when I steered them back to the topic at hand (the sexual economy in Slow River) they were given to vague "well, everyone has their opinion" statements and to collective "I'll respect your beliefs and you'll respect mine" that couldn't get to the heart of the questions asked. Anyway, enough from me. I just wonder if anyone has comments, suggestions, discussions. My class was mainly returning students, most in their mid 20 - 30s... although I had two grandmothers and two 19 year olds. Thanks! Michelle _______________________________________________________________ Michelle R. Kendrick Assistant Professor of English Washington State University 14204 NE Salmon Creek Avenue Vancouver, Washington 98686 (360)546-9645 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 17:55:04 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Sean Johnston Subject: Re: And the course winds up... In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Michelle, I think you live in the same town as Steven Barnes, a good African-American SF author. I'd ask him some of this stuff, since he deals with a bit of it in his wonderful book "Gorgon Child". -Sean >I just finished teaching my summer course on women writers -- I focused >on women writing speculative fiction. The books we read were: >Frankenstein, Herland, The Female Man, Slow River and He, She, and It. >All in all, it was a fabulous course. I had fun, responsive students who >talked up a storm. (Nicola, they LOVED Slow River, btw, and the best >presentations of the course were on that book). > >Although I didn't bill the course as "feminist" -- of course it was :-) >Here are a couple of things from the course that >bothered/challenged/provoked me. > >1. The assumption that in terms of gender equity -- "it's all getting >better." My students had a very difficult time dealing with Russ's anger >and the violence of some of her characters. Their way of handling it was >to historically compartmentalize this as a "70's thing." While I could >get them to admit/see current, specific, inequities and the constraints >of gender roles -- nothing seemed to be able to make a dent in their >cheery assessment and in the myth of "progress" (things are ALWAYS >getting better). Does anyone have any idea how to deal with this issue >in a responsible manner? Not even my rereading Russ's passage on "THE >DOCTORINE of GRADUAL CHANGE" seemed to make lightbulbs go off. > >2. Their surprising puritan streak. I thought it would be the lesbian sex >that would provoke outrage and I was ready to deal with that. But they >objected to all the depictions of graphic sex (geez, I use to *take* >courses based on the steamy sex scenes in the novels). They just didn't >want explicit anyone rubbing on anyone. They took a position of -- what I >believe to be) psuedo-tolerance, articulated something like this, "I >don't care what anyone does in their bedroom, just don't make me read >about it." I found it difficult to challenge (and I did try) that "don't >ask, don't tell" philosophy. > >3. How to teach in a manner that respects "difference" without letting >that shut down all discussion. For instance, one student claimed that he >was Morman and that, in his religious view, that homosexuality was wrong >and a sin against God. Since it was his religious view -- the students >in his small group thought they couldn't take this up as a topic of >conversation. I came to work with them and they were deep on a >tangent... when I steered them back to the topic at hand (the sexual >economy in Slow River) they were given to vague "well, everyone has their >opinion" statements and to collective "I'll respect your beliefs and >you'll respect mine" that couldn't get to the heart of the questions >asked. > >Anyway, enough from me. I just wonder if anyone has comments, >suggestions, discussions. My class was mainly returning students, most >in their mid 20 - 30s... although I had two grandmothers and two 19 year >olds. > >Thanks! Michelle > > > >_______________________________________________________________ >Michelle R. Kendrick >Assistant Professor of English >Washington State University >14204 NE Salmon Creek Avenue >Vancouver, Washington 98686 >(360)546-9645 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 19:28:42 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Nicola Griffith Subject: Re: And the course winds up... Michelle, I'm glad they liked SLOW RIVER. I'd love to hear more about some of the student presentations--either here or in private email. With regard to the cheery, "everything is getting better" attitude of your students: I have mixed feelings. After all, if one is speaking of gender inequity in this particular culture, everything *is* getting better. It still has a long, long way to go, of course. But maybe you could ask them to put themselves in the shoes of, say, a modern American woman who goes to Saudi Arabia and finds she can't drive, vote, etc. etc; ask them to imagine they are stuck there forever, and imagine how angry they'd be. You could speak about the purpose, the use of anger; a tool for change, all that stuff. Maybe you could do a class role-playing thing: divide the class into brown eyes and blue eyes, and only take questions from/listen to/applaud the contributions of the brown-eyed contingent and see how they feel after *that*. I don't know what to suggest for the puritans except to ask: what are they afraid of? Maybe they just don't like raw emotion. Find some passages on ecstatic food eating or something, or childbirth, and see how they compare it to writing on sex. The subject of religion: are you saying the class wouldn't even discuss homosexuality, or that they wouldn't discuss the Morman's reaction to it? Nicola Nicola Griffith http://www.america.net/~daves/ng/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 16:39:55 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bonnie Gray Subject: Re: Re[2]: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here!) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >OK, so we haven't seen series 4 in the UK yet, but please, tell me that Ivanova has *not* gone to bed with that ill-behaved puppy! Rest assured, Farah; Ivanova, like many B5 characters, makes mistakes, but that isn't one of them (yet) :) Bonnie ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 17:19:12 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bonnie Gray Subject: Ivanova Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Gabby wrote: Am I the only one who hoped, upon hearing rumors that Ivanova was going to have a love interest, that she would end up with Lyta? Just think. Two telepaths on the run from Psicorp. They'd be perfect! I was so mad when they brought Marcus on. Happily that affair seems to be going nowhere. Ivanova doesn't need a hero. She is a hero. Lyta, on the other hand, is in a tough situation and could use some support. Which brings me to an observation/question. Potential love affair aside, why don't we ever see these two women interact? Ivanova _must_ have some feelings about Lyta's situation. Considering her reaction to Talia (& to Bester & other Psicorp people), I can't believe she feels nothing. In fact, the fact that Ivanova is a latent telepath has hardly been touched on at all this season. Gabby Yes, I, too find it strange that her latent telepathic abilities have "disappeared", especially considering some of the telepathic comings and goings of this season. Here's another question that has bothered me for some time about both B5 and DS9: the "affair" with a woman Dax had awhile ago, and the allusions to an affair between Ivanova and Talia. (Although the Dax host was male when Dax first met the woman, as I recall, and they leave the whole Ivanova/Talia thing up in the air on purpose; I have always assumed they were just very close friends until told otherwise). My question is, what are the chances there would ever be a gay/bi affair between two MEN on either DS9 or B5? Very slim, I'm sure. Any thoughts on that? Thanks! Bonnie ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 20:30:13 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Monica Gaudio Subject: Re: Anita Blake and Strong series women Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 08:50 AM 6/11/97 -0700, you wrote: > Jill Gillham shared: [Snipped stuff about Anita Blake Novels] >I like these books a lot as well, although they could be improved if her >prose would improve. I think she's a great storyteller, but for me, these >are airplane books, (or light summer reading) where I don't have time to >count how many times she uses exactly the same pronouns or adjectives to >describe something. Oh I do so have to disagree. It's written in first person, and Anita (the main character) is this hard-boiled tough as nails (and a bunch of other cliques) chick and I can not feel that the character's prose should be "flowing." Hamliton writes her books like a 1940's detective novel, but, with a woman, vampires, and a good amount of sexual tension thrown in. I adore them. Yah, they are almost like candy, and you read them voraciously, but, they stick with you for a long time, and you want to read them again, and get the newest one. >Of interest in a similar vein (heh heh) I might suggest Tanya Huff's >"Blood" books. Just read the first one in Seattle last weekend, and thought >it was pretty good entertainment. Yup. The first three books are nifty. The last two are a disappointment. I just finished her last "Blood" novel, and scuttlebutt from the dealer that I bought it from says it's her last. I was not impressed and I just did not like the "feel" of the novel. I won't go into details and spoil it for the those that are reading it or plan on reading it. Just, personally, I did not like it. Monica ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 20:09:59 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Denise Borgen Subject: Re: Re[2]: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here In-Reply-To: <27061114292442@vms2.macc.wisc.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 11 Jun 1997, Gabrielle Bate wrote: > >From: IN%"FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU" "For discussion of feminist > > SF, fantastic & utopian literature" > >To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU > >Subject: Re: Re[2]: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here!) > > > >On Tue, 10 Jun 1997 17:03:14 -0700 Bonnie Gray wrote: > > one of these > >> days I would like to see Marcus get called out of bed in his lingerie > >> instead of Ivanova. :) > >> > >> Bonnie > > > > > >OK, so we haven't seen series 4 in the UK yet, but please, tell me > >that Ivanova has *not* gone to bed with that ill-behaved puppy! > > > >Farah > > Am I the only one who hoped, upon hearing rumors that Ivanova was going > to have a love interest, that she would end up with Lyta? Just think. > Two telepaths on the run from Psicorp. They'd be perfect! I was so mad > when they brought Marcus on. Happily that affair seems to be going nowhere. > Ivanova doesn't need a hero. She is a hero. Lyta, on the other hand, is in > a tough situation and could use some support. Which brings me to an > observation/question. Potential love affair aside, why don't we ever see > these two women interact? Ivanova _must_ have some feelings about Lyta's > situation. Considering her reaction to Talia (& to Bester & other Psicorp > people), I can't believe she feels nothing. In fact, the fact that > Ivanova is a latent telepath has hardly been touched on at all this > season. > > Gabby > I rather thought that Ivanova was avoiding Lyta, partly because Lyta reminds her of Talia and partly because of Ivanova's highly conflicted feelings about her telepathic heritage. As for Marcus, i kind of enjoy his puppyish attempts to interest Susan, even if they would seem a bad match. IMHO of course ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~ Between two evils I always pick the one ~ ~ I haven't tried before Mae West ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Denise Borgen borgen@eskimo.com ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 09:32:27 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: HScott/PAronoff Subject: Re: topics of curiosity (Trek) In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 05:04 PM 11/6/97 +0000, you wrote: > > What about Dax? > >Dax is my hero(ine). I think it's the wonderful blend of >feminine/masculine/wholistic qualities she embodies. She wrestles >before breakfast with 200-pound aliens, can hold her own on a Klingon >warship, is a cultural scholar and scientist; she is sensitive, >savvy and beautiful. (plus she has those elegant Trill markings) > >I definitely aspire to be more like Dax.... > >-Valerie I agree. I think she's the strongest female character of all the Trek series. She's a symbiotic creature, however, so the unfortunate implication is that she draws much of her strength from her past male lives. On the other hand, maybe the message is more positive, i.e. that we could all grow by spending time in female bodies and in male bodies. Am I opening a whole new can of worms? (or Trills?) Howard (in a male body as long as I can remember) Scott & Aronoff Translation & Editorial Services Montreal, Quebec, Canada alterego@rocler.qc.ca ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 09:05:07 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: SMCharnas Subject: Re: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here!) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 8:54 AM 6/11/97, farah mendlesohn wrote: >The problem with liberalism (and with liberal feminism) is that >underneath it all is the belief that if x can make it so can y, even if x >had all the advantages bequeathed by privilige. Funny. I thought that was classic *Conservatism*, as articulated (usually, in the States) by rich people. Liberalism, as I know it anyway, holds that precisely on account of the advantages of x, it is to the benefit of the entire society if the government provides some form of advantage to y so as to create some semblance of a level playing field for all. SMCharnas ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 09:30:44 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Maryelizabeth Hart Subject: SM Charnas on list! Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Welcome to the list Suzy! If you've been lurking before, I guess this is just a note that I'm pleased to see you here! BTW, is it correct that you are the author of _The Ruby Tear_? Maryelizabeth Mysterious Galaxy 619-268-4747 3904 Convoy St, #107 800-811-4747 San Diego, CA 92111 619-268-4775 FAX http://www.mystgalaxy.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 10:05:27 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Maryelizabeth Hart Subject: Re: Anita Blake and Strong series women Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Monica had offered: > >Maryelizabeth stated: > >>I like these books [Laurell Hamilton's Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter books] >>a >>lot as well, although they could be improved if her >>prose would improve. I think she's a great storyteller, but for me, these >>are airplane books, (or light summer reading) where I don't have time to >>count how many times she uses exactly the same pronouns or adjectives to >>describe something. > >Oh I do so have to disagree. It's written in first person, and Anita (the >main character) is this hard-boiled tough as nails (and a bunch of other >cliques) chick and I can not feel that the character's prose should be >"flowing." Hamliton writes her books like a 1940's detective novel, but, >with a woman, vampires, and a good amount of sexual tension thrown in. I >adore them. > >Yah, they are almost like candy, and you read them voraciously, but, they >stick with you for a long time, and you want to read them again, and get the >newest one. Well, let's agree to like them, but with different reactions. BTW, to clarify my earlier comments, I don't necessarily want her prose to be flowing, I just don't want to have character's hair described that way 7 times in one book. And there are plenty of good PI novels out there with a good voice with a tough female protagonist that aren't lyrical, but are less amateurishly phrased, IMO. For example, no SF tie in here, but Randye London's Sydney Sloan books come to mind as an immediate example. And I have absolutely no interest in investing time in rereading these. Of course, I rarely reread anything, to be honest. >>Me: >>Of interest in a similar vein (heh heh) I might suggest Tanya Huff's >>"Blood" books. Just read the first one in Seattle last weekend, and thought >>it was pretty good entertainment. > >Monica: >Yup. The first three books are nifty. The last two are a disappointment. I >just finished her last "Blood" novel, and scuttlebutt from the dealer that I >bought it from says it's her last. I was not impressed and I just did not >like the "feel" of the novel. > >I won't go into details and spoil it for the those that are reading it or >plan on reading it. Just, personally, I did not like it. Thanks for the warning -- I'll probably continue, but with some reservations. Sometimes I find this can be an asset. When one reads with lowered expectations, sometimes one can be pleasantly surprised. :[ Actually, wasn't the fourth supposed to be the last one, and then she came out with the fifth, which was "really" the last one? Maryelizabeth Mysterious Galaxy 619-268-4747 3904 Convoy St, #107 800-811-4747 San Diego, CA 92111 619-268-4775 FAX http://www.mystgalaxy.