Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF LOG9802A" ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Feb 1998 02:35:49 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Geoffrey D. Sperl" Subject: Re: Book themes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Marina wrote: > Honestly, in my 23 years in this > world I've _never_ met a guy who would even think about controlling his > sexual urges. 1) Yeah, this is really off-topic. I'm beginning to re-think my earlier stances on topicality. 2) Well, you've at least met *me* virtually, so pull the "never" out of that statement. - Geoffrey ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Feb 1998 12:46:00 UT Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Lesley Hall Subject: Re: Book themes Marina wrote: > Honestly, in my 23 years in this > world I've _never_ met a guy who would even think about controlling his > sexual urges. This may reinforce everyone's ideas about the sexual peculiarities of the British, but I've encountered plenty of men who, if they suddenly became 'a real animal' would be something like the Muskrat in Kipling's 'Rikki-Tikki-Tavi', timidly creeping around the walls of the room and not daring to dash into the middle, or a flopsy bunny. Lesley Lesley_Hall@classic.msn.com ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Feb 1998 10:20:36 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Kathleen M. Friello" Subject: Re: Book themes Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-01-31 20:01:18 EST, you write: << Honestly, in my 23 years in this world I've _never_ met a guy who would even think about controlling his sexual urges. If there are any, they must be really good in hiding that. The idea that "they don't really feel that way, but are just posing", unfortunately, does not make it any better. If a person blows your brains out not because he hates you, but just to impress someone, it would not make you less dead. Whatever people feel or think, their actions are what others have to deal with. >> I can readily believe this about your personal experience, particularly about men in groups, in a school environment (damned right, including Professors). And far be it from me to defend anything about men--whom I avoid, if possible--but your age and circumstances could be limiting factors, here. Maybe when you get away from the University, out of Dodge, and gain a few years you'll encounter different behavior. I have an extended family of deeply conservative Italian men with glass egos and the inborn expectation that women will wait on them, but who (at least the older generations, with whom I'm more familiar) practice the virtue of restraint over rampant self-indulgence. And one or two (including my brother) are truly nice guys to be around, even a little shy. You may not find that you like men any better, but your experience may broaden over time and you may encounter some who act outside of this stereotype. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Feb 1998 09:47:01 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Catweasel Subject: Re: untitled In-Reply-To: <199801301715.LAA41144@spnode01.tcs.tulane.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit It was 30/01/98 17:15:46 GMT when, as I was going about my lawful occasions, I observed Linda Quinlan , hereinafter referred to as the accused, writing on a Bristol monitor: > As a lesbian, I don't find heterosexual sex offensive. I think sex with men > would be fine if it didn't involve some kind of relationship. And Barbara,a > lot of men love to watch, read and observe lesbians making love. They seem > to find this a real turn on. What does this say about their sexuality? As > for romance novels, well, if 50% of Americans read or agree on anything, I > find that suspect.Who wants to be part of mainstream America and do what > they do? Am I being an elitist? Linda > Dear accused, You raise three points: 1) Good. You realise that the fact that you are most comfortable with a woman does not automatically make sex with a man a bad thing. 2) I think you will find that, for a large proportion of those same men, if you substituted women with men the reactions would range from mild revulsion to an overwhelming desire to kick the living shit out of the fucking faggots. This says far more to me about their bigotry than their sexuality. 3) I am suspicious of the 50% figure, but I can neither prove nor disprove it, and Catherine is in a better position to know than I am. In any case, she was talking about books published, not readers. She has previously stated, and my own experience tends to confirm, that people who read romance fiction tend to read a LOT of romance fiction. They also tend to read a lot from other genres. One friend of mine who primarily reads romance will serve as an example. A quick glance at her bookshelves will turn up Catherine Cookson, Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, Virginia Andrews, Clive Barker, R. A. MacAvoy, Megan Lindholm... Are you being elitist? No, I don't think so. Are you being blinkered? Quite possibly. Judge not, lest ye yourselves be judged. I have sat on the above response for 24 hours, wondering whether I have gone OTT. I know that I have a tendency to upset people, and I have no desire to do so. The problem is that a lot of what we have been discussing over the last few days is a fundamental part of my religion, and we all know what religious zealots can be like, don't we? Please try to bear in mind whilst reading this, or whenever I start preaching in the future, that I mean well. If I make someone think then I have achieved what I set out to achieve. This is a good thing. Sometimes I hurt people. This is a bad thing, and hurts me deeply. I think that basically what I am trying to say here is that I will never apologise for expressing that which I believe. I regret that I am not always sufficiently lucid to be able to do so without becoming heated, and for that I do apologise. I would welcome any comments if anyone wishes to discuss this with me privately. Trust me, I'm a doctor. Catweasel Censorship: The reaction of the ignorant to freedom. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Feb 1998 12:13:23 -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: Female POV; was...Book themes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii -- [ From: David Christenson * EMC.Ver #2.5.3 ] -- > > There > > are, I believe, male writers of romance who are obliged to use female > > pseudonyms, just as there are genres in which women writers have to use > male > > or gender-ambiguous names. In this vein, I recall it mentioned that one of the pioneers of lesbian romance/scandal fiction (in its 1950s paperback period) was Forrest J. Ackermann, male editor of "Famous Monsters of Filmland." Pseudonymously, of course. Sorry, I don't have a list of titles or pseudonyms. -- David Christenson - ldqt79a@prodigy.com "What's harder than stone and gentler than water flowing? Yet the stone is hollowed by flowing water." - graffiti found in Pompeii ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Feb 1998 12:55:16 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: jenn mottram Subject: Sexually controlled men In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" (BOY that subject should catch some eyes!) :-) At 07:58 PM 1/31/98 , you wrote: >From: Marina >Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Book themes >One correction: not only the residence halls but the whole "university >community" including off-campus students, the school staff members, and >-- suprise! -- professors with Ph.D.'s. Honestly, in my 23 years in this >world I've _never_ met a guy who would even think about controlling his >sexual urges. If there are any, they must be really good in hiding that. Maybe you hang out with the wrong people? I can't say I know a -lot- of men who think with their heads, because I tend to be reclusive. My husband, much to my annoyance at times, doesn't have the sexual switch "ON" unless we're actually being sexual. And he never has that "oooh, she's attractive" glint when he's watching TV or reading Playboy. (and -that- should spark another whole discussion! My take on it -- Playboy, for all of its non-degrading-but-still-naked-pictures of women, does have great articles, including strong feminist discussions. I read it first before I hand it on to Dale.) My other male friends are also the sort to be more interested in computers than in flesh... maybe that says something about me? In any case -- don't give up. They're not all horny beasts. >It's the fact that men in the modern society are raised to believe that >the more they "score", the more of "a man" they are. The reason men in >women-written fiction are shown mainly from that prospective, is because >that's too often the only side of themselves they present to women (and I >am not talking just the fraternity types, but all kinds of guys, including >the deeply "progressive-minded" English majors, and the nerdy computer geeks) I will agree with this, but not wholeheartedly. I have too many real-world people that contradict this statement to accept it across the board. Literature as well. Frex: Mercedes Lackey does not write men as sex-conquest sorts. Andre Norton also does not depict men like that except when she is showing the evil sorts are evil. I suppose you might have an argument for Ursula LeGuin in _Left Hand of Darkness_ where they are discussing sex, but that's stretching the point. Or were we not discussing SF/F books but literature as a whole? >Around other men, they might think or talk or act upon some other issues, >but around women, in 9 cases of 10 their behavior does not differ too >much from the one of Beavis and Butt-head, only on more refined level. I've found entirely different behavior from the people I pal around with. And, from my husband's reports, when men aren't around women, they can be either completely business or very bawdy, much more so than in "polite company". >The same as the Moon has two sides (well, two sections of the sphere, to >be exact) but since it always turned with only one side towards the >Earth, the other might as well not exist, because you cannot see it >anyway. The same could be said about the mysterious "non-sexist" part of >male psyche, I guess. It might be there, but it's not what you have to >look at on daily basis. Or, since you are looking for only the sexual looseness, that's what you're seeing, and since I'm not looking for it, I'm not seeing it. >Of course, high school and college might not be the "real world" (only an >extreme version of it) but they do, in my opinion, represent the general >trends. Since that's where most of us learn how to be ourselves. I'm not sure I agree with this statement either. I think that a lot of people learn what the stereotype adult is like, but then once they leave that environment, and get to the "real world", then they grow up. Of course, these are all merely my opinions, and I do not pretend to speak for others. Or, if I do pretend, then feel free to chide me. :-) Hope your day is well, Jenn {jenn mottram} {generally poetry} {athena(at)geocities.com} {http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2464} ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 10:37:15 +1300 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jenny Rankine Subject: BDG - Same-sex themes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Barbara compared her revulsion about same-sex love scenes to preferences for or against liver or Diet coke. Inappropriate analogy. Consumption of diet coke and liver is not the key identifier of a group identity. That felt like an insensitive and thoughtless comparison to me. I have lots of heterosexual friends and acquaintences who are completely comfortable with same-sex love scenes. Revulsion about that is *not* an automatic part of heterosexual identity - it is socially constructed. Which means it can be changed if one is prepared to work against those dominant constructions. Barbare also says she "never thought that feminism was particularly linked to lesbianism, but that seems to be implied in some of these postings." I thought the period of US feminist movement history when NOW and Betty Friedan were worried about the "lavendar menace" was well-known . That was when lesbian feminism first became clearly articulated, and the link between lesbianism and feminism first made clear. Lesbians wrote about how compulsory heterosexuality - the expectation that all women are straight, and the structures of society which enforce that behaviour - is a key component of sexism, and oppressive to all women. When I've talked with groups of heterosexual women about the occasions when the word "lesbian" has been used against them as an insult, they have almost always been when the women have been standing up for the rights of all women; enjoying themselves in public as a group of women who are indifferent to advances by men; or when they express affection for other women. To me the connection is clear - discrimination against lesbians affects all women who take a public feminist stand, or publicly express a preference for women's company. I also have a different definition of feminist than many of the ones other people use in the list. Mine is a woman who believes that women as a group are oppressed in ways which advantage men as a group, and who also thinks collective social action is the only way to change this. I think this is influenced by becoming a feminist in New Zealand, where radical feminism was the strongest strand of feminism for the 1970s and early 1980s. In New Zealand men sympathetic to feminism don't call themselves feminists - they say they're sympathetic to feminism. Obviously it's different in the US and Canada, for a start. Jenny R ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Feb 1998 15:32:47 -0600 Reply-To: