Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF LOG9901B" ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1999 01:41:51 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Anne Vespry Subject: The Avengers [Was Re: Vampires and slayers] In-Reply-To: <199901042124.PAA86810@piglet.cc.uic.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 4 Jan 1999, Santanico wrote: > Not true! Emma Peel in "The Avengers" was the first woman to do that. She > worked with Steed, a man, but more often than not it was her who rescued > both him and herself from the weekly threat. I'd argue that Modesty Blaise was the first... unfortunately in books and comic strips only ... the one MB film was awful. Anne Anne Vespry ******* http://www.vex.net/~maverick After Stonewall Bookshop ***** never forget avespry(at) *** only dead fish ollisdotuottawadotca * swim WITH the stream ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1999 02:51:09 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Santanico Subject: Re: The Avengers [Was Re: Vampires and slayers] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 01:41 AM 8/01/99 -0500, you wrote: >I'd argue that Modesty Blaise was the first... unfortunately in books and >comic strips only ... the one MB film was awful. Yeah, I'm a fan of Modesty Blaise too, but I was talking exclusively about TV heroines, of which, unless there's an earlier character I don't know about, Emma Peel was definitely the first. You know, I hear they're making a new MB film at the moment, either that or they're still in the pre-production stage. I seem to recall hearing that they were reviewing actresses for the role. I wouldn't mind seeing Catherine Zeta Jones (Mask of Zorro) have a crack at the role - she looks right for the part, and has the whole "James Bond"-esque, self-confident female-spy characterisation persona down pat. But then, I thought Jones would've been a good choice for Emma Peel too (certainly she couldn't have done worse than Uma). Sant. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1999 06:48:21 -0500 Reply-To: feldsipe@erols.com Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: suzanne feldman Organization: or lack thereof Subject: Ehrenreich OT MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit suzanne feldman wrote: > > This is a request for a totally OT conversation to be conducted in > private email: Is anyone interested in discussing Barbara Ehrenreich's > book, BLOOD RITES? A little more description about the book for those who might be interested but aren't sure: The subtitle is---The Origins and History of the Passions of War. Ehrenreich argues (this point among others) that violent conflicts are essentially a 'replaying' of humanity's prehistoric role-change from prey to the ultimate predator. Her interpretation of religion from this angle is absolutely fascinating. The book is easy to read (for us non-academic types), and very absorbing. And of course it's a good, Feminist read. Two or three people have shown an interest so far---let me know if there's anyone else out there! Suze/Severna ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1999 05:59:34 PST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Kate Willshaw Subject: Subscrbing to the digest version Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Hi All I was wondering - how does one subscribe to the digest version of the FSFFU as my e-mail provider keeps teloing me Im going over the limits of my account and I could do with an easy read/east delete from of the postings. I love reading the stuff on this list, but often haven't got time to. The digest would make things a lot easier. Kate ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1999 17:13:48 +0300 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Maijan H. Al-Ruwaili" Organization: KSU Subject: Re: Women Writing Male Protagonists MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit susan mcdermott wrote: Madrone wrote: > So is [partial meaning] because there some necessary disjunction between > language and > that which it describes? Language is always unable to "present" that which it speaks about. The moment there is language, and this an original moment, the reference is absent. > If so, we can never approach the thing because > that which we use to explain or express it can never be identical to it. > Hence communication can never be full or complete? That sounds fair enough > And the political relationships in which we exist add complications to > this already > partial knowledge... So gender does as well. Fair enough. > So back to the main issue - can women write male protagonists? What is "male" and "female"? These two terms are already value laden before we can name the protagonist and the antagonist. Who defines the "male" and the "female"? If we reach agreement on who does that then perhaps the answer will be irrelevant. To provide my own answer, I would say only women can write "male" protagonists. My Gender is not left for me to claim; it is imposed by the other and I await the other to assign me that "generic identity." Gender, as you know only too well, is a social construct, with immense political investment. It is certainly not biological sex; but the biological, in this case, is utilized for incredible ends, some of which are obvious and some are hidden. > Well, I > suppose men can't write them either - not fully, not completely. Women > would have I suspect greater difficulty writing men since being a man is > also a lived experience - one that I can't have no matter what. This is the claim of the "gynocritics." It would seem plausible that no man can ever experience what a woman exepriences in child bearing and birth. There are things that women cannot experience but men take for granted. However, the "lived experience" is cultural rather than natural. Whether or not men are unable to experience child bearing has nothing to do with writing "male protagonists"; this is part of the cultural distinction to assign each gender a "proper place." Writing is a genre (gender); it has its conventions and rules. And no one, man or women, will have his/her own experience fully present to him/her alone. Experience is already mediated by various cultural/ social/ political etc... environment. Only those who believe that language is able to express or present in full own's own experience will tend to make such a claim (ie, men write men art and women write women stuff). > But I suspect that some women write male protagonists better than some > men. If they are good writers, why not? > Even a man may not be able to comunicate his own experience to himself > or others... Oh well. This could get very complex. Exactly! > We create a whole new category of meaning when women write male > protagonists... but since men have been writing women for so long, and > have in part defined what it means to be a woman for us, we are only > doing the same thing. This is one of the ruses that has to be addressed; and there is a lot of work done on this particular issue. Still, that fact that men have already "defines what it means to be a women" makes it possible for women to define what it means to be a man. It also proves that it is not experience based or natural but cultural. As for doing the same, I am not quite sure: nothing is the SAME. There is always a difference. > I doubt if our creations will have the same impact. Perhaps it does not and it should not. If it has the same impact, women have not done much. It must be different.************* <> Madrone Language is the only medium. Writing is a better word for language. And if the deconstructive definition of language is accepted, then there is nothing but language (writing). On communication Derrida has "Signiture Event Context." ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1999 09:06:46 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joyce Jones Subject: Children/next generation and SF utopias Having started our reading for next month, I have to say The Female Man by Joanna Russ fits this perfectly. This overabundance of freedom, expectation of child-interest-lead learning and productive work has much in common with 'The Dispossessed, and the summer children in Snow Queen. The fact that children live and are taught in collectives also echoes The Dispossessed. Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1999 16:15:37 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Sophia Hegner Subject: Re: Fwd: BDG: _Brown Girl:_ replies Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >>From: Sophia Hegner;shegner@MAIL.SDSU.EDU >> >>Nalo Hopkinson wrote: >> >>How about the dialogue? Reactions to the creole? >> >>SH: After the first few sentences, as I figured it out, it flowed >>just fine. It was a very important part of the book for me, it >>created the rhythm and timing...the voice. I loved it. > >NH: So you'd be at the other end of the spectrum of reactions to >it. First of all, what a thrill and an honor to communicate directly with you, Nalo, about this book! I wanted to add that I've been trying to figure out why this book was so palatable to me. Based on how I've reacted to books with dialects and surreal elements in the past, I'd have expected to be thrown by _Brown Girl in the Ring_. But I wasn't. I got into it quickly, I was quickly hooked, and I read the book in about three hours (I'll probably reread it soon). I have never been to Toronto and have very little experience with Carribean dialects (although I did visit St. Lucia when I was 13). Suffice to say, I don't have the answer yet...except that it was written by a woman, and I have found that I understand what woman say (in writing) a lot more smoothly than what men say (I don't even try to make sense of VCR instructions written by men ). Theories, anyone? >>Nalo H. wrote: >>Did a lot of people find it made her seem way >>self-absorbed? >> >>SH: Not at all. Ti-Jeanne was excellent. Very real. > >NH: :) Which, for someone struggling with the issues she is, >might well *mean* a certain amount of self-absorbtion. Well, exactly. I could see it. She's a young woman who has wrenched herself out of a passionate but disappointing relationship with a man. She is a new mother without any sudden awakening of maternal instinct who is struggling because she wants to do what's right for her child. She is coming to terms with her grandmother, and their difficult and awkward love for each other... Plus she is confronted with the powers of the deities, the knowledge of the evil of her grandfather, the identity of her mother...of course she'd be a little self-absorbed! It fit beautifully. And I am positively grateful that you were so--unforgiving is the only word I can think of--in representing her infatuation with Tony. She knows he's no good for her, he says things that offend her, but it doesn't stop her from succumbing to the desire she feels for him. Very very real. Just wonderful. Sophia Hegner ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1999 20:03:38 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Rebecca Subject: Re: segregated slash stories In-Reply-To: <2230553@flc.flink.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Got an address for that website? Rebecca >Re: slash > >I asked the same question to the members of my slash list and the answer >was: yes, het men do write f/f. Lesbian and bi- women do also. People >on my list claim it is often different in tone from that the women >write. They also say that the m/m slash women write is often different >from the m/m slash gay men write. There is a web-site set up just to >give tips to women m/m slash writers... told from a gay man's point of >view. Since women don't have male bodies and thus haven't, well. Anyway. > >I've read m/m slash written by gay men and I don't see too much of a >difference - haven't read enough to see it frankly. So much difference >just between female authors let along male and female authors... LOL! >That old debate! > >We seem to like to see and read the same things from what I can tell. > >Susan > > > >______________________________________________________ >Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1999 20:20:59 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Rebecca Subject: Re: segregated slash stories In-Reply-To: <2230618@flc.flink.