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 11:58:31 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Michelle Kendrick Subject: Re: And the course winds up... In-Reply-To: <970611192824_-793335656@emout09.mail.aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 11 Jun 1997, Nicola Griffith wrote: > Michelle, I'm glad they liked SLOW RIVER. I'd love to hear more about some > of the student presentations--either here or in private email. > They did a number of presentations on Slow River. One woman did a lot of research on the web and discussed issues of identity. She made us all write down five nouns that we would use to identify ourselves. Then she made us cross out nouns one and three. "Those aspects of your identity are gone." It provoked a lot of discussion -- the students essentially recreated postmodern theory of subjectivity :-) They discussed identity as a construct; how we "make" our identity, whether there is an "essential" self and what that might look like. I was blown away. Another women discussed the sexual economy in SR. She put us in groups and had us describe our families and our lives without using gendered pronouns or references. It was a great exercise too -- as we reverted to "roles" to identify the sex of other people's siblings, parents, etc. > With regard to the cheery, "everything is getting better" attitude of your > students: I have mixed feelings. After all, if one is speaking of gender > inequity in this particular culture, everything *is* getting better. It > still has a long, long way to go, of course. But maybe you could ask them to Yes. I agree -- but what I feel they need to realize is that it didn't get better *by itself* . There is no "evolutionary" progress here -- that's what they assume, mostly... that things just "get better" as we move through history. I want them to realize that their cheery assumptions are built on the backs of women like Gilman who dared to imagine and women like Russ who dared to be angry. I am struggling with how to do that in an eye opening way -- not just a "You don't appreciate your history" lecture. > > I don't know what to suggest for the puritans except to ask: what are they > afraid of? Maybe they just don't like raw emotion. Find some passages on > ecstatic food eating or something, or childbirth, and see how they compare it > to writing on sex. > I don't know either -- I was very surprised at this attitude. I wondered if it was a cloaked reaction to the lesbian sex (they probably read my politics clearly enough to know that they might offend me with that reaction). My impulse is just to discuss sexuality as it occurs in the books, as issues of culture, politics and indentity, without letting them hide behind puritan lowered eyes. > The subject of religion: are you saying the class wouldn't even discuss > homosexuality, or that they wouldn't discuss the Morman's reaction to it? The small group dynamic was to drop the whole subject for risk of offending the one person who stated his "personal" belief. But I think it's a bigger issue in terms of how to respect the personal but not let that be a stopping point in discussions. Yours, Michelle ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 15:53:49 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Anastasia McPherson Subject: Re: And the course winds up... In-Reply-To: from "Michelle Kendrick" at Jun 12, 97 11:58:31 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > I don't know what to suggest for the puritans except to ask: what are they > afraid of? Maybe they just don't like raw emotion. Find some passages on > ecstatic food eating or something, or childbirth, and see how they compare it > to writing on sex. > I don't know either -- I was very surprised at this attitude. I wondered if it was a cloaked reaction to the lesbian sex (they probably read my politics clearly enough to know that they might offend me with that reaction). My impulse is just to discuss sexuality as it occurs in the books, as issues of culture, politics and indentity, without letting them hide behind puritan lowered eyes.>>>>> I had a number of thoughts regarding this specifically and a number of other things that came up in this very interesting thread. As for the issue of puritanism - remember your Weber, in that capitalism and thus the society we live in is built on the protestant ethic and the fear and hatred of the body and of death that is at the center of puritanism. I would also like to point out that Puritanism and Political Correctness are still being pushed as meta-narratives. One one hand - anything goes and we are seeing a new acceptance of homosexuality or alternative lifestyles being constructed. On the other hand think of the scare tactics of the AIDS commercials and the reaction to teenage pregnancy that is as financially retributory in our day of conspicuous consumption as a Scarlet A was in colonial times. Homosexuality is still being villified on one hand and marketed on the other. It puts me in mind of Orwell and his brilliant concept of doublethink. I suspect that your students wouldn't comment n the concept of lesbian sex or the way in which it was portrayed/utilized in Slow River because they were experiencing doublethink. They are holding conflicting beliefs, their prejudices about homosexuality are no doubt still privately, firmly in place in many cases, their prejudices about the Mormon student are firmly in place and the idea that they need to "respect" the ideas, races, creeds and practices of others as codified by a model of political correctness were all at war within them. Me, I would shut up too were I them. I will agree that things are getting better for women in this country materially, but I do not think that underlying attitudes about women have changed dramatically. I (cynically ) think that we have been given a certain amount of freedom of movement and freedom of ideas and finances for purely economic reasons. Were we to be too restricted, the larger society could not benefit from our labor. But all in all, our bodies are still alternately exploited and denigraded, our sexuality monitored, our reproduction permitted only within very narrow social circumstances and closely controlled and criticized within ANY circumstance. I think that this change is in many ways an illusion. Anastasia ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 16:29:00 -0400 Reply-To: Joel VanLaven Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joel VanLaven Subject: Re: And the course winds up... In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 12 Jun 1997, Michelle Kendrick wrote: [snip] Wow. I wish I could have been in that class. I miss the "ivory tower" where there were so many people right there willing to explore such topics. (sigh) > The small