Ravensflight Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Ravensflight Subject: Re: BGD--Censoring same-sex themes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="x-user-defined" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit - >I'd love to see some definitions of "feminist literature" from >list members. > >Barbara > I would define feminist literature as literature in which womyn are treated as human beings. "Feminism is the radical notion that womyn are people too." Becca Dreams Are Born In The Heart And Mind, And Only There Can They Ever Die remember Narnia, wonderland, MiddleEarth, and Never Never Land, and you = shall truly never die. Peace Be With Thee and Blessed Be ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Feb 1998 19:10:03 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Barbara R. Hume" Subject: Re: Book themes--putting down the "other" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-01-30 12:42:12 EST, you write: << Try to open your mind. Same-gender sex is just as natural and beautiful as opposite-gender sex. >> Don't you see? Opening my mind is exactly what I am trying to do. I'm reaching the ripe old age of 55 this month--but I have never in my life met anyone who was, or who let it be known that she was, a lesbian. This list is my first opportunity to ask some questions and try to learn something about a different point of view. One major theme that comes through in my own fiction deals with the wrongness of the oppression of any group of people by another. This theme is important to me. Sometimes oppression occurs because of malice--and sometimes, I've come to understand, because of ignorance. What I'd like to do in this message is show you some of the experiences I've had in my life that deal with bigotry, prejudice, and enlightenment. These experiences are just now starting to manifest themselves in my writing, and SF is the ideal genre for dealing with such issues. Anyone interested can read what I'm sharing here; anyone not interested in one person's attempts to deal with and learn from such experiences can simply click "next." You won't hurt my feelings! I grew up in the South in the fifties. It never occurred to me to wonder why the black kids caught the school bus in front of my high school so they could go to another school several miles away. It was carefully explained to me that "the Negroes have a right to be happy, but they're biologically inferior to us, and if they're in our schools they'll bring us down." The people who told me that apparently believed it. I never got close enough to a black person to speak to him until I was in college, so they were always sort of exotic to me. When I worked in the college dining hall to help pay my way through school, I met the blacks who worked there. They weren't allowed to attend that college, but they were allowed to do the menial jobs like dishwashing at a pathetic wage. It started to dawn on me: Why should people wrapped in pink skin assume themselves to be inherently superior to people wrapped in brown skins? The pink people who were most adamant about blacks "staying in their place" were the least impressive in terms of achievement, intellect, and just about any category you could name. I eventually decided that they needed to consider somebody beneath them so they wouldn't have to put forth any effort to be worth anything themselves. When I was in my mid-twenties and living in Ohio, I had a friend my age who was black. One day I was in her bedroom with her while she was changing her baby. I picked up a jar from her dresser. "What's this brown stuff?'" I asked. She laughed at me. "That's my makeup, stupid!" It had never occurred to me that makeup came in any color but pink. That wasn't malice--just an inability to think outside the box. I had a pretty bad attitude about men for many years, because I was married to a domineering, arrogant, insensitive, self-centered jerk. ("Don't mince words, Barbara. What do you really think?") After about ten years in the "all men are rotten" attitude, it occurred to me that I didn't know all men. When I started looking at them with an open mind, I found out that many of them were actually very nice. But by that time, I'd grown such a get-away-from-me-I-can- do-it-myself shell that I wasn't much of a potential marriage partner. Now I'm used to doing things my own way that learning to share my life with someone else would be a major adjustment. I can't believe now that I used to watch "I love Lucy" and never question the parent-child relationship between Ricky and Lucy. I used to watch "Father Knows Best" and take in all the episodes in which Margaret decided she might want to do something with her life besides waiting on her family hand and foot; the moral of all such episodes were always that a real woman couldn't possibly want more than a husband who was a good provider and several children and a house to take care of. You know, when you're young, you absorb this stuff and internalize it. The reality didn't dawn on me until I'd been in an oppressive marriage for a while, and I found myself saying, "Is this it? Is this what all the roses and dinners and dancing lead up to?" If any of you are in my age group, you might remember what an enlightment _The Feminine Mystique_ brought. For the first time, I realized I wasn't unhappy because something was wrong with me. Something was wrong with the system!! I keep thinking I've learned, only to find out different. By the time I came out West in my early thirties, I thought I'd eliminated all prejudice from my system. Then I found out that two of the leaders of the church I was attending were a truck driver and a janitor. "How can they hold down such responsible positions?" I thought indignantly. Then I realized I had blue-collar prejudices! I'd grown up in a comfortable, middle-class home in which everyone went to college and lauched a professional career. Again, I'd never thought about the fact that those "others" were not so different. Okay, now we come to the sexual identity thing. I'd always been told that homosexuals could be "normal" if they wanted to. They just delibrately chose to be perverted. Then I found out that a good friend of mine was gay. I'd known him for many years, and he finally got tired of hiding his true nature and came out. It didn't change my feelings for him, but it gave me the opportunity to learn about his experiences. He told me that he'd known he was different since he was four or five. He said that he tried in every way he could find to change, but it didn't work. Finally he chose to accept himself as he was. This was a new concept to me--that it wasn't a matter of choice for everyone. I'd heard, for example, that some prostitutes become so disgusted with men after a few years in that profession that they become lesbians just to escape the horror of their associations. So now perhaps some of you can enlighten me further. As I said, I've heard for most of my life that same-sex sex was not "natural." Now I'm hearing that it's perfectly natural. I would think that the people involved would know more about it than people who stand off and call names. So please enlighten me if you want to. I'm listening. You know, people like to pigeonhole other people because it's easier than thinking. Young people, for example, are infuriated if they think you're categorizing them, but they do it to us. They look at me and see a middle-aged fat lady; it wouldn't occur to them that I write science fiction, or listen to heavy metal, or own my own business. They see a cookie-baking gramma. I've seen the astonishment on their faces when I've known the words to a Motley Crue song, or shown them a story I've published, or explained that I wouldn't bake a chocolate-chip cookie if my life depended on it. So, like you say, we need to open our minds. I know I have a tendency to be judgmental, because I am the opinionated type. But I'm trying to change that. Writers have to be open-minded. When I did my doctoral dissertation on Shakespeare, I found all this evidence in his work of his distaste for one person's arbitrary exercise of power over another. But now I wonder if I saw it because it's such a significant issue for me. If you're still reading, maybe you'd like to share some of your experiences with sexism, racism, genderism, weightism, or whatever, and what you've learned from it. You can't change other people, but you can work on improving and learning for yourself. Barbara ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Feb 1998 19:45:16 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Barbara R. Hume" Subject: Re: Female POV; was...Book themes Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-01-31 02:51:00 EST, you write: << Then to take this even further, I wonder if part of the reason many men (obviously not the ones on this list!) still can't (won't) get behind feminism is because they have not been willing to see (and thus in a small measure, *experience*) things from the female point of view in many situations. >> I find this a really interesting question to raise. I recently heard the comment that to most men, the male viewpoint is the default and anything else must be qualified. Thus, "lady doctor." I get into some very strange conversations with my male business partner because he assumes that the way he sees things is the only way to see them. He isn't being deliberately sexist; he just never thought of a different viewpoint existing. I have gotten him to the point where he works toward win- win scenarios instead of "let's crush the other guy," so he is willing to look at other viewpoints once he understands that they exist. Barbara Hume ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Feb 1998 19:49:53 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Barbara R. Hume" Subject: Re: Book themes Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-01-31 07:45:59 EST, you write: << In fact, even though we have an openly gay college principal and an openly lesbian couple among the dons (myself and my partner) and an entirely pro-gay donning staff, we *still* end up counselling kids *not* to come out in residence, unless they've got good strong egos, tough hides, and supportive families and friends. >> I've heard that only about 10% of the population is lesbian. Is this accurate? And if so, should it affect the amount of prose spent in writing about that group? that is, should what you write reflect the percentage? -- Answering my own question --Why should it? You write what you know. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Feb 1998 19:56:02 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Barbara R. Hume" Subject: Re: Book themes - gay censorship - vastly off-topic! Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-01-31 17:35:21 EST, you write: << but you have not answered the question...would you ask not to read books that include other races? would you ask not to consider books that discuss/include other religious beliefs? >> No. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Feb 1998 19:58:21 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Barbara R. Hume" Subject: Re: BGD--Censoring same-sex themes Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-01-31 18:26:00 EST, you write: << Besides, insulting people to the point of getting defensive about their tastes does not change anything anyway. p >> As Benjamin Frankline wrote: "A man convinced against his will Is of the same opinon still." ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Feb 1998 19:42:12 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pat Subject: Soaps MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII But soaps are really a set of virtual neighbors. That's their big appeal, especially in a culture where - 50s sitcoms to the contrary - people who work at home (as housewives or whatever) - have almost no interaction with others unless they join a club or group. The soaps are a substitute. I*t's also my guess that organized team sports fulfill a bit of the function of "virtual war", and following celebrities harks back to the ancient necessity of keeping a very sharp eye on the doings of those in power. Patricia (Pat) Mathews mathews @unm.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Feb 1998 20:22:26 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Barbara R. Hume" Subject: Re: BDG - Same-sex themes Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-02-01 16:46:44 EST, you write: << Barbara compared her revulsion about same-sex love scenes to preferences for or against liver or Diet coke. Inappropriate analogy. Consumption of diet coke and liver is not the key identifier of a group identity. That felt like an insensitive and thoughtless comparison to me. >> Sorry. Didn't mean to be thoughtless. I've had my group identities assaulted, too. For example, as a Mormon, I hear people tell me I'm not a Christian, even though I know that my faith centers around Christ. What they mean is that I'm not exactly the same kind of Christian they are. And I've had people inform me that Mormons oppress women, when I know that Mormon women had the vote 50 years before other American women. And I've had people tell me that as a woman, I'm incapable of dealing with technology, when I've been in the computer industry for 16 years. So I know what you mean. Barbara ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Feb 1998 19:49:57 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pat Subject: Re: Book themes In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Sun, 1 Feb 1998, Lesley Hall wrote: > > This may reinforce everyone's ideas about the sexual peculiarities of the > British, but I've encountered plenty of men who, if they suddenly became 'a > real animal' would be something like the Muskrat in Kipling's > 'Rikki-Tikki-Tavi', timidly creeping around the walls of the room and not > daring to dash into the middle, or a flopsy bunny. Yes, and DO rent the video "Shadowlands" C.S. Lewis falls in love in midlife and is very shy and awkward about it and totally endearing.