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" And if you REALLY want to be confused, you might try the Roughriders e-zine. http://www.netgsi.com/~listwrangler/roughriders.html I can't remember how it started, but I exchanged several enlightening e-mails with a person named Gary Bowen, who is transgendered female to male (or f2m) and gay. I was not too sure what that meant, so I asked him: he was female; he is now male and sexually oriented toward other men. He writes both gay and lesbian fiction. I'm sorry, this makes my head fuzzy if I think about it too long. Not that it wasn't a good conversation, because I discovered that I had a minor character who was transgendered m2f and lesbian. And if you think it's tough doing justice to a straight, garden-variety male. . . I just wasn't "getting it" at all. Rebecca At 02:55 PM 1/7/99 CST, you wrote: >Madrone asked: > >>Which leads to the question of how we write and read stories. Do >men write slash stories about lesbians as well as women write slash >stories about gays? >>Is there a difference? I'm honestly curious... >> >There's a book out, "Switch Hitters : Lesbians Write Gay Male >Erotica and Gay Men Write Lesbian Erotica," edited by Carol Queen and >Lawrence Schimel. Haven't read it, but this might answer your >question. > >Freddie > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1999 22:17:13 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Melissa Subject: Re: segregated slash stories In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19990108200338.01051328@flink.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Rebecca wrote: >Got an address for that website? This is either the one that was being referred to or a very similar site - http://www.gis.net/~minotaur/Tips/index.html Melissa ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1999 22:46:15 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Stacey Holbrook Subject: Re: Children/next generation and SF utopias In-Reply-To: <000701be39f6$89fdc400$2810460c@johnconn> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 6 Jan 1999, John & Jessica Connor wrote: > I am working on a master's thesis that involves examining > children/"the next generation" in SF utopian novels. Does anybody > have any good suggestions on novels that I should be reading? I am > already looking at Butler's Xenogenesis series and also notions of > education in Gilman's Herland and Le Guin's The Dispossessed, but I'm > stuck from there. I'm mostly interested in contemporary (after > 1970's, preferably after 1980's) fiction, though of course this is > flexible if the work is universal enough to carry into the Millennium. > Thanks everybody! I am about half way through Joan Slonczewski's *The Children Star*. Several of the secondary characters are orphaned children being raised by a religious order. Very interesting book but I'm not sure if it would be considered utopian. Hope this helps. > --Jessica > Stacey (ausar@netdoor.com) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1999 08:52:36 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Maryelizabeth Hart Subject: pot pourri again Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Nalo: Congrats on BGITR making the final ballot for the PK Dick award!! ~~~~~ Nalo and Steve: Nalo looks lovely and alive, especially in her cover shot with her hair flying in "Locus." It's the placement of Melissa's admittedly lovely tattoo I wince at -- right above and between her breasts. ***** Speaking of breasts, I prefer Xena's body type to Buffy's too, and not just for fightin' reasons. ##### "The Haunting" is definitely brrrr, as is "the Entity," totally chilling. I like WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE best of Jackson's novels, myself. ______ Just to bring this slightly back to the point of the list, one of the most prolific areas of slash fiction is Kirk/Spock. Some interesting stuff out there, written by men and women. Thanks to Susan for her info. IMO, SWITCH HITTERS suffered from the same problem as many theme anthologies -- a variety of levels of quality, because the stories met with the theme qualifications... Pax, Maryelizabeth Mysterious Galaxy 619-268-4747 3904 Convoy St, #107 800-811-4747 San Diego, CA 92111 619-268-4775 FAX http://www.mystgalaxy.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1999 13:13:46 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: jenn mottram Subject: Fwd: Call for Submissions: Sci-Fi & Related Genres Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thought this might be of interest to some here... apologies if it's a repeat. jenn >FemSpec is an interdisciplinary feminist journal dedicated to critical and >creative works in the realms of science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, and >other supernatural genres. We are recruiting manuscripts and are interested >in a variety of feminist approaches. We aim to be inclusive of ethnic and >cultural diversity. > >Possible upcoming articles and stories include: gender in Star Trek, >Brazilian science fiction, women's ghost stories of the 1800s, constructing >feminism through folklore, contemporary women's rewriting of folk and fairy >tales. > >For more information: Batya Weinbaum, Department of English, Cleveland State >University, East 24th and Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio, 44115. E-mail: >femspec@popmail.csuohio.edu > > >>From What She Wants: Cleveland's Feminist Newspaper athena@geocities.com http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2464 ------------------------------------- * You're just jealous because the voices only talk to me. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1999 11:31:31 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Allyson Shaw Subject: Re: Horror Movies--Croneberg MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sandy, thanks for the recommendation-- I will have to check out Alison's Birthday. So-- since we are on the subject of Sci Fi/Horror movies-- what do people think of Cronenberg? I think Dead Ringers is an amazing movie. And his "non-sci fi" M Butterfly was elegant and subversive. I think there are some compelling feminist elements to his films. --Allyson ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1999 11:39:31 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Allyson Shaw Subject: Re: Horror Movies MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Santanico wrote: > > Try "Carnival of Souls" and "The Haunting". > > "The Haunting" is based on the Shirley Jackson novel > I've heard a lot about these three movies-- I will have to see them. Thanks for the recommendation. --Allyson. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1999 12:52:08 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Allyson Shaw Subject: Re: Horror Movies MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thanks for the recommendations-- Actually I liked The Company of Wolves a lot-- I guess that is what I'm looking for in a movie, something scary but still benevolent, or at it's core there's something human rather than a kind of voyeristic, sadistic chaos. Hey, that's pretty vague! Actually Angela Carter explains this whole thing better in The Sadean Woman, where she argues for a "moral pornography." She's talking about The Marquis DeSade, but I think many horror films, the gory abjection-- share a lot with DeSade, but just aren't as smart. Hitchcock has never done much for me. Though I did like Rebecca very much. The old house was very spooky in that one. Thanks again. --Allyson > > > Company of Wolves. Creepy red riding hood-- Angela Carter oversaw the > adaptation with Neil Jordan. > > Dressed to Kill. I don't remember a lot of gore, but I could have just blanked > it out. > > I suppose you've already mined Hitchcock--- Psycho, The Birds, Rear Window, > Dial "M" for Murder, are all tops for creeps without gore. Rebecca is less of > a horror film, but still has its moments. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1999 20:29:39 PST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Nalo Hopkinson Subject: Re: pot pourri again Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain >From: Maryelizabeth Hart >Subject: [*FSFFU*] pot pourri again >To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU > >Nalo: > >Congrats on BGITR making the final ballot for the PK Dick award!! NH: Thank you. It's kind of neat to be able to say that I've been shortlisted to get a Dick. -nalo > >~~~~~ ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 02:01:45 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Santanico Subject: Re: Horror Movies--Croneberg Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 11:31 AM 9/01/99 -0800, you wrote: >Sandy, thanks for the recommendation-- I will have to check out Alison's >Birthday. > >So-- since we are on the subject of Sci Fi/Horror movies-- what do people >think of Cronenberg? I think Dead Ringers is an amazing movie. And his >"non-sci fi" M Butterfly was elegant and subversive. I think there are >some compelling feminist elements to his films. Cronenberg - love his work! Ironically enough, though, he's one of the directors who are often taken to task for the "misogyny" in his films (something I honestly can't see in his movies). He defends them by claiming that he's (and I probably have this quote slightly wrong) "exploring the territory of misogyny in my films, rather than endorsing it". Personally, though, my favorite of the lot of his films has to be "Naked Lunch". Yes, it's totally unfaithful to the book in pretty much every respect, but the truth is that it would be absolutely impossible to film Burroughs' original novel faithfully (you thought "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" would be unfilmable? Read _this_ book!). Cronenberg's "Naked Lunch" was _so_ bizarre and _so_ weird that it's earned a place on my "Favorite Films" list. Sant. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 02:06:20 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Santanico Subject: Re: Horror Movies Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 12:52 PM 9/01/99 -0800, you wrote: >Thanks for the recommendations-- Actually I liked The Company of Wolves a >lot-- I guess that is what I'm looking for in a movie, something scary >but still benevolent, or at it's core there's something human rather than >a kind of voyeristic, sadistic chaos. Hey, that's pretty vague! >Actually Angela Carter explains this whole thing better in The Sadean >Woman, where she argues for a "moral pornography." She's talking about >The Marquis DeSade, but I think many horror films, the gory abjection-- >share a lot with DeSade, but just aren't as smart. Just out of curiosity: Ever seen the movie "Marat/Sade"? If not, it's very much for you. A simply amazing movie, one of the most intelligent I've ever seen (a welcome change in these days, where film-makers tend to assume that their audience is comprised of morons), and marks the great Glenda Jackson's first role, as a mental patient in a play written by the Marquis de Sade (she plays Charlotte Corday, the woman who assassinated Jean Paul Marat). The downside is that the movie might be a tad hard to find; it was made in the 70's and isn't terribly well-known outside of film buff circles. Sant. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 09:56:24 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joyce Jones Subject: Dead Ringers I don't believe I've ever met anyone who liked Dead Ringers, but it's one of my favorite movies. I like it for the same reason I like Saturday Night Fever, the sexism is right on top. These men put it out as if it's completely normal and acceptable, which it certainly is, especially to many obstetrician-gynecologists. I loved the "instruments for working on mutant women". "There's nothing wrong with the instruments, it's the women's bodies that are all wrong." The glorious scenes of surgery in which everyone is swathed in red; the scene in which the first twin to start wigging out uses his pet instrument on a patient and responds to her complaints of pain as if she's an ungrateful wench for failing to appreciate his perfect tool. It just doesn't get better than that. I've thought of giving copies of the movie to most OB-GYN's I know, but would they get it? Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 09:58:20 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joyce Jones Subject: motherhood in science fiction I foolishly deleted my digest before I noted the name of the person who did her thesis on motherhood in science fiction. If you read this, would you be willing to send me a list of the books you used? I'm not writing a thesis, just interested for personal reasons. Thanks, Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 13:28:52 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pat Subject: OT? Search for Brown Girl MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I finally got it. I was hoping to get it at Full Circle Books, which has been an independent feminist bookstore for about 30 years. The former owner is burned out and wanted to sell it, perhaps had to sell it. People formed a Full Circle Foundation to buy the bookstore and solicited and got donations. (Though many feminists are as poor as field mice!) Meanwhile I kept not finding new books, and those that were on the shelves were displaced face-forward instead of end-on. :| Now I hear that the Foundation doesn't find itself in a position to operate the bookstore and is looking for a private buyer. It was the last independent bookstore in the University Area. All the others have closed down in the past 5 years. I ended up buying this book at Hastings. :[ Patricia (Pat) Mathews mathews@unm.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 14:56:27 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Erin Garrett Organization: None Subject: Re: male/female behavior MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: MULTIPART/MIXED; BOUNDARY="Boundary_(ID_LS5QtDmTghGu3NhPSIQurw)" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --Boundary_(ID_LS5QtDmTghGu3NhPSIQurw) Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT I've been lurking a while and thought I'd join in. > Much of women's violence may not be seen and recorded. I think this is where the truth lays. In fact, women's lives have historically been relegate to the private and secretive domestic sphere (a sphere largely hidden from men [but not from boys/children], and protected, therefor, from public comment). Therefor, the violences committed by women, traditionally, have been hidden as well. I believe that women's violence may be different from men's violence, but is committed just as often. Our methods are different as a result of our social conditions, but that makes us no less prone to be verbal and mental abusers, as well as physical abusers. > Clearly men more often commit acts of violence than women > and it is often more severe in impact personally and socially. I disagree. More attention may be given to male violence by the male-dominated media, but that doesn't say much about anything. We still turn away from violent acts committed by women because they seem so much more horrifying. This disgust at women's violence, in my opinion, suggests a conditioned inherited response which is in turn based upon an assumption of what makes for "natural" female behavior. For whatever reason, women's crimes seem all the more heinous to the imagination. Women are human beings first. Violent behavior seems a human instinct in the grab for control over one's human environment. As women have had to be particularly crafty in their bids for power (metaphoric and literal), it makes sense that their methods would be more subtle than that of "public" men. > I see in my niece's generation a whole lot more female violence than > when I was her age (16). My friends and I were shocked when another > female was ever violent. My niece and her friends were involved in a > gang attack on a boy they thought was a geek. And she is a member of the > popular crowd so this was not a fringe thing. A whole different > generation I guess. > > Or maybe a less secretive one? --Boundary_(ID_LS5QtDmTghGu3NhPSIQurw) Content-type: text/x-vcard; name=vcard.vcf; charset=us-ascii Content-description: Card for Erin Garrett Content-disposition: attachment; filename=vcard.vcf Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT begin: vcard fn: Erin Garrett n: Garrett;Erin email;internet: egarrett@du.edu note: "Without a metaphor I cannot live." MWS, March 17, 1823 x-mozilla-cpt: ;0 x-mozilla-html: TRUE version: 2.1 end: vcard --Boundary_(ID_LS5QtDmTghGu3NhPSIQurw)-- ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 14:46:06 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Allyson Shaw Subject: Re: Children/next generation and SF utopias MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This book is not exactly sci-fi, but it is kind of apocalyptic/experimental/speculative. I'm thinking of is Operation Wandering Soul by Richard Powers. It's about a group of sick children in a public hospital and a play they perform, but the narrative is spliced in with a retelling of the pied piper. You could say the children create a kind of utopian space of their own. But this isn't a genre novel per se, so this may not help. --Allyson ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 15:43:15 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Allyson Shaw Subject: Re: Horror Movies--Croneberg MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I also liked Naked Lunch a lot-- especially the Jane Bowles character. But would be an impossible book to film-- Cronenberg did a great job of capturing the spirit of Burroughs-- more like a freaky biography of him instead of a version of Naked Lunch. I think he does explore and indict mysogyny in his films. That doesn't make him a mysogynist. I think he's