group dynamic was to drop the whole subject for risk of > offending the one person who stated his "personal" belief. But I think > it's a bigger issue in terms of how to respect the personal but not let > that be a stopping point in discussions. This is a topic that I feel inspired to comment on. I can't help but smile at the idea of sparing someone's feelings based on thier "personal" beliefs, especially in a college classroom. I remember with great clarity my own college experience. In our "freshman preceptorial" we had a wide range of belief systems from a fundamentalist christian missionary to well, my own anti-religious non-theistic Quaker self. No one's feelings were spared in that class, believe you me. I'm sorry, but if you can't handle having your beliefs scrutinized, challenged, and seemingly trashed by your friends and teachers, a) change them b) don't take a liberal arts college class c) don't expect to have a friendly and meaningful relationship with people who have beliefs that differ from yours (like me). There is a difference between true tolerance, and the dishonesty of keeping your mouth shut. You might be surprised to find that that Mormon was the most truely tolerant person in that group. (I wouldn't know but it IS a possibility, at least he wasn't dishonest.) If not, screw him, I wouldn't care too much about his feelings. A good discussion could have been had in spite (perhaps because of) his intolerance. Those students owed it to themselves and to each other (possibly to him) to engage in a rip-roaring discussion no matter that one of them was mormon. I think I might belive that it is our moral duty as thinkers to question, test, and stress not only our own beliefs and ideas (our world-view) but to help others to do the same. Of course Socrates got killed for that, but hey, we have better laws now :) -- Joel VanLaven ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 16:42:10 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Susan Marie Groppi Subject: Re: And the course winds up... In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 12 Jun 1997, Michelle Kendrick wrote: > Yes. I agree -- but what I feel they need to realize is that it didn't > get better *by itself* . There is no "evolutionary" progress here -- > that's what they assume, mostly... that things just "get better" as we > move through history. I want them to realize that their cheery > assumptions are built on the backs of women like Gilman who dared to > imagine and women like Russ who dared to be angry. I am struggling with > how to do that in an eye opening way -- not just a "You don't appreciate > your history" lecture. This is a particularly tricky one... as a twenty-year-old, it's been sometimes hard for me to understand a lot of the anger I see in earlier feminist writings. Gilman and Russ in particular, along with some of Marge Piercy's more feminist poems, threw me a bit the first time I read them, and I already considered myself to be feminist and aware of at least some of the problems facing women currently. In my own life, the best way to understand where those authors were coming from is to read some less sf-oriented fiction from around the same time period. You probably don't have time for this in your course, so this is an almost useless suggestion, but the book that did it for me was "Braided Lives" by Marge Piercy. It's certainly not classic literature, but it's a good novel, and it captures a lot of what life was like for women then. It's a very realistic, very straight-forward look at how things were before the progress your students are talking about, and it shows a bit of what had to be done to get there. It also drives home how recently all of this has started changing. I'm sure there are other books that could accomplish the same goal. I admit to having no idea how you could integrate this into a course, though, without raising complaints about workload. :) -- Susan groppi@hcs.harvard.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------ i found god in myself and i loved her i loved her fiercely -- n.shange ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 16:09:18 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Amanda Clarke Subject: B5 vs ST Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain Hi I'm new to this list. I'm from Christchurch, New Zealand. Currently I'm enjoying reading CJ Cherryh & Terry Practchett novels. CJ Cherryh doesn't always write with strong primary female characters but I like her ideas eg the exploration of culture in the 'Foreigner' series. Her women characters do have depth to them. I've enjoyed reading Ursula Le Guin, Andre Norton, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Sheri Tepper. I thought 'The Net' by Loren MacGregor was a great book - about 5'2'' Jason Horiuchi, spunky Japanese starship captain (female). As to my thoughts on Babylon 5 & Star Trek: I find the characters in ST 2 dimensional & the environement rather sterile. (This doesn't stop me from enjoying it tho'.) But Ivanova (& the other characters on B5) are 3 dimensional and I love the quirky humour often delivered through Ivanova. B5 doesn't hide away from grime & poverty & darkness. And the strength of relationship between characters can be quite moving. A great show. Amanda ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 17:18:21 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Nalo Hopkinson Subject: Re: And the course winds up... Comments: To: Joel VanLaven In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII At this point, we're all just theorizing, but it's also possible that self-silencing was only masked as tolerance, because it was a way of getting themselves off the hook from actually having to use words out loud in a discussion of gay/lesbian identity. I only came up with that because I was recently talking with a friend who's a fundraiser for a local festival of South Asian culture, run by an organization that's very queer positive and queer active. They recently hired a young student temp who quit after a few weeks. My friend Zainab says, "there were words he couldn't even bring himself to say." I remember being that young and that bashful. I know nothing about teaching methods, but if you're teaching material that has content that might make your students shy, maybe it would be helpful to get them used to using the words that describe that content. I remember a Grade 13 (sixth form by the u.k. system, I think) English teacher finally giving up and railing at us in disgust, "They had SEX, people, SEX! They didn't 'make love,' they didn't do, 'you know,' they had sex!" -nalo "He walked so far/On stilts of songs, of masqueraded story, that the stars/Were near." -Kamau Brathwaite, "Jou'vert" ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 19:02:42 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Shana Yunger Subject: Re: And the course winds up... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >2. Their surprising puritan streak. I thought it would be the lesbian sex >that would provoke outrage and I was ready to deal with that. But they >objected to all the depictions of graphic sex (geez, I use to *take* >courses based on the steamy sex scenes in the novels). They just didn't >want explicit anyone rubbing on anyone. They took a position of -- what I >believe to be) psuedo-tolerance, articulated something like this, "I >don't care what anyone does in their bedroom, just don't make me read >about it." I found it difficult to challenge (and I did try) that "don't >ask, don't tell" philosophy. I'd like to respond to that. Personally, I don't want to have steamy sex scenes in the novels that I read. I like a lot of science fiction and I think it ruins to the story to graphically describe the scenes. yes, it's part of life and books should reflect that. However, I feal that the kind of depictions really take away from the impact of the book. Shana ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 18:17:07 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Laura Wigod Subject: Re: And the course winds up... In-Reply-To: <970611192824_-793335656@emout09.mail.aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >With regard to the cheery, "everything is getting better" attitude of your >students: I have mixed feelings. After all, if one is speaking of gender >inequity in this particular culture, everything *is* getting better. It >still has a long, long way to go, of course. But maybe you could ask them to >put themselves in the shoes of, say, a modern American woman who goes to >Saudi Arabia and finds she can't drive, vote, etc. etc; ask them to imagine >they are stuck there forever, and imagine how angry they'd be. This is an interesting point. I, too, have mixed feelings. I am an Extremely Positive person, but I balance my idealism with huge doses of reality, which, actually, are pretty damn unavoidable! However, there's some danger in pointing the finger at other cultures to show how bad things still are _elsewhere_. In my mind, the only difference between the experience of an American woman and that of a Saudi woman is the matter of _degree_ of oppression. I'm always stunned to hear Americans go on and on about the atrocities of female genital mutilation rituals in Muslim cultures, while remaining blind to the fact that the American proclivity towards breast enlargement and liposuction is pretty much the same thing - body mutilation to meet a perceived societal standard. This is not to minimize the horrors of the experience of women in some countries by any means. I guess what I'm trying to say is that, as lucky as I feel to live in what is probably the most progressive society for women, I am not satisfied with conditions here by any stretch of the imagination. Laura "I'll Never Shut Up Until Everything's Alright" Wigod ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 00:07:17 -0400 Reply-To: Nalo Hopkinson Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Comments: RFC822 error: SENDER field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. From: Nalo Hopkinson Subject: sex in sf In-Reply-To: <199706122302.TAA14135@mail.ifu.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII On Thu, 12 Jun 1997, Shana Yunger wrote: > I'd like to respond to that. Personally, I don't want to have steamy > sex scenes in the novels that I read. I like a lot of science fiction and I > think it ruins to the story to graphically describe the scenes. yes, it's > part of life and books should reflect that. However, I feal that the kind of > depictions really take away from the impact of the book. NH: Well, to each her own. Certainly, excellent fiction need not have explicit sex in it. Me, I make a point of looking--among other things--for sf and other lit that explores human interactions and sexuality. I try not to divorce that from other sensual experiences described in fiction. I resist doing so precisely because we're always being told that sex is dirty and vulgar, and undeserving of having art made about it, and I don't buy it. I adore Delany's fiction in large part because of the explicit, often (I dunno, trangressive? Depends on your pov) sex and the way that his writing makes me think about sexual mores and conventions. I spent many years hooked on Tanith Lee's voluptuous, necrophiliac prose. Jeff Noon's _Pollen_ was gummy with snot, which made me squirm, but I appreciated his take on it. I loved that the romantic interest in Nancy Kress's _Beggars and Choosers_ was provided by an old, toothless, uneducated white guy with a bad heart and a fat, irritable black woman (when I look in my mirror, I feel a certain fondness for large, cranky black women). I loved that they actually had sex on stage, as it were. And that the black woman doesn't die nobly in the end, but continues to be her fat, cranky self; only now in love. Nancy was in Toronto a few days ago, reading from her novel in progress; part of the excerpt included a sex scene between an old married couple. She told the audience that people in her writing group found that scene distasteful, not so much because it was sex, but because it was *old people* having sex, yuck! I think that when