> Patricia (Pat) Mathews mathews @unm.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Feb 1998 17:31:52 -0800 Reply-To: cynthia1960@home.com Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Cynthia Gonsalves Organization: @Home Network Subject: Re: Book themes--putting down the "other" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Barbara: Good luck with your quest to think outside the box. Your message made me think about a couple of things: That's one good reason to read and write science fiction and fantasy, you go out of your way to create worlds outside your box or stretch the boundaries of the box you were born with. Also, defining yourself as feminist means that you're willing to challenge the boundaries of the existing boxes as they define women. All and all, these are very good reasons for those of us on the list to stay in this little corner of cyberspace and hash things out. take care everyone, Cynthia -- "I had to be a bitch....They wouldn't let me be a Jesuit." (from Matt Ruff's _Sewer, Gas & Electric_) Sharks Bite!!!! http://members.home.net/cynthia1960/ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Feb 1998 20:02:47 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pat Subject: Re: Book themes--putting down the "other" In-Reply-To: <7c6aae98.34d50ede@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Barbara - a lot of our generation had the exact same experiences. We were kept in such ignorance about so many things, and were often reared by people who knew without every questioning that their way was the only One Right Way. Perhaps living through a depression and a world war did that to them? I remember wondering what on Earth Isaac Asimov meant, in his Foundation series, by describing a fading beauty as a dictator's "More than friend and less than wife." I recall being charmed in Edgar Pangborn's MIRROR FOR OBSERVERS by the two little old ladies, one a spinster and the other a widow, who had made a life together in what he quietly described as a "Boston Marriage." Ask anyone at Worldcon '81 (Denvention) how I, a married woman with two children, reacted to my first look at illustrated slash fiction! Or Darkover fans about how totally shocked I was at an illo in the Darkover Newsletter (?) of the Forbidden Tower foursome. And I still can't read explicit sex scenes, hetero or lesbian. I've tried, and my eye just slides over them like the Valdemarans did when magic was mentioned. Patricia (Pat) Mathews mathews @unm.edu 58 and not holding. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Feb 1998 23:02:18 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: jenn mottram Subject: Re: Book themes In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 07:49 PM 2/1/98 , you wrote: >From: "Barbara R. Hume" >Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Book themes > >I've heard that only about 10% of the population is lesbian. Is this accurate? >And if so, should it affect the amount of prose spent in writing about that >group? that is, should what you write reflect the percentage? -- Answering my >own question --Why should it? You write what you know. This doesn't answer the above question, but it's something I find interesting and indicative of our culture. I was born in '71, and reading SF by '79. I wrote fairly heavily from 11 to 14. (I thought I was simply writing really good stuff that the publishers would love to read! Now, I realize that it was simply fanfic. Ahhh, naive youth that I was...) I always wrote with males as lead characters. I don't think I had more than one or two female characters. The first story that I wrote with a female lead was once I got back into writing, in college. Certainly interesting, hmmm? Now, it would be rare for me to use a male lead, unless I were trying to show something specific about "maleness" and how it relates to the society I portray him in. Whether I choose to elaborate on the characters' orientations or not, I think would lie with what I want the story to say. I would definitely not look at the other stories and decide I'd hit some societal quota. jenn {jenn mottram} {generally poetry} {athena(at)geocities.com} {http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2464} ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Feb 1998 15:42:36 -0800 Reply-To: jkrauel@actioneer.com Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jennifer Krauel Organization: Actioneer, Inc. Subject: All this discussion about book themes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I've been just catching up on the group's conversations and I do want to chime in with one comment on the whole topic of reading about sexual preferences not your own, and romance novels, and the like. In my research on book discussion groups and in all your excellent comments on the subject one of the major recurring benefits I heard about was being exposed to books you wouldn't have read otherwise. That wasn't one of my reasons for suggesting the idea in the first place, but after hearing it so often, I'm looking forward to it now. There will be books you love, books you hate, books you expected to love and were disappointed by, and books that really touch you that you would never otherwise have read. You must keep yourself open to the possibilities. Which is, after all, the reason many of us read this stuff, no? And if a book comes up that you already read and didn't like, you will probably still be amazed when reading why others loved it. All that said, if you do have opinions, don't forget to vote! (email to bjbenesch@aol.com by Friday) -- Jennifer jkrauel@actioneer.com book discussion group coordinator ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Feb 1998 15:25:53 -0800 Reply-To: jkrauel@actioneer.com Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jennifer Krauel Organization: Actioneer, Inc. Subject: [Fwd: Nancy Kress Serves Up a Near-Future Scientific Thriller] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------E927A9DA534C91BE38559F6D" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------E927A9DA534C91BE38559F6D Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I kind of hesitate to send this to the list, but it will probably be of interest to most of you. This is in no way a promotion of amazon - I just signed up for their sf email notification and thought the group might like to see this one. If this bothers you please let me know (private email to save bandwidth) and I won't send them again. Jennifer jkrauel@actioneer.com --------------E927A9DA534C91BE38559F6D Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Return-Path: Received: from amazon.com ([204.177.154.31]) by mail.actioneer.com (Netscape Mail Server v2.02) with ESMTP id AAA237 for ; Wed, 28 Jan 1998 23:43:32 -0800 Received: from zephyr.amazon.com (zephyr.amazon.com [204.177.154.23]) by amazon.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id XAA03558; Wed, 28 Jan 1998 23:38:18 -0800 (PST) Received: by zephyr.amazon.com id QAA28434; Wed, 28 Jan 1998 16:09:47 -0800 (PST) Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 16:09:37 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199801290009.QAA18038@anaconda.amazon.com> From: science-fiction-editor@amazon.com To: science-fiction-editors-subscribers@amazon.com Subject: Nancy Kress Serves Up a Near-Future Scientific Thriller Sender: science-fiction-editor@amazon.com Precedence: list Reply-To: science-fiction-editor@amazon.com The principal title reviewed in this Amazon.com Delivers message is: "Maximum Light" by Nancy Kress Publisher: Tor Books You can find this book and more at http://www.amazon.com/science-fiction-1-1998 ****** Nancy Kress is one of those solid science fiction writers who expands her range with each novel. She started her career as a fantasy novelist in the early 1980s; later in the decade she switched over to writing primarily science fiction. Since that time she has written several impressive pure sci-fi novels, including "Beggars in Spain," an expansion of her Nebula Award-winning novella of the same name. Kress's latest book, "Maximum Light," is a near-future scientific thriller created from the threads of three separate narratives by each of the book's main characters. The protagonists include Shana Walders, a 19-year-old troublesome girl whose only goal in life is to join the army; Cameron Atuli, a 22-year-old gay male dancer who voluntarily had a portion of his memory removed; and Nick Clementi, a 75-year-old doctor who is simply seeking dignity as he nears the end of a long and illustrious career. The backdrop for their stories is a near-future America caught in a worldwide fertility crisis that has resulted in a largely geriatric society supported by a waning younger generation. Children are considered precious resources: they are bought and sold on the black market, as are other "substitutes" ranging from pets to something almost unspeakably evil. It is this evil that ties the individuals together and drives the mystery. Kress wastes little time setting up the intrigue; she switches between the viewpoints of Shana, Cameron, and Nick to reveal one piece of the puzzle, then another. At the same time she gives us insight into the characters themselves, showing us their personalities and their conflicts. Eventually you'll come to care about the group, even those who may at first seem distasteful. And the three come to care about each other, though Kress often puts them at odds. As we learn more about these characters and their lives, we also discover that what at first seemed to be a straightforward mystery is far more than we were led to believe; even as Kress gives the answer to one puzzle, she sets up another, larger one. The plot threatens to break apart at every turn, but Kress's sure hand guides her characters through the maelstrom and manages to keep things on track, if just barely. What happens to the characters after the fury dies down is as important as discovering the answer to the larger puzzle. A lesser but still important thread running through the book is how the elderly deal with death and dying. Seventy-five-year-old Nick Clementi has a secret of his own that magnifies the already difficult decisions he faces. Although we don't get a clear understanding of how it feels on a physical level to be his age (aside from the occasional reference to needing a cane or needing a cat nap), Kress does a good job of getting into the head of Clementi. She offers a rare glimpse of a character who not only understands that he will one day die, but who is also looking for a way to embrace that death without fear. This combination of raucous adventure and quiet dignity makes "Maximum Light" a powerful story, proving yet again that Kress is one of science fiction's finest writers. --Craig E. Engler is editor and publisher of the electronic publication Science Fiction Weekly. You'll find more great science fiction and fantasy books, articles, excerpts, and interviews in Amazon.com's Science Fiction & Fantasy section at http://www.amazon.com/science-fiction-and-fantasy ****** We want to be sure that our Amazon.com Delivers e-mail message delivers the type and quality of information you want to receive. To reach us just hit "reply" and send us your comments. ****** If you have friends who might enjoy this mailing, please feel free to forward it to them. To become a new Amazon.com Delivers subscriber, or to sign up for additional categories, visit http://www.amazon.com/delivers ****** To unsubscribe from this mailing, send a blank e-mail message to unsubscribe-science-fiction@amazon.com Copyright 1998 Amazon.com, Inc. All rights reserved. --------------E927A9DA534C91BE38559F6D-- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 07:47:06 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Kathleen M. Friello" Subject: Out of print book source Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I came across this a little while ago, while searching for books: http://www.abebooks.com This is a clearing house that lists available hard to find or out of print books, from sources in the US and Canada (possibly elsewhere; these are the only countries I've encountered so far). A search for Russ's Adventures of Alyx, for example, turned up 6 books, most of them for under $7. Ditto Pat Murphy's Falling Woman, and 16 copies of Cherryh's Rimrunners (although this is still available through the Science Fiction Book Club, if I'm not mistaken). ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 01:22:06 +1100 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Julieanne Subject: Re: BDG - Same-sex themes In-Reply-To: <849f57e4.34d51fd4@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 20:22 1/02/98 EST, you wrote: >In a message dated 98-02-01 16:46:44 EST, you write: ><< > Barbara compared her revulsion about same-sex love scenes to preferences > for or against liver or Diet coke. > > Inappropriate analogy. Consumption of diet coke and liver is not the key > identifier of a group identity. That felt like an insensitive and > thoughtless comparison to me. > >> > In reality I dont usually like love/sex scenes either gay or straight, however, as long as they dont drag on for half the book, I have no real problem with them. I think I started thinking of myself as a feminist, when I was about 15-16 yrs old, in 1975 (International Women's Year). It was also that year, I discovered science-fiction, and I was first blown away by Ursula Le Guin's "Left Hand of Darkness"...and soon after, my teenage idol/role-model - the character Aleytys..the heroine of Jo Clayton's 7-novel "Diadem" series. The love/sex scenes throughout the series, both gay and straight, and include sexual liasons with aliens of indeterminate gender.