pointing fingers, but not in a didactic way. Videodrome has some cheezy special effects, but the image of the pornographer (James Wood's character) growing a vagina-like VCR on is belly is just too great! I even liked Crash, though I disliked the book, and felt he was too true to the book. I was hoping he'd subvert the sexism of the book somehow. I've been putting off seeing Rabid and the Brood because of the violence, though I really want to. Maybe some morning, with all the lights on, etc. Santanico wrote: > Cronenberg - love his work! Ironically enough, though, he's one of the > directors who are often taken to task for the "misogyny" in his films > (something I honestly can't see in his movies). He defends them by claiming > that he's (and I probably have this quote slightly wrong) "exploring the > territory of misogyny in my films, rather than endorsing it". > > Personally, though, my favorite of the lot of his films has to be "Naked > Lunch". Yes, it's totally unfaithful to the book in pretty much every > respect, but the truth is that it would be absolutely impossible to film > Burroughs' original novel faithfully (you thought "Fear and Loathing in Las > Vegas" would be unfilmable? Read _this_ book!). Cronenberg's "Naked Lunch" > was _so_ bizarre and _so_ weird that it's earned a place on my "Favorite > Films" list. > > Sant. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 15:46:34 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Allyson Shaw Subject: Re: Horror Movies MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Santanico wrote: > Just out of curiosity: > > Ever seen the movie "Marat/Sade"? If not, it's very much for you. A simply > amazing movie, one of the most intelligent I've ever seen (a welcome change > in these days, where film-makers tend to assume that their audience is > comprised of morons), and marks the great Glenda Jackson's first role, as a > mental patient in a play written by the Marquis de Sade (she plays Charlotte > Corday, the woman who assassinated Jean Paul Marat). The downside is that > the movie might be a tad hard to find; it was made in the 70's and isn't > terribly well-known outside of film buff circles. I have seen this. Glenda Jackson is pretty amazing in as the hysteric/comatose playing Charolette Corday. Have you read "The Skull of Charlotte Corday"? It's a GREAT short story by Leslie Dick, about phrenology and sexism-- but written without being didactic, etc. --Allyson > > > Sant. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 15:53:41 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Allyson Shaw Subject: Re: Dead Ringers MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Joyce Jones wrote: > I don't believe I've ever met anyone who liked Dead Ringers, but it's one of > my favorite movies. Hey, I'll second that. > These men put it out as if it's > completely normal and acceptable, which it certainly is, especially to many > obstetrician-gynecologists. I loved the "instruments for working on mutant > women". "There's nothing wrong with the instruments, it's the women's > bodies that are all wrong." The glorious scenes of surgery in which > everyone is swathed in red; the scene in which the first twin to start > wigging out uses his pet instrument on a patient and responds to her > complaints of pain as if she's an ungrateful wench for failing to appreciate > his perfect tool. It just doesn't get better than that. Yes, these are some of the things that make the film so haunting-- make it strike such a chord in me. But you feel that Chronenberg is not inviting us to indulge in their sadism-- that he is putting us in a position of witnessing (rather than observing) it. And women are not sacrificed-- the men are. I also like the sense that Chronenberg is obsessed by certain ideas-- dualities, the abject, pathology, technology and the body-- and it's interesting to see these obsessions manifested in different ways in his films --Allyson ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 23:45:10 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Santanico Subject: Re: Dead Ringers Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 09:56 AM 10/01/99 -0800, you wrote: >I don't believe I've ever met anyone who liked Dead Ringers, but it's one of >my favorite movies. I like it for the same reason I like Saturday Night >Fever, the sexism is right on top. These men put it out as if it's >completely normal and acceptable, which it certainly is, especially to many >obstetrician-gynecologists. I loved the "instruments for working on mutant >women". "There's nothing wrong with the instruments, it's the women's >bodies that are all wrong." The glorious scenes of surgery in which >everyone is swathed in red; the scene in which the first twin to start >wigging out uses his pet instrument on a patient and responds to her >complaints of pain as if she's an ungrateful wench for failing to appreciate >his perfect tool. It just doesn't get better than that. I've thought of >giving copies of the movie to most OB-GYN's I know, but would they get it? You know, there's a rather amusing story about "Dead Ringers" I once heard from someone on Usenet: Apparently, the poster (a woman) was watching "Dead Ringers" with a male friend, who immediately turned pale and started gasping "What the hell are they DOING to that woman?!" This was in the early scene, the poster said, in which a woman is undergoing a _normal_ gynecological examination! Sant. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 02:44:37 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "S.M. Stirling" Subject: Re: segregated slash stories Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 1/8/99 7:00:41 PM Mountain Standard Time, hathor@FLINK.COM writes: >They also say that the m/m slash women write is often different from the m/m slash gay men write.> -- probably. From my observation, the thing that women authors do worst at with male characters is, specifically, sex -- the subjective experience of it from a male p.o.v. When I'm doing that in reverse, I always run it by at least 3 or 4 women first. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 04:00:59 CST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Barbara Benesch-Granberg Subject: Horror Movie FYI Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Somebody mentioned a movie version of "The Haunting of Hill House", and then (actually, I think it was in the new issue of Vanity Fair - bought specifically for the Annie Leibovitz photos from Star Wars, they look wonderful, btw) I saw a small blurb that apparently Liam Neeson is working on a new movie entitled "The Haunting of Hill House" which I assume to be based on the book of the same title. IMDb confirms that it's due on this year(in the US anyway), and also stars Lili Taylor and Catherine Zeta-Jones (of Zorro semi-fame). I haven't really dug deeper than that, but I thought I'd throw that out as an FYI. Barbara Benesch-Granberg BJBenesch@hotmail.com ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 04:12:11 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Santanico Subject: Re: Horror Movie FYI Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 04:00 AM 11/01/99 CST, you wrote: >Somebody mentioned a movie version of "The Haunting of Hill House", and >then (actually, I think it was in the new issue of Vanity Fair - bought >specifically for the Annie Leibovitz photos from Star Wars, they look >wonderful, btw) I saw a small blurb that apparently Liam Neeson is >working on a new movie entitled "The Haunting of Hill House" which I >assume to be based on the book of the same title. > >IMDb confirms that it's due on this year(in the US anyway), and also >stars Lili Taylor and Catherine Zeta-Jones (of Zorro semi-fame). I >haven't really dug deeper than that, but I thought I'd throw that out as >an FYI. Yeah, I heard about that. Apparently it's going to be directed by Jan de Bont, of "Twister" infamy. Imagine a subtle, totally FX-deprived classic like "The Haunting" in the hands of the guy who did "Twister". Oy...Still, I do like Lili Taylor, so maybe there's slight hope. I just hope he doesn't turn "The Haunting" into "Poltergeist" (ie, huge FX). Sant. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 10:05:34 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Sophia Hegner Subject: Siskel & Ebert Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Did anyone else watch S & E's "Memo to the Academy" yesterday? Siskel nominated James Woods for best performance in John Carpenter's _Vampires_. I was positively screaming at the TV: "No way! No way!" Sigh. Oh well. One less TV show to watch on a Sunday. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 15:36:45 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Frances Green Subject: Re: segregated slash stories MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit A very simplistic rule of thumb for woman-written m/m gay fiction (slash and otherwise) versus man-written gay fiction is that women write emotions and are really not interested in equipment size! I'm always surprised (not offended) when reading slash if size is mentioned more than very fleetingly. Of course slash is supposed to be fantasy for women's pleasure, not realistic gaysex depiction; and man-written lesbian fiction generally feeds into male fantasy. And most female slashers I know read male-written gay fiction avidly. And of course there are many exceptions! I believe the original slash was Kirk/Spock, and the term just became adopted from there. On Mon, 11 Jan 1999 02:44:37 EST "S.M. Stirling" writes: >In a message dated 1/8/99 7:00:41 PM Mountain Standard Time, >hathor@FLINK.COM writes: > >>They also say that the m/m slash women write is often different from >the m/m slash gay men write.> > >-- probably. From my observation, the thing that women authors do >worst at with male characters is, specifically, sex -- the subjective >experience of it from a male p.o.v. > >When I'm doing that in reverse, I always run it by at least 3 or 4 >women first. > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 15:36:52 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "S.M. Stirling" Subject: Re: segregated slash stories Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 1/11/99 1:32:03 PM Mountain Standard Time, jjggww@JUNO.COM writes: >versus man-written gay fiction is that women write emotions and are really not interested in equipment size! I'm always surprised (not offended) when reading slash if size is mentioned more than very fleetingly. >> -- sounds credible. Men are rarely honest around women when sex is discussed, because it leads to involuntary celibacy. Gay men are often (not invariably, but often) an excellent guide to the way straight men would act, if they didn't have to compromise with womens' expectations. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 18:56:13 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Rebecca Subject: Re: Brown Girl In-Reply-To: <2220297@flc.flink.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" For everybody who enjoyed Brown Girl (that's all of us) check out the new children's book _The Invisible Princess_ by Faith Ringgold. "When Mama and Papa Love learn they are to have a child, they are astonished to hear that their baby will not be an ordinary child. Instead, she will be a princess, who will one day bring freedom to her parents and to all the slaves on the plantation where they live. But Mama and Papa Love fear that their master, mean plantation owner Captain Pepper, will sell her to another owner. They pray that by some miracle she will be kept from such a terrible fate. Indeed, at the moment of their daughter's birth, a miracle does occur: the Powers of Nature make her invisible and the Prince of Night whisks her from her mother's arms to safety." book blurb. The Powers of Nature--the Great Lady of Peace, the Giant of the Trees, the Dream Queen, the Sun Godess, the Sea Queen, the Prince of Night, and others--are powerfully drawn, and if the story is a tad simple, it still makes a warm bedtime story. Rebecca ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 23:18:20 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Marina Subject: Re: Siskel & Ebert In-Reply-To: <199901111758.JAA02436@mail.sdsu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 11 Jan 1999, Sophia Hegner wrote: > Did anyone else watch S & E's "Memo to the Academy" yesterday? Siskel > nominated James Woods for best performance in John Carpenter's _Vampires_. > I was positively screaming at the TV: "No way! No way!" Sigh. Oh well. One > less TV show to watch on a Sunday. > I'm with you on that. Yesterday, while flipping the channels I saw those two talking, remembered their reaction to the "Wifebeaters" -- and flipped right through. Those two guys never impressed me as particularly smart, and now I am not going to listen to them altogether. By the way, I think they would make another two great artifacts in the Museum of Cultural Rejects. Displayed as "The Relics of Sexism" collection, together with John Carpenter himself and other folks of the same sort -- like Neal Stephenson and his "male thinking saves the world" pseudo-cyberbabble. Seriously, I think Siskel and Ebert might be really good candidates for an early retirement. They really do not belong in the modern world anymore nor seem to have any clue about it. Why don't we write a letter to the TV stations that employ them, asking to find someone less offensive to the viewers to put their thumbs in different directions? The TV people may not care too much about women, but they seem to care about their program's ratings. After all, even if you cannot teach an old dog new tricks, it is still possible to make it quit performing the old ones. I think that if there is enough public objection to violence against women (like in case of on-screen cruelty to animals) the reatings-fearing producers might start thinking twice before endorsing anything that could cause public protest in the future. Even if that involves telling the esteemed movie critics to praise their beloved wife-beating movies in the privacy of their own homes -- off-air. IMHO, Marina http://members.aol.com/Lotaryn/index.html "Femininity is code for femaleness plus whatever society is selling at the time." Naomi Wolf ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 23:59:35 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Santanico Subject: Re: Siskel & Ebert Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 11:18 PM 11/01/99 -0600, you wrote: >I'm with you on that. Yesterday, while flipping the channels I saw those >two talking, remembered their reaction to the "Wifebeaters" Heh. It's never going to lose that nickname, is it? ;) -- and flipped >right through. Those two guys never impressed me as particularly smart, >and now I am not going to listen to them altogether. Well, it's probably a good idea to remember that these are the same guys who gave the atrocious "Batman and Robin" a thumbs-up (this movie, by the way, has since become my measuring stick for Really Godawful Movies. If a movie comes anywhere near B and R on the scale, then it's one to be avoided). It brings to mind the humorous ad campaign slogan put forth for David Lynch's "Lost Highway": "Two thumbs down from Siskel and Ebert. Two more great reasons to see Lost Highway!" >By the way, I think they would make another two great artifacts in the >Museum of Cultural Rejects. Displayed as "The Relics of Sexism" >collection, together with John Carpenter himself and other folks of the >same sort -- like Neal Stephenson and his "male thinking saves the world" >pseudo-cyberbabble. Don't forget some other important additions to that collection: - John Norman (can you tell that I have a personal vendetta against this guy?) - Nancy Kilpatrick (author of "Child of the Night", a vampire story in which a sadistic male vampire takes a human woman as a forced sex slave - and she finds she really loves him! Awww. How cute. Kill me). - Anne Rice (for those repulsive "Beauty" stories. For the plot of which, see above, and replace "vampire" with "fairy tale prince"). - Anyone, come to think of it, who's ever written a story, film or novel, in which a woman falls deeply in love with a man who treats her violently, and we're _not_ meant to view this as sick. - Arthur Tunstall, the Australian sports commish, who has banned female boxing because, I quote, "Call me old-fashioned, but I still think of women as delicate flowers who need protection". Why he hasn't been fired yet is one of the great mysteries of our time (right up there with the Pyramids, the Bermuda Triangle, and why someone gave John Carpenter the money to make "Vampires"). I'm sure there are others, but none really come to mind at the moment. Any ideas, people? Sant. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 08:09:25 +0000 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Mike Stanton Subject: Re: segregated slash stories Comments: cc: ajhs@usa.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On 11 Jan 99, at 15:36, Frances Green wrote: > A very simplistic rule of thumb for woman-written m/m > gay fiction (slash and otherwise) versus man-written > gay fiction is that women write emotions and are > really not interested in equipment size! I'm always > surprised (not offended) when reading slash if size is > mentioned more than very fleetingly. This question was discussed at some length on the content_analysis list in mid-1996. The consensus was that _direct_ mention of size is as Frances says, but woman-written fiction tends to use _indirect_ allusions of the "fills her/him up completely" or "stretches her/him to the limit" kind (I hope I haven't been too graphic). The discussion started because of a case reported in two British newspapers at that time. Evidently an irate woman had carried out an analysis of the _Black Lace_ series ("Erotic fiction written by women for women") and was able to show - with sufficient conviction to elicit an apology from the publishers - that at least one of the "female" authors was in fact male. Mike Stanton (m_stanton@postmaster.co.uk) _____