something makes you squirm like that, the source of your discomfort bears paying attention to. And for me, that's part of the function of art/literature (can you tell that I'm an arts administrator during office hours?). I think Nicola has a point. Life is goo (words not mine), whether that be juicy sex or or how exactly does one pee in a space suit or how a kid eats ice cream, or the intimate self-disgust that would lead a woman to find cause with and ultimately love the Opera Phantom (hello, Ms Charnas). The sticky stuff is as much a dilemma as a joy of human existence. It helps me resolve that dilemma or luxuriate in that joy a little more every time I experience art that gives me a little of another human being's take on it. I don't need my fiction to be crammed with sweaty sex on every page, or at all, if that's not the point of the piece. But if fiction can graphically describe a star system, it need not balk at also describing sex. -nalo ""Rat Korga...?" I said; and to say the name of your perfect erotic object is always to say it for the first time, even when it is the fiftieth repeated shriek and you are half blind with terror on the crags of a world so far away its night is virtually without stars." Samuel Delany, _Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand_ "He walked so far/On stilts of songs, of masqueraded story, that the stars/Were near." -Kamau Brathwaite, "Jou'vert" ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 18:03:29 BST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: farah mendlesohn Subject: B5 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII On Wed, 11 Jun 1997 14:29:00 CST Gabrielle Bate wrote: > >On Tue, 10 Jun 1997 17:03:14 -0700 Bonnie Gray wrote: > > one of these > > > >OK, so we haven't seen series 4 in the UK yet, but please, tell me > >that Ivanova has *not* gone to bed with that ill-behaved puppy! > > > >Farah > > Am I the only one who hoped, upon hearing rumors that Ivanova was going > to have a love interest, that she would end up with Lyta? Just think. > Two telepaths on the run from Psicorp. They'd be perfect! I was so mad > when they brought Marcus on. Happily that affair seems to be going nowhere. > Ivanova doesn't need a hero. She is a hero. Lyta, on the other hand, is in > a tough situation and could use some support. Which brings me to an > observation/question. Potential love affair aside, why don't we ever see > these two women interact? Ivanova _must_ have some feelings about Lyta's > situation. Considering her reaction to Talia (& to Bester & other Psicorp > people), I can't believe she feels nothing. In fact, the fact that > Ivanova is a latent telepath has hardly been touched on at all this > season. > > Gabby I truly don't care as long as she isn't paired off with a male, but I actually find it interesting to have a telepath around who doesn't want to use it. I was galled however that it was never made clear how far Ivanova and Talia's relationship got. Farah ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 18:12:51 BST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: farah mendlesohn Subject: Re: Re[2]: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII On Wed, 11 Jun 1997 20:09:59 -0700 Denise Borgen wrote:. As for Marcus, i kind of enjoy > his puppyish attempts to interest Susan, even if they would seem a bad > match. > IMHO of course I don't object because it would be a bad match, I object because I do not want to see a strong and gorgeous woman fall "naturally" into the arms of some quarterstaff wielding macho prat. How appallingly tacky. And why, by the way, should she even have a love interest? Farah ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 13:36:29 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Susan Marie Groppi Subject: Re: Re[2]: Topics of curiosity (was: yes, list is still here In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 13 Jun 1997, farah mendlesohn wrote: > And why, by the way, should she even have a love interest? Because it makes for a good story? I certainly don't buy in to the idea that you have to continually pair off people (or characters) just for the sake of it, but many of the romantic pairings we've seen on B5 have had interesting plot implications, and besides, people enjoy romance. :) What was it, "Rock Cried Out"? Where the preacher talked to Sheridan about how much it helps to have someone to share your burdens with? Sheridan draws a lot of strength from his relationship with Delenn, and it doesn't make him any weaker as a character; I doubt that Susan Ivanova would be significantly weakened by falling in love. -- Susan groppi@hcs.harvard.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------ i found god in myself and i loved her i loved her fiercely -- n.shange ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 13:38:25 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Susan Marie Groppi Subject: Re: B5 In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 13 Jun 1997, farah mendlesohn wrote: > I truly don't care as long as she isn't paired off with a male, but I > actually find it interesting to have a telepath around who doesn't want > to use it. I was galled however that it was never made clear how far > Ivanova and Talia's relationship got. Oh please! Talia, wearing slinky nightgown, rolls over and pats the bed next to her, looking for Ivanova. That, plus all the innuendo that had been flying around, -plus- alter-Talia's little farewell speech to Ivanova? I thought it was made perfectly clear. One does not need to actually see people naked in bed together to know that they're involved. -- Susan groppi@hcs.harvard.