(absolutely mind-blowing to a young girl!!) Originally, my thoughts on feminism in general, revolved around the gay-versus-straight *problem* - it seemed to me for many years, every women's group I entered, became a two-camp affair , an either/or dilemma, I often felt I could not be a *real* feminist unless I was lesbian:)) Similar to not being able to be a black rights activist, as I am white. Afterwards, I started thinking about this focus on sexuality, and in particular, the concept of "pair-bonding for life", and the supremacy of that "pair-bond" of two unrelated individuals, in modern 20th century culture. At University...a few things really slapped me in the face: 1) almost all mammalian species (including marine mammals) on this planet, do not exhibit a "pair-bonded" mating structure; (a few rare exceptions, usually in cold climates)- the majority are very gregarious, living in groups, herds, packs etc in which all age-groups are included in the "group" regardless of their reproductive or sexual capacity. 2) nearly all mammalian species, show an adult reproductive age-group sex ratio of female dominance, on average around 60-70% adult females to 30-40% adult males; who taper off even more sharply in the post-reproductive age groups; ..which of course, makes extremely good sense, biologically speaking. A natural in-built species-survival/evolutionary "fail-safe" for the mammalian species - a large percentage of the males born, will not be able to become sexually active/reproduce in adulthood. Of those males that do, they are the healthiest and best of the bunch, so to speak:))) Similar to the redundancy or "fail-safe", of laying large numbers of eggs is for reptiles and amphibians. I once saw a video on the behaviour of a baboon troop, one of the more aggressive primates. Both males and female baboons are quite aggressive for primates, usually intra-gender aggression, ie female-female, male-male; and fights can be quite bloody. However, on occasion the females will "gang up" on the fighting males and stop the fighting (when male numbers are getting too low for genetic viability for example), or attempt to ensure the outcome that is most advantageous to the group as a whole (ie..they will make sure the "best man wins" LOL - sometimes supporting their male kin) As with most mammalian species, the male is larger, stronger and often more aggressive - but, when 3 adult females attack one adult male, he will be the loser. In species where females outnumber males, this mechanism also serves species-survival/evolution. So men, under "natural" evolutionary laws must compete with Nature or each other, upon reaching maturity...the adolescent male elephant, lion, chimpanzee, human etc - child no longer, must leave their birth-clan/pack/herd/pride etc and attempt to gain entrance into another. (ie they must compete for a limited number of places, for the *right-to-life/affection/acceptance etc* within the female-dominated group)....Thousands of human male rituals reflect this natural process, from staged mini-battles of adolescent men with neighbouring tribes, to brutal circumcision under unhygienic conditions, or being left in isolated spots with few tools/clothing/shelter etc. But Man, evolving "culture" out of "nature", thought of ways to get around the natural attrition and competitiveness of their gender,...(celibate priesthoods for example, whereby they voluntarily gave up the competition for access to females, and in return, were given "high status", support, food, shelter etc for the term of their lives). Another mechanism, is of course "marriage"..pair-bonded marriage - which gives the expectation that every male, would have at least one female for sexual and/or reproductive rights. In order to do this however, males had to break the natural "group-bonding" preference of females (in particular, their ability to "gang-up" against threats, or individual males), and their natural sensible preference to bear children by different sires. In addition, men needed to enforce female dependency on the male. The idea of one-to-one "romantic love" in marriage, (or out of it), came much later in human history - but, it certainly caught on:))) The assumption that "pair-bonding" is *natural* for homo-sapiens is really quite illogical - but is so deep-seated and fully accepted as a "natural-fact-of-life", even by feminists. It is all-pervasive in contemporary culture, whether gay or straight,- we all adore love-stories:)) and we all fantasise about our true *soul-mates* etc:)) and we all seem to prefer to live in households that are based on a single "exclusive/intimate" relationship. We are jealous of *rivals/threats* to that relationship...like children jealous of younger siblings, like children we want to return to the *exclusive intimacy* of the mother/infant relationship allowing no outsiders. In "Ethan of Athos", Lois McMaster Bujold wrote of a male-only homosexual world. However, the primacy of the "pair-bond" remains, whereby only men in "paired" stable relationships could earn the right to have a child using reproductive technologies and imported ova :)) Patriarchy has for milennia enforced a particularly *masculine-centred* philosophy of the world, and the focus on "pair-bonding" and sexuality, has been enormously successful in alienating women from each other. Probably everyone for that matter, we are isolated, alone, and obsessed with finding a "significant other". I do believe women have a natural preference for 'group-bonding' as opposed to 'pair-bonding' - for mutual affection, support and companionship with or without a sexual element. Remember those painful high-school days when not one or two, but a rag-tag gaggle of "bitchy" girls go into *attack* mode? Girls rarely attack one-on-one, they "gang-up" :))) ...women with little ones at play-groups ... women in the office at morning-coffee break - 5 or 6 or more sharing a joke...women at P&C meetings (what Americans call PTA).. even in cultures which practise polygamy, which we in the "pair-bonding obsessed" West deplore, the women often comment that they enjoy the female-group friendship/companionship that such group living gives them. The physical/sexual component of their marriage with the male, may be good, bad, indifferent, with or without true affection/fun/pleasure etc...and accounts of physical affection between the women in such marriages includes both the "whole-body eroticism" of hugging/kissing/casual caresses to full lesbian sex. Whatever its nature, according to many women in these polygamous marriages, the sexual component takes second-place to the value they place on the "group-bond". I have rarely seen this concept of "pair-bonding" questioned in fiction, (or anywhere else for that matter), particularly by men writers. In book after book, after book - the "pair-bond" remains a basic foundation of futuristic societies..(one notable exception, is Shannah Jay's first sci-fi novel "Envoy") ... and anyway, to cut this short, ((and, I do apologise for this email being so long-winded, I didnt mean it to when I started:)) - this concept is one which I have been exploring in recent years in my writing... .. ..however, I was hoping to ask the list, if anyone has come across writers/books which do explore/question this concept of replacing the "pair-bond"/nuclear family etc with alternative formats, particularly woman-focussed ones rather than just gender-neutral... Thanks Julieanne ppp98@cs.net.au __________________________________________________________________ | | | FATAL ERROR! LOGOFF! | | | | Reality.sys Corrupt! Reboot UNIVERS? | | | |________________________________________________________________| ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 10:57:07 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: jenn mottram Subject: Re: BDG - Same-sex themes In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19980203012206.007a5840@cs.net.au> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 09:22 AM 2/2/98 , you wrote: >From: Julieanne >Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG - Same-sex themes .. >..however, I was hoping to ask the list, if anyone has come across >writers/books which do explore/question this concept of replacing the >"pair-bond"/nuclear family etc with alternative formats, particularly >woman-focussed ones rather than just gender-neutral... > >Thanks >Julieanne >ppp98@cs.net.au Robert Heinlein in his later books are rampant with polygamy. I thought the books were so liberal and "free-love" and wild and fantastic when I was a teen. Now, I'm a little more realistic and annoyed by those books -- especially on his extremely rash treatment of incest. This isn't to say I'm against polygamy, I'm just against RAH's sexism. jenn {jenn mottram} {generally poetry} {athena(at)geocities.com} {http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2464} ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 11:13:14 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Penelope Gibbs Organization: UGA College of Vet. Med Subject: Re: Men and sexual urges On Sat, 31 Jan 1998 23:56:00 Jim Hollomon said: > In a message dated 98-01-31 20:01:18 EST, my0203@BRONCHO.UCOK.EDU (Marina) > writes: > > > Honestly, in my 23 years in this > > world I've _never_ met a guy who would even think about controlling his > > sexual urges. If there are any, they must be really good in hiding that. > > I imagine that impression has more to do with your perceptions than with > reality. I've met PLENTY of men who control their sexual urges. If I didn't > control mine, I'd long since have been locked up for fondling someone I found > unduly attractive, or some other such idiotic behavior. I've known hundreds of > other men who behaved as perfect gentlemen at all times. I've even known some > that didn't even seem to HAVE any sexual urges, for goodness sakes. If you > really live among a bunch of men who are completely unrestrained sex fiends, > you might do well to consider a change of venue. It doesn't have to be like > that. > Although Jim has met hundreds of men who appear or claim to "control" their sexual urges, this doesn't mean that in private that they do...and those that say or act as if they don't control themselves may actually do so in private. I think that Jim is right in that our perceptions do affect our opinion on this, as we all base our opinions on what we see empirically; however, these perceptions are generally influenced by not only our previously-held attitudes or opinions but by the presentation of the subject. Many people feel societal pressures and deal with them in different ways. Some take on a "persona" (i.e. "salivating fools running off at the mouth about getting laid" or "flaming heterosexual out making conquests), but actually live how they feel (i.e. conservative sexual or homosexual lifestyles, respectively.) Although I haven't dated men in 15 years or so, from what I remember few actually demonstrated that they thought they SHOULD control their sexual urges. Going back to perceptions, perhaps it is not the venue that needs to be changed, but maybe some individuals need to rethink old habits. Penny ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 12:00:03 -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: Out of print book source MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii -- [ From: David Christenson * EMC.Ver #2.5.3 ] -- Listmembers can save time on book searches by checking out this site set up by a private bookfan, Anrivan Chatterjee: http://www.mxbf.com/#searchform >From this site, entering your info only once, you can simultanously search Amazon & Powell's and other new-book sources, plus the major out- of-print book sources (Interloc, ABE and Bibliofind). All at once. If you can't find it with this search engine, you're probably not going to find it on the Net today. -- David Christenson - ldqt79a@prodigy.com "What's harder than stone and gentler than water flowing? Yet the stone is hollowed by flowing water." - graffiti found in Pompeii ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 12:08:52 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joel VanLaven Subject: Male sexuality -- Off topic (was: Book Themes) In-Reply-To: <7c6aae98.34d50ede@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII There have been allegations that men can not, do not, and will not control their sexuality. For the most part this has been refuted in the time-honored tradition of men on this list saying "Not Me!" and "Not my friends either!" While this is undoubtedly true, and I felt inclined to do the same thing, I feel like offering some ideas. I suggest a model of male sexual needs and hormones (especially young male) that goes like this: Men accumulate sexual hormones much like they accumulate the toxins that go into urine. These hormones make themselves apparent by causing men to be "horny". Men get rid of these hormones (or toxins, depending on how you look at it :) through activities like sports or sex (sex probably being the most obvious and effective). Let us further assume that these toxic hormones affect judgement and temperment, and that they accumulate rather quickly (about the same order of magnitude as a filling bladder). It is no small surprise that many men would seem to be "sex fiends" and "think with their penises". As a young man (well boy really) I observed these effects in myself and discovered a solution that seems to work for me. I masturbate. Alot. In much the same way that I expel toxins when I urinate, I masturbate the hormones away. I can't be sure that that is what does it, but It is a possibility. After all, I have made an ass of myself (as I am sure most people have) in certain circumstances, and I did manage to "control myself" without it for a time (on a bet), but I can't really imagine handling my irrational hormones very well without it. It seems like this is somehow taboo in our society, even for discussion. I know I had a hard time in college when my suitemates broached the subject and tricked me into spilling the whole story. They all denied their "confessions" and proceded to tease me for a long time, but I see it as a growth point in my self-understanding and acceptance. There is something really painful for me in being secretive, in much the same way that I imagine homosexuals feel pain being secretive. We often see sex and lust as uncontrollable irrational things. I wonder if there is anything out there that deals much with the conscious rational control of this simple and fundamental human aspect in any ways other than magical or technological? Maybe we need to see a society that teaches men that their urge-induced sexist actions are unacceptable and that teaches them masturbation (or something else) as a method of self-control. -- Joel VanLaven ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 12:13:34 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jim Hollomon Subject: Re: Men and sexual urges Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-02-02 11:16:41 EST, Penny writes: > Although I haven't dated men in 15 years or so, from what I remember > few actually demonstrated that they thought they SHOULD control their > sexual urges. > > Going back to perceptions, perhaps it is not the venue that needs to > be changed, but maybe some individuals need to rethink old habits. > > Penny Penny, I think what we must be discussing here is the definition of "control." As this discussion develops, it seems that the men-can't-control-their-sexual- impulses camp mean that men have sexual thoughts when they encounter visual erotic stimuli. Of course, women are not immune to such. An attractive enough sight may prompt a little flutter in the tummy of a woman, or so I've been told. But men are wired to respond to visual stimuli by (insert the Creator or evolution, as you may choose). After all, if we are to reproduce and continue as a species, somebody's gotta make the first move. What I take "control" to mean is from the dictionary. con·trol (k^Ån-trol") tr.v. con·trolled, con·trol·ling, con·trols. 1. To exercise authoritative or dominating influence over; direct. See Synonyms at conduct. 2. To hold in restraint; check: struggled to control my temper; regulations intended to control prices. By that definition, if you allow that we eternally erectile men are stimulated by the sight of a sexy (woman, man, sheep or whatever turns this individual on) and yet we take no overt action to (have sex with, yield to sex with, stalk, voyeuristically observe, expose ourselves to or whatever turns this individual on) then it seems to me we have met the test of the "control" definition. We have exercised "control." If it's true that all men are totally uninhibited sexual predators as intent upon their prey as the raptors of the Jurassic age, then I'm astounded that rape is as infrequent as it seems to be. Granted that rape is all to frequent, and I am appalled at its ever happening. It should not. However, what I am saying is that if half the human race were totally unrestrained rapists, this would be a very different world, and one I'm glad I don't have to inhabit. Jim ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 13:20:43 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: silk Subject: Re: Book themes--putting down the "other" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Barbara wrote: > > Don't you see? Opening my mind is exactly what I am trying to do. I'm reaching > the ripe old age of 55 this month--but I have never in my life met anyone who > was, or who let it be known that she was, a lesbian. This list is my first > opportunity to ask some questions and try to learn something about a different > point of view. I'm trying to frame a question here and to do it in such a way that it won't be seen by Barbara, or anyone else, as insulting . . . but I'd like to somehow bring this discussion back to the issue of writing and reading. So . . . *if* you can't think yourself into the head of someone who's not like yourself (different sexual orientation, different race, whatever), how can you write? This is the other side of the 'appropriation' coin, of course, but it seems to me so utterly intrinsic to the act of writing that, without it, none of us would produce anything but autobiography. Furthermore, the "problem," such as it is, of identifying with the "other" (Barbara's term) enough to write about him/her/it, seems to be a top-down one. Have you ever heard a queer writer suggest that they've never known anyone who was a heterosexual and therefore can't get into that point of view? Or how about a black writer suggesting that they've never had any understanding of the "white world" and can't write about it? Only the oppressors have the privilege of not knowing the lives of the "others." For the oppressed, knowing about the other half is an essential survival skill. I'm glad to see people like Barbara trying to get past their privilege. Wendy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 06:34:08 +1100 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Julieanne Subject: Re: Men and sexual urges In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 12:13 2/02/98 EST, you wrote: >I think what we must be discussing here is the definition of "control." As >this discussion develops, it seems that the men-can't-control-their-sexual- >impulses camp mean that men have sexual thoughts when they encounter visual >erotic stimuli. Of course, women are not immune to such. An attractive enough >sight may prompt a little flutter in the tummy of a woman, or so I've been >told. But men are wired to respond to visual stimuli by (insert the Creator or >evolution, as you may choose). After all, if we are to reproduce and continue >as a species, somebody's gotta make the first move. > Jim - The sex drive can be strong in both sexes, but is also highly variable amongst individuals - I have known men, who were quite low-sexed - but, in our culture, these men are rarely visible, they are too busy leading relatively asexual and anonymous lives. Its possibly an unfortunate irony, that high-sex drive men are mostly attracted to low sex-drive women, and vice-versa:)) Also, women are more often taught in childhood/adolescence to deny their sexuality, and those women who do enjoy sex and lots of it, are often put-down and scorned by both men, and by other women. Another reason that women control their desires, is because of the very realistic fear of male aggression in the expression of masculine sexuality. As a consequence, women are more likely to be fearful of all male sexual displays regardless of the intent, or their own strong response to it. All hetero-sexually active women are very much aware of the truth of the statement by Germaine Greer : "Any woman who goes to bed with a man for the first time, knows that she runs the risk of being treated with contempt." That fear of even mild negative consequences resulting from the release of their own strong sexual desire, is a very good motivator for women to exercise "control" over their urges. Men, on the other hand have no such motivator. Nonetheless, like other physical urges/desires, for example: the desire to "break-wind" or burp to relieve mild abdominal discomfort, the desire to remove all your clothing on hot summer days, an urgent need to scratch a genital itch, or squeeze your zits etc ... its part of being an adult to be responsible for your own behaviour, and make an attempt to control it in those circumstances when its not appropriate. It is unfortunate that somewhere along the line, large numbers of women have lost the ability to take pleasure and delight in displays of healthy masculine sexuality...possibly due to an enormous distrust and lack of faith in men's ability to respect and honour women's sexuality in return. but, well..tossing the blame onto men/patriarchy doesnt really solve the problem, even if its true. So I guess, its just *tough, luck babe*..or.. *shit happens, deal with it!* LOL Julieanne ppp98@cs.net.au ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 11:48:01 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Maryelizabeth Hart Subject: Re: sex again -- sorta OT Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Okay, this was triggered by watching the debut episode of "Dawson's Creek," (which follows "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," which would be on topic, but oh, well ...) Anyway, the last scene, involves a pair of 15 year olds, one male and one female, discussing the changes adolesence is presenting to their relationship. He thinks they can still talk about anything. She challenges that, and makes her point by asking him to tell her when and how often he mastrubates. He hesitates, she leaves, and then he shouts the info after her. However, he doesn't ask her the same question in return. ::sigh:: So it's now okay for teenage boys to discuss mastrubation, but we are still not going to acknowledge that teenage girls do? I did not watch the second episode, so if this was addressed then I missed it, but I suspect not. On the other hand, "Veronica's Closet" surprised me, by having an episode in which an editorial appeared to be about female mastrubation, and in the midst of the rather typical sit com banter, one character actually said, "if that's how it's read, so what? It's a good thing, and people do it!" (not verbatim.) So how come female sexuality still has to be so radical? Why does it need to evoke comment, in any media? And when will sex with oneself become something one need not feel apologetic about? (no, I'm not talking clones here ) Any of the cross genre readers familiar with Lynn Kurland? Her new book, _The Very Thought of You_, a time travel romance involving fairy rings, just got a very nice review in PW, and I was thinking of checking it out. 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: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 12:03:12 PST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Daniel Krashin Subject: Re: same-sex in SF Content-Type: text/plain Barbara: I can sympathize with you feelings about lesbian relationships in fiction, as I used to feel very uncomfortable with gay male relationships. All I can say is that for me, this discomfort was a conditioned reflex. Once I realized it was a form of prejudice, I was able to desensitize myself fairly speedily. I think it is worthwhile for you to try to overcome this distaste, because otherwise you'll be excluded from some of the best and most important feminist fiction (SF and not) that's out there. Thus, it's not just a moral issue, but also an aesthetic one -- similarly, you can't learn to enjoy Wagner operas unless you can tolerate a few fat women with horned helmets. Dan Krashin P.S. About guys being able to restrain their impulses: I think the number of predatory males out there makes it seem that way, but in fact they are also controlled, they just know what they can get away with. If men in general were as uncontrolled and lawless as all that, civilization would probably collapse. I also think that some women show a positive genius for finding and attracting bad men. (I'm not trying to suggest that anyone on this list belongs to this group!) ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 18:11:09 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Barbara R. Hume" Subject: Re: BDG - Same-sex themes Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-02-02 09:37:14 EST, you write: << I have rarely seen this concept of "pair-bonding" questioned in fiction, (or anywhere else for that matter), particularly by men writers. >> It seems to me that all episodic TV posits that a man can't be one of the "heroes" unless he is free to bop from partner to partner. No stability--no families--no commitment to a permanent relationship or to raising children. I believe that a strong and loving family life is the best thing we can give our descendants. Why does that concept get such a bad rap these days? Nature gives males a strong sex drive so they'll reproduce, but I'd like to think that humans can think beyond their own libidos and consider the reality they're bringing children into. Barbara ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 16:49:47 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Neil Rest Subject: Re: Female POV; was...Book themes In-Reply-To: <199801311552.KAA28975@daisy.snet.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" jenn mottram wrote: > > And, of course, all the >women who had masculine pseudonyms in order to be considered respectable, >even in the SF field. Not Kate Maclean, not Judith Merrill, not C.L. Moore, and if my brain didn't sieze up on proper nouns, I'd name the woman whose last credit was for star Wars II ("The Big Sleep" with Fasulkner). They've been lonesome, but never totally absent. Neil NeilRest@tezcat.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 17:09:57 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Neil Rest Subject: Re: BDG - Same-sex themes In-Reply-To: <199802012143.KAA162480886369391@mail.iconz.co.nz> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Jenny Rankine wrote: >Barbara compared her revulsion about same-sex love scenes to preferences >for or against liver or Diet coke. > >Inappropriate analogy. Consumption of diet coke and liver is not the key >identifier of a group identity. That felt like an insensitive and >thoughtless comparison to me. You suggest that your sexual orientation is a "key identifier" of your "group identity". If this inference is correct, it makes me wonder about you in much the same way I'd wonder about the jock whose self-esteem can be made or broken by whether he "scored" Saturday night. With what other groups do you identify? >I also have a different definition of feminist than many of the ones other >people use in the list. Mine is a woman who believes that women as a group >are oppressed in ways which advantage men as a group, and who also thinks >collective social action is the only way to change this. Do you also mean that it's implicitly impossible for a man to be a feminist? Neil Rest NeilRest@tezcat.