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------ i found god in myself and i loved her i loved her fiercely -- n.shange ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 14:03:25 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Nicola Griffith Subject: Re: And the course winds up... In a message dated 97-06-13 02:35:50 EDT, Laura wrote: << However, there's some danger in pointing the finger at other cultures to show how bad things still are _elsewhere_. In my mind, the only difference between the experience of an American woman and that of a Saudi woman is the matter of _degree_ of oppression. >> The was precisely my point. It was a comparitive exercise. Nicola ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 11:08:00 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Maryelizabeth Hart Subject: fairy tales -- follow up Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >Dear Maryelizabeth Hart, > Sorry it's taken so long to get back to you on this..... >Nalo Hopkinson forwarded your email about putting the intros at the beginning >or end of each story of Terri Windling and my fairy tale antho series. I >don't remember either of us (or our editor at the time, John Douglas) giving >it much thought as we put together the first volume and this is the first >time anyone has commented on it (negatively or positively). I passed the note >to Terri and Jennifer Brehl, our current editor at Avon. Neither of them feel >strongly about it with regard to hurting or enhancing the reader's enjoyment >of each story. > >I feel, though, that putting the intro at the beginning isn't an issue >because our fairy tales' genesis(es?) are not meant to be a "surprise" --each >story should be fresh enough to transcend the original in some >way--Obviously, when a story's punch is dependent on the reader's ignorance >giving certain info away upfront won't work. eg. I took Michael McDowell's >"Halley Passing" for the Year's Best many years ago and was very careful not >to give away it's "punchline." > >Also, since we're already up to the fourth volume of the fairy tales, it's >seems a little strange for us to switch format in midstream. I personally >like intros that flow smoothly from author bio to a bit about the upcoming >story. But if a reader finds that hurts the pleasure of the story she/he can >ignore the front matter until after having read the story. >Best, >Ellen Maryelizabeth Mysterious Galaxy 619-268-4747 3904 Convoy St, #107 800-811-4747 San Diego, CA 92111 619-268-4775 FAX http://www.mystgalaxy.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 12:51:53 BST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: farah mendlesohn Subject: Re: B5 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII On Fri, 13 Jun 1997 13:38:25 -0400 Susan Marie Groppi wrote: > On Fri, 13 Jun 1997, farah mendlesohn wrote: > > > I truly don't care as long as she isn't paired off with a male, but I > > actually find it interesting to have a telepath around who doesn't want > > to use it. I was galled however that it was never made clear how far > > Ivanova and Talia's relationship got. > > Oh please! Talia, wearing slinky nightgown, rolls over and pats the bed > next to her, looking for Ivanova. That, plus all the innuendo that had > been flying around, -plus- alter-Talia's little farewell speech to > Ivanova? I thought it was made perfectly clear. One does not need to > actually see people naked in bed together to know that they're involved. > > > -- Susan But the heterosexual pairings don't have to settle for innuendo! Farah ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 16:07:17 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Robin Gordon Subject: Re: B5 and queers In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Sat, 14 Jun 1997, farah mendlesohn wrote: > > But the heterosexual pairings don't have to settle for innuendo! > > Farah > Exactly! And the innuendo was pretty darn weak to begin with. Sure, sexual tension, but keeping lesbianism always a subtext gets extremely frustrating. Especially because Ivanova's "bisexuality" was made such a big deal of in the press, I saw numerous references to it. But no kiss, nothing except Ivanova admitting to Delenn as her ceremonial gift "I think I was in love with Talia." and no mention after than. AAArrrrrgggh! And why does the press say Ivanova is bisexual when there's been even less a hint of her being involved with a man, and no open discussion about the nature of her awakening attraction to women? I'd be happy to have the character be bi or lesbian but neither was actually portrayed. And I worry that she's called bi just because her attraction to Talia was layered on a presumption of heterosexuality. On the other hand the ABSOLUTELY HOTTEST LESBIAN SCENE ON TELEVISION YET goes to Daz and her forbidden love. The entire episode was well written, and while it took the traditional Star Trek line that homosexuality is no big deal in the future even though we never see it, it drew a lovely parallel with the forbidden nature of love between trills who have been involved as previous hosts. The attraction, love and sexual, between the two women-hosted trills was well written and well acted. The chemistry was visible. And the kiss! Yay! I can't say enough. Went a long way to making up for the attrocious STNG episode which came out of the queer communities lobbying efforts, you know where Riker falls in love with the androgynous (hermaphrodite???) who is forbidden to be her true desire - feminine! Now if he had fallen in love with one who was forbidden to be his true desire - masculine, we might have had something interesting. But I must say I hardly watch DS9 anymore, Kira's pregrnancy and Dax's relationship with Worf have disheartened me greatly, both used as tools to diminish the strong independence of the character. I love Babylon 5, the ongoing and complex storyline and great political intrigues! I miss Na'Toth though too. And while she needs to loosen up her acting, I like the new 'Number One' leader of the Mars rebellion. Gay men in space? Alas, while gay male sexuality has always been more visible, in continues to be more threatening to our culture as well. Sure B5 hints that same-sex marriage is a norm in the future when Marcus and Steven play a honeymoon couple on their first trip to mars, but where are the real gay men? unapologetically a fan of television sf: Robin Gordon -------------------------------- "I want a women's revolution like a lover, so much I long for it..." Robin Morgan, Monster