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 16:06:21 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Neil Rest Subject: Re: Book themes--putting down the "other" In-Reply-To: <7c6aae98.34d50ede@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" "Barbara R. Hume" wrote (a great deal, including): I'm 50, so I think I have a pretty good understanding of where you're coming from. (I think that one of the most lost aspects of "the Sixties" is how incredibly *fast* things seemed to happen. You went to a high school in a different world in eisenhower's second term than I did under Kennedy!) I have two comments: >I keep thinking I've learned, only to find out different. You have. A lot. There happens to be even a bigger lot out there to be learned by the advenced few such as yourself who will persist in taking the trouble, but please don't belittle yourself! >Okay, now we come to the sexual identity thing. I'd always been told that >homosexuals could be "normal" if they wanted to. They just delibrately chose >to be perverted. Then I found out that a good friend of mine was gay. I'd >known him for many years, and he finally got tired of hiding his true nature >and came out. It didn't change my feelings for him, but it gave me the >opportunity to learn about his experiences. He told me that he'd known he was >different since he was four or five. He said that he tried in every way he >could find to change, but it didn't work. Finally he chose to accept himself >as he was. This was a new concept to me--that it wasn't a matter of choice for >everyone. I'd heard, for example, that some prostitutes become so disgusted >with men after a few years in that profession that they become lesbians just >to escape the horror of their associations. > >So now perhaps some of you can enlighten me further. As I said, I've heard for >most of my life that same-sex sex was not "natural." Now I'm hearing that >it's perfectly natural. I would think that the people involved would know more >about it than people who stand off and call names. So please enlighten me if >you want to. I'm listening. There seems to me to be a fallacy of one-dimensionalism in the whole area. To begin with, the definition of "homosexual" (I still tend to use the word in the sense in which we learned it, "homo-' meaning same) is social. A person who is inclined toward, or engages in, a list of behaviors which is a social construct is identified with a categorization. The list is variable from one society or subculture to another. Then, the concept that a person with these inclinations or behaviors therefor has some certain sort of personality type is a very recent invention: the word "homosexual" in the sense of a character tyoe is about a hundred years old, dating from the late prehistory of psychology. Human variation is immense. Clearly there are significant minorities who are 'exclusively homosexual' and 'bisexual'. I see no compelling reason to take it for granted that all the people with one of these characteristics have any certain other characteristics innately in common, any more than left-handed people (a much simpler trait!) do. (I am implicitly assuming that we are all aware of the social pressures which strongly incline some people to certain subcultures. This is entirely separate from my points.) Neil Rest NeilRest@tezcat.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 18:17:12 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Barbara R. Hume" Subject: Re: BDG - Same-sex themes Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-02-02 10:56:29 EST, you write: << I'm just against RAH's sexism. >> A friend of mine commented that Heinlein's later books are full of middle-aged male sexual fantasies. The man was an incredible storyteller, but from _Stranger in a Strange Land_ on, he pushed his (disgusting, IMHO) concepts of amorality down his readers' throats. But I can still enjoy his juveniles-- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 18:31:13 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Barbara R. Hume" Subject: Re: The last bastion of prejudice? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-02-02 15:08:27 EST, you write: << Thus, it's not just a moral issue, but also an aesthetic one -- similarly, you can't learn to enjoy Wagner operas unless you can tolerate a few fat women with horned helmets. Dan Krashin >> Hey, I'm a fat woman who likes to wear horned helmets! Actually, I think that fat prejudice is one of the last bastions of putting down the "other." Thin people assume that fat people are undisciplined slobs. I don't think I could have raised my children alone, earned three advanced degrees, and started and operated my own business if I were an undisciplined slob. One thing I like about _Outlander_ is that the hero likes the heroine's ample rear, rather than wishing he could impale himself on sharp, fleshless bones. . . . . I ran into my grown son once at the gym. He happened to be on the treadmill next to mine. He remarked, "You know, Mom, it is harder to take off weight when you're older. I thought you were making that up." Barbara ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 16:43:50 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Denise Borgen Subject: Re: Female POV; was...Book themes In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19980202164947.0075f24c@tezcat.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 2 Feb 1998, Neil Rest wrote: > jenn mottram wrote: > > > > > And, of course, all the > >women who had masculine pseudonyms in order to be considered respectable, > >even in the SF field. > > Not Kate Maclean, not Judith Merrill, not C.L. Moore, and if my brain > didn't sieze up on proper nouns, I'd name the woman whose last credit was > for star Wars II ("The Big Sleep" with Fasulkner). Catherine Lewis Moore may not have deliberately chosen to write as C.L. Moore to disguise her gender but there was an outcry from readers of ( I think) Amazing stories when she was listed as Henry Kuttners' spouse in his obituary. One reader wrote in to lambast the editor for saying that Moore and Kuttner were homosexuals. The editor, whose name escapes me right now was astonished since Kuttner and Moore attended conventions together, and were one of the most well known couples in SF at the time. The readers who did not attend cons or otherwise discover her simply assumed Moore was male. > > They've been lonesome, but never totally absent. > > > Neil > NeilRest@tezcat.com > ~ Denise M. Borgen ~ If the world were a logical ~ ~ ~ place, men would ride sidesaddle ~ ~ ~ -Rita Mae Brown ~ ~ borgen@eskimo.com ~ ~ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 20:13:35 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bill Sansbury Subject: Re: BDG - Same-sex themes In-Reply-To: <23bec86.34d6528f@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I the TV show Hercules, he HAD a wife and kids, but I guess they were getting in the way of his heroic stunts because they killed all of the family off. Bill At 06:11 PM 2/2/1998 EST, you wrote: >In a message dated 98-02-02 09:37:14 EST, you write: > ><< > I have rarely seen this concept of "pair-bonding" questioned in fiction, > (or anywhere else for that matter), particularly by men writers. >> > >It seems to me that all episodic TV posits that a man can't be one of the >"heroes" unless he is free to bop from partner to partner. No stability--no >families--no commitment to a permanent relationship or to raising children. I >believe that a strong and loving family life is the best thing we can give our >descendants. Why does that concept get such a bad rap these days? Nature gives >males a strong sex drive so they'll reproduce, but I'd like to think that >humans can think beyond their own libidos and consider the reality they're >bringing children into. > >Barbara > > "The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words." PKD grok@idt.net http://idt.net/~grok/ bsans@wam.umd.edu http://www.wam.umd.edu/~bsans ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 20:18:45 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: silk Subject: Re: BDG - Same-sex themes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > >Inappropriate analogy. Consumption of diet coke and liver is not the key > >identifier of a group identity. That felt like an insensitive and > >thoughtless comparison to me. > > You suggest that your sexual orientation is a "key identifier" of your > "group identity". > > If this inference is correct, it makes me wonder about you in much the same > way I'd wonder about the jock whose self-esteem can be made or broken by > whether he "scored" Saturday night. > Ah, but the question is who is doing the labelling. I could wander around calling myself straight if I wanted to, but that wouldn't stop the gay bashers from labelling me (I *look* like everyone's stereotype of a dyke; I looked like a dyke when I *was* in a relationship with a man). So what point would there be in not taking my sexual orientation as a "key identifier" in my "group identity"? After all, the lesbian/gay movement arose the same way the feminist movement did: as a response to bigotry and oppression. Didn't make much difference if a woman didn't identify with her "group identity", back in the 60s, she still couldn't get a bank loan without Daddy-o's signature. > Do you also mean that it's implicitly impossible for a man to be a feminist? > Well, I've no idea what the original poster meant, but I certainly don't believe that. Most of my male friends are unabashed, unashamed feminists; so are quite a few of my students. Wendy ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 20:25:55 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: silk Subject: *FSFFU*] Gendered language - Was Men and sexual urges MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Jim made the very important point that the definition of "control" is central to this debate. Here's a query: as far as I can tell from reading the various postings, the male posters seem to interpret the complaint that many men do not control their sexual urges as a claim that men are actually completely out of control all of the time. In other words, there appears to be no loss of control unless it's a total full-time technicolour kind of deal. Any control at all is control. The female posters, otoh, appear to be assuming that any control is complete control. That it, that in order to be in control of one's sexual urges, one has to be in control of them 100% of the time. Any loss of control at all is the same as being out of control. Is this totally off base? If there's any truth to the above, then do we even have any basis of communication? Wendy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 16:02:02 +1300 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jenny Rankine Subject: BDG - Same sex themes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This thread has brought up some fascinating comparisons - first lesbian/gay sexuality is compared to a taste for liver (apology appreciated Barbara, as well as your further explanation about the reason for the original question). Then for disagreeing with Barbara's analogy I'm compared to a jock whose self-esteem depends on whether he scores on Saturday night. Wooo! I wasn't suggesting that my sexual orientation is a key identifier of me as a lesbian (I don't use the term so term because I don't agree I have one - I have an identity). My experience is that revulsion against two women making love is strongly associated with heterosexism and broader anti-lesbian prejudice, so I have a strong reaction to it. It feels personal. It does not equate to mere culinary preferences. (That's the last time I'm going to explain it because it sounds like I'm beating Barbara on the head, and I'm not.) Certainly the dominant perspective is that lesbianism is only about sex. For me it isn't. Here's another one for you, Barbara - I'm one of the lesbians who *chose* to identify this way and live this life. (Best decision I ever made.) I don't argue that it's natural, since what's *natural* is determined by the power structures of the times. I argue that a lesbian identity has a political implication, that lesbianism can be a choice for any woman, and if it wasn't for compulsory heterosexuality a lot more women would be loving other women. As you can appreciate, whether I'm in a relationship or not, this perspective is how I see the world 24 hours a day. It's part of my decisions about friendships, political activity, where I work, images I use in print making, etc etc. To relate this - at long last - to SF&F, I'd like to suggest that lesbian-feminist political analyses and living patterns have contributed in positive ways to SF&F. I can only think of a few self-identified lesbian writers - Gael Baudino (fantasy), Gwynneth Jones, Joanna Russ and Elizabeth A Lynn (enlighten me, please), but I think some lesbian-feminist thinking has percolated into general feminist thought. The contribution includes - * The living situations of characters in relationships and families are more likely to vary from the heterosexual/monogamous/nuclear family and include group or multiple parenting, partners living apart, families chosen as well as those biologically related, and cultures where the genders are largely separated. * All-women societies are more likely to be viewed positively, and as useful thought experiments. * Explorations of sexuality in environments where compulsory heterosexuality doesn't exist or where the power/gender/sexuality nexus is structured differently. (I seem to remember Marion Zimmer Bradley writing once that she didn't see the point in writing about all-women human societies since A They would never happen and B They'd be boring. I'm probably misquoting her, but that's my memory. If SF&F writers only wrote about societies that could happen, the genre would hardly exist, and since the variation among women is as great as that between women and men, I don't see how it could be boring or lacking.) Of course, goes without saying that lots of heterosexual feminist writers have explored these topics too. Enuf, already! Jenny R ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 23:16:12 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: jenn mottram Subject: Re: heros and daredevils In-Reply-To: <23bec86.34d6528f@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 06:11 PM 2/2/98 , you wrote: >From: "Barbara R. Hume" >Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG - Same-sex themes >It seems to me that all episodic TV posits that a man can't be one of the >"heroes" unless he is free to bop from partner to partner. No stability--no >families--no commitment to a permanent relationship or to raising children. I >believe that a strong and loving family life is the best thing we can give our >descendants. Why does that concept get such a bad rap these days? Nature gives >males a strong sex drive so they'll reproduce, but I'd like to think that >humans can think beyond their own libidos and consider the reality they're >bringing children into. > >Barbara Speaking logistically, if the male hero has a wife and kids, then goes out to fight the badguys all the time, putting his life at risk a million different ways, then he's rather thoughtless to those who he has some responsibility for (the kids). This is rather different than a real life police officer, who takes risks as necessary, but not those "wild and crazy" things that are such a staple of our TV diet. jenn {jenn mottram} {generally poetry} {athena(at)geocities.com} {http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2464} ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 00:21:38 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Anny Middon Subject: The Vampire Population Problem Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I caught most of an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer a while back. It was a pleasant experience to see a female hero of what may be termed an Action Horror show. Buffy's certainly not afraid to kick some vampire butt. The show was endearingly quirky, and I intend to watch it again someday. At any rate, in the ep I saw a high school acquaintance of Buffy's falls in with the wrong crowd, which is to say vampires. They suck her blood and sure enough (unbeknownst to Buffy) she becomes a vampire herself. She was about to ax Buffy when the phone rang and by the time I got back the closing credits were rolling so I didn't find out whether Buffy put a stake through her heart. This got me thinking about vampires in general and their propagation in particular. Let me say at once that I'm not very well-versed in vampire biology. Little of what I've read (Salem's Lot {don't really remember it], about a quarter of Interview with the Vampire [hated it]) and seen (a few weeks of Dark Shadows in my teenie years and a terrific PBS movie of Dracula with Louis Jourdan as the Count) has stuck with me. I know pretty much only what most people know about vampires, including: 1. Vampires have a craving for human blood. Animal blood won't do it; vampire blood won't do it. And despite the jokes about vampires working at blood banks, it needs to be fresh, straight from the neck. 2. Vampire bites will turn you into a vampire. Maybe not that first bite, but it doesn't take many. 3. Vampires are immortal, in that they don't age and won't die of natural causes. The only sure way to kill one is by putting a stake through its heart. Sunlight is harmful to them, but must not be fatal since all the vampire hunters rely on the stake bit, rather than just tying them up and waiting till dawn. And let's face it, a stake through the heart is a lot easier to avoid than influenza or plague. I imagine most vampires have a complete wardrobe of stylish breastplates. (I would, wouldn't you?) So we have a group that propagates easily and is hard to kill. This kind of geometric expansion ought to mean a veritable Vampire Population Explosion. Suppose that the net increase in vampire numbers is only 5% a year. This would indicate a remarkable restraint on the part of vampires in terms of blood-sucking, or an admirable success rate by vampire killers, or both. (It does seem this might be correlated ^× the more profligate the vampires, the more assiduous their neighbors would be in tracking them through the night- dark forest, sharpened stakes in hand.) Let's also suppose that in the year 1600 there were only 100 vampires in existence. At an annual growth of 5% there'd be in excess of 25 billion (American definition) vampires today. This of course is an impossible number, but it does suggest that by now we'd all or nearly all be vampires. So where are all the vampires? I know it's possible that I've missed some vital (so to speak) point on vampires, which will earn me the kind of email that starts, "Anny, you ignorant twit!" But I think it's more likely that what we've got here is one of those instances that ask for suspension of disbelief, as in science fiction where the main character bops halfway across the galaxy in an afternoon and then has a first contact experience with a race that happens to speak perfect Terran. But often in science fiction the writer gives an offhand explanation. (Wormholes. Universal Translators.) Do horror writers give similar explanations? How come there are so few vampires today? Where are all the vampires? A related question, and one that is more On Topic: There seems to be a general idea that the act of a vampire biting a human is a sexual act. No doubt a case could be made that this is because this is how vampires reproduce, but the act regardless of consequences seems to be seen as sexual. In popular culture representations, male vampires nearly always bite the necks of female humans. Presumably female vampires bite the necks of males. But that would make the male/female ratio of vampires about 50/50. Yet vampires depicted in books and movies seem to be predominately male. Why should this be so? I'm tempted to explain it by saying that vampires are sexual predators, but gee -- isn't the woman as sexual predator kind of a common theme in lit? Anny (Who thinks the worst part of being a vampire would be giving up spaghetti aglio olio) AnnyMiddon@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 00:10:24 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Michael Marc Levy Subject: Pseudonyms and gender neutral names--was Female POV; was Book themes In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19980202164947.0075f24c@tezcat.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 2 Feb 1998, Neil Rest wrote: > jenn mottram wrote: > > > > > And, of course, all the > >women who had masculine pseudonyms in order to be considered respectable, > >even in the SF field. > > Not Kate Maclean, not Judith Merrill, not C.L. Moore, and if my brain > didn't sieze up on proper nouns, I'd name the woman whose last credit was > for star Wars II ("The Big Sleep" with Fasulkner). > > They've been lonesome, but never totally absent. > There were always a few women who used their own names, although even staunch feminists like Judith Merrill and Katherine MacLean used male pseudonyms on occasion. C.L. Moore's use of her initials was definitely an attempt to disguise her sex. Leigh Brackett (the writer you're trying to think of) also used her name as a kind of gender-neutral disguise, as, early in her career, did Marion Zimmer Bradley. There were other writers, now mostly forgotten, who used gender neutral names or straight pseudonyms. Lesley Stone was one of the former and Francis Stevens one of the latter. Stevens was a fairly big name in her day too. And let us not forget Andre Norton (who also published as Eric North, I believe). More recently there have been writers like James Tiptree, Lee Hoffman, and Lee Killough. Mike Levy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 01:11:27 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jim Hollomon Subject: Re: *FSFFU*] Gendered language - Was Men and sexual urges Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-02-02 22:13:51 EST, jrankine@HRC.GOVT.NZ (Jenny Rankine) writes: > Here's another one for you, Barbara - I'm one of the lesbians who *chose* > to identify this way and live this life. (Best decision I ever made.) I > don't argue that it's natural, since what's *natural* is determined by the > power structures of the times. I argue that a lesbian identity has a > political implication, that lesbianism can be a choice for any woman, and > if it wasn't for compulsory heterosexuality a lot more women would be > loving other women. Here's something OT for the group to mull. Suppose we posit a future where there is no compulsory heterosexuality. Will humans "naturally" continue to pair in cross-gender bondings? We assume this is natural. All mammals do so, with a small percentage of dissenters among the primates. But what if other life forms are simply obeying instincts? What if humans, being sentient beings, find same-sex relationships inherently more comfortable? _Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus_ did raise some interesting points. Such differences don't bother woodchucks, but it may be that they grate on the nerves of a sentient life form. Perhaps the Biblical invectives against homosexuality were there to prevent us from seeking a comfort zone, which, however pleasant, would assure the destruction of the human race. Before anyone tears my head off or disbars me from FSFFU, I'm not saying any of this is so, just tossing a polemic into the mill to stimulate discussion. J Jim In a message dated 98-02-02 20:33:58 EST, silk@PIPCOM.COM (silk) writes: > Jim made the very important point that the definition of "control" is > central to this debate. > > Here's a query: as far as I can tell from reading the various postings, > the male posters seem to interpret the complaint that many men do not > control their sexual urges as a claim that men are actually completely out > of control all of the time. In other words, there appears to be no loss of > control unless it's a total full-time technicolour kind of deal. Any > control at all is control. > > The female posters, otoh, appear to be assuming that any control is > complete control. That it, that in order to be in control of one's sexual > urges, one has to be in control of them 100% of the time. Any loss of > control at all is the same as being out of control. > Well, control is, after all, the exercise of restraint. The definition doesn't require total restraint. Just enough to be called restraint. I sometimes get the feeling that the issue isn't one of exercising reasonable restraint as much as finding the opposite sex guilty of having feelings that are "different." That seems about as reasonable as finding them guilty of having genitalia that are "different." At any rate, thanks for some excellent, thought provoking questions. My wife and I often dance around this issue. She was reared in the home of an adult alcoholic. She witnessed her father brutalize and rape her mother. She saw him smash his wife against a hallway mirror and spatter the room with blood. Needless to say, this shaped her perceptions. To her, outside an occasional caress in a tightly locked bedroom, any display of sexuality is abhorrent. Despite the best attempts of puritanical parents, I grew up to be quite the libertine. In my wife's thinking, she is chaste and commendable, and I am a damned roue because I take note of sexy images, whether they are males or females. To me, she is a hypocrite. She is just as tempted to sin by things that sway her as I am by things that sway me. It's like a chocolate hater chiding a chocoholic for being attracted to death-by-chocolate fudge, then diving into a plate of pork rinds the chocolate lover finds disgusting. > Is this totally off base? If there's any truth to the above, then do we > even have any basis of communication? > I don't find it off base at all. The core discussion is, "How do we use language to discuss things in a comprehensible way?" If we insist on enforcing definitions more stringent than the dictionary provides, it's probably useless to use language to communicate. I think that if we define our terms, it just may be possible to communicate. (And the group writes, in unison... Pollyanna!!! :) When language fails, bullets become the medium. Let's talk. Jim ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 01:11:22 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jim Hollomon Subject: Re: BDG - Same sex themes Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-02-02 22:13:51 EST, jrankine@HRC.GOVT.NZ (Jenny Rankine) writes: > Here's another one for you, Barbara - I'm one of the lesbians who *chose* > to identify this way and live this life. (Best decision I ever made.) I > don't argue that it's natural, since what's *natural* is determined by the > power structures of the times. I argue that a lesbian identity has a > political implication, that lesbianism can be a choice for any woman, and > if it wasn't for compulsory heterosexuality a lot more women would be > loving other women. Here's something OT for the group to mull. Suppose we posit a future where there is no compulsory heterosexuality. Will humans "naturally" continue to pair in cross-gender bondings? We assume this is natural. All mammals do so, with a small percentage of dissenters among the primates. But what if other life forms are simply obeying instincts? What if humans, being sentient beings, find same-sex relationships inherently more comfortable? _Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus_ did raise some interesting points. Such differences don't bother woodchucks, but it may be that they grate on the nerves of a sentient life form. Perhaps the Biblical invectives against homosexuality were there to prevent us from seeking a comfort zone, which, however pleasant, would assure the destruction of the human race. Before anyone tears my head off or disbars me from FSFFU, I'm not saying any of this is so, just tossing a polemic into the mill to stimulate discussion. J Jim ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 01:15:20 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Geoffrey D. Sperl" Subject: Re: The Vampire Population Problem MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Anny Middon wrote: > 1. Vampires have a craving for human blood. Animal blood won't do it; > vampire blood won't do it. And despite the jokes about vampires working at > blood banks, it needs to be fresh, straight from the neck. Rice's vampires can subsist on animal blood - Louis and Lestat both, in various points of their unlives, feed off of rodents, livestock, worms...but the craving for human blood is still a strong one, yes. > 2. Vampire bites will turn you into a vampire. Maybe not that first bite, > but it doesn't take many. Actually, that's death, not biting. The vampire can continue to feed on its victim for years, maybe even decades - as long as the victim never dies because of the vampire, the victim never becomes a vampire. If we take DRACULA, for instance - Lucy becomes a vampire because she dies at Dracula's fangs...if, however, she had walked out into the street one day, during the period of Dracula's visitations, and was killed by a runaway carriage then she would have died in peace. > 3. Vampires are immortal, in that they don't age and won't die of natural > causes. The only sure way to kill one is by putting a stake through its > heart. And beheading. A stake can be pulled. A head, however, cannot be reattached. > Let's also suppose that in the year 1600 there were only 100 vampires > inexistence. At an annual growth of 5% there'd be in excess of 25 > billion(American definition) vampires today. This of course is an impossible > number,but it does suggest that by now we'd all or nearly all be vampires. > So where are all the vampires? Richard Matheson asked that same question. Go find a copy of I AM LEGEND if you're curious what his take was... > Do horror writers give similar explanations? How come there are so few > vampires today? Where are all the vampires? They're in the goth clubs swaying to the melodic sounds of Nick Cave... Presumably, the "old world" vampires were properly hunted down and killed by various hunters, never allowing them to truly spread. Dracula was old world, as was the vampire in King's 'SALEM'S LOT - if you die at their hands, you're damned, that's that. Rice had a different theory, as did Mark Rein^ÕHagen (borrowed it from Rice, probably), who created the roleplaying game VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE: The vampires control who they create. In both cases, the vampire must share his/her blood with the victim at the vital point where the victim is almost dead. The idea of the sharing of the blood borrows itself from Dracula cutting the vein in his chest and letting Mina suck from it, but it more heavily borrows from Christ and the Last Supper (just as many things in the vampire myth mirror the Christian myth - rising three days after death, sharing body and blood, entering everlasting life, etc.) - Rice and Rein^ÕHagen have a sort of vampiric communion on their hands, as the only way the victim is to be "saved" is to be reborn by his savior (the vampire). However, in the Rice/Rein^ÕHagen schema, vampires control the vampiric population so as to not call attention to themselves. They still have to feed off human blood, but that human doesn't turn into a vampire unless the vampire wants the human to do so. - Geoffrey > Why > should this be so? I'm tempted to explain it by saying that vampires are > sexual predators, but gee -- isn't the woman as sexual predator kind of a > common theme in lit? Well, the neck thing is because it is an erogenous zone (first hand experience) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 08:16:31 GMT Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Vonda N. McIntyre" Subject: Re: Out of print book source In-Reply-To: <199802021700.MAA16852@mime2.prodigy.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Basement Full of Books, alas, is not on this search engine. (I did email them about the possibility, but they didn't reply. I was impressed with the engine, so not hearing back was quite a disappointment.) http://www.sff.net/bfob is a cooperative project that lists books available by mail directly from their authors. Most are OP books rescued from the publisher before they went into the great remainder maw in the sky. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I think that checking out BFoB first is likely to find you books at _readers'_ prices rather than _collectors_ prices (just for instance: I sell SUPERLUMINAL for $16 postpaid, and am happy to discuss price reductions under circumstances determined by whim; the usual price that I've seen for the book elsewhere is $30, plus s&h.); the writer makes the profit; and you can get the book signed. Best, Vonda On Mon, 2 Feb 1998 12:00:03 -0500, DAVID CHRISTENSON wrote: >... If >you can't find it with this search engine, you're probably not going to >find it on the Net today. http://www.sff.net/people/Vonda ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 03:24:58 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Barbara Benesch Subject: Re: The Vampire Population Problem Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-02-03 00:30:47 EST, you write: > I caught most of an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer a while back. It was > a pleasant experience to see a female hero of what may be termed an Action > Horror show. Buffy's certainly not afraid to kick some vampire butt. The > show was endearingly quirky, and I intend to watch it again someday. You may enjoy the movie, which was a lot of fun as well (I think). > This got me thinking about vampires in general and their propagation in > particular. Let me say at once that I'm not very well-versed in vampire > biology. An interesting anthology about vampires that you (and other people on the list) might enjoy reading is called "Tomorrow Sucks" (there's an anthology in the same series about werewolves called "Tomorrow Bites"). It has many very interesting takes on vampirism, and the focus isn't on the romanticized gothic view of vampires, but rather various science fiction views. I'm afraid I don't remember the editor, and can't muster up the courage to try digging for my copy. > I know pretty much only > what most people know about vampires, including: > > 1. Vampires have a craving for human blood. Animal blood won't do it; > vampire blood won't do it. And despite the jokes about vampires working at > blood banks, it needs to be fresh, straight from the neck. > > 2. Vampire bites will turn you into a vampire. Maybe not that first bite, > but it doesn't take many. > > 3. Vampires are immortal, in that they don't age and won't die of natural > causes. The only sure way to kill one is by putting a stake through its > heart. Sunlight is harmful to them, but must not be fatal since all the > vampire hunters rely on the stake bit, rather than just tying them up and > waiting till dawn. And let's face it, a stake through the heart is a lot > easier to avoid than influenza or plague. I imagine most vampires have a > complete wardrobe of stylish breastplates. (I would, wouldn't you?) Part of the reason for not trusting the tie-them-down-and-wait-for-dawn solution is because vampires are also (almost always) supernaturally strong, and thus finding something sufficient for keeping them in place to wait for the sun is tough. Also, sometimes vampires are portrayed as being able to transform into various forms, including bats, wolves, and mist, and I don't know about you, but tying mist is beyond my abilities! ;) > So we have a group that propagates easily and is hard to kill. This kind of > geometric expansion ought to mean a veritable Vampire Population Explosion. This notion is the basis for one of the stories in the "Tomorrow Sucks" anthology. > So where are all the vampires? I've seen several cases where vampires are all part of a strange social network which includes some very *active* infighting. So a lot of times the vampires are killing each other off over various insults, disagreements, and power struggles. Also, in some cases (including the Vampire: The Masquerade roleplaying game Geoffrey mentioned), a vampire can gain another vampire's power (the aforementioned strength, shape-shifting ability, and also extreme speed) by drinking that vampire's blood (and killing them in the process). > Do horror writers give similar explanations? How come there are so few > vampires today? Where are all the vampires? Another reason for there being so few vampires today - according to writers - is because just as the vampires have societies, there are societies of people who have made it their mission to kill off the vampires on earth. John Steakley wrote a novel called "Vampire$" which focused on a team of people who are commissioned by a mysterious backer (the book reveals who the backer is, but I don't want to ruin it for anyone who may decide to read the book) to track down and kill vampires. I won't say it has the best gender-roles out there (in fact, _don't_ read it for feminist messages, really), but it's well written and very very interesting. > A related question, and one that is more On Topic: There seems to be a > general idea that the act of a vampire biting a human is a sexual act. No > doubt a case could be made that this is because this is how vampires > reproduce, but the act regardless of consequences seems to be seen as sexual. > But that would make the male/female ratio of vampires about 50/50. Yet > vampires depicted in books and movies seem to be predominately male. Why > should this be so? I'm tempted to explain it by saying that vampires are > sexual predators, but gee -- isn't the woman as sexual predator kind of a > common theme in lit? I'm once again thinking out loud here, but I think part of the reason for vampires in books and movies being predominantly male is because the standard vampire plot is the vampire begins wooing a woman who already has a boyfriend (but usually not a husband, oddly enough). The boyfriend and the vampire begin to compete for the woman, and the boyfriend figures out that there's "something not right" with the vampire (but the woman remains oblivious, of course), and then eventually the boyfriend defeats the vampire and the woman learns her lesson about straying. Also, in movies especially, the vampire tends to be portrayed as something of a "sissy", while the boyfriend is a "man's man". (Which seems fairly homophobic to me.) The vampire takes the woman to the opera, the ballet, and all the other places the boyfriend is too "manly" to go to, and so in defeating the vampire, the man is defeating the woman's attempts to change him, and he's defeating that which is deemed less than masculine. > Anny > (Who thinks the worst part of being a vampire would be giving up spaghetti > aglio olio) > AnnyMiddon@aol.com Just a few thoughts, Barbara Benesch (Who agrees that giving up garlic isn't worth eternal life ;) BJBenesch@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 17:28:45 +1100 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Julieanne Subject: Re: Soaps In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 19:42 1/02/98 -0800, you wrote: >But soaps are really a set of virtual neighbors. That's their big appeal, >especially in a culture where - 50s sitcoms to the contrary - people who >work at home (as housewives or whatever) - have almost no interaction with >others unless they join a club or group. The soaps are a substitute. > >I*t's also my guess that organized team sports fulfill a bit of the >function of "virtual war", and following celebrities harks back to the >ancient necessity of keeping a very sharp eye on the doings of those in >power. > > Pat - This is also the case for many disabled people, who are even more isolated than the general mainstream community. In recent years, the explosion of IRC as a medium of communication...has become an "interactive", or *virtual* soap-opera on general chat-channels:)). I guess it also supports the idea, that the human species is a gregarious one, and feels a strong need to have regular contact with others. Julieanne ppp98@cs.net.au __________________________________________________________________ | | | FATAL ERROR! LOGOFF! | | | | Reality.sys Corrupt! Reboot UNIVERS? | | | |________________________________________________________________| ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 04:46:30 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Kathleen M. Friello" Subject: Re: The Vampire Population Problem Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-02-03 00:30:47 EST, you write: << I know pretty much only what most people know about vampires Vampires have been sliced & diced so many ways in fiction by now that all of their early characteristics have been altered at one time or another, including the craving for blood (energy/life suckers are rampant and frequently classed with vampires---like the ghosts in Cherryh's Rusalka series). It's almost meaningless to list hard and fast "rules" for vampires in print or non-print fiction--- it's easier to trace different types or traits. Greg Cox published a series of "excerpts" (I don't know if the final work has ever been released) from The Transylvanian Library: A Consumer's Guide to Vampire Fiction in the New York Review of Science Fiction a while back (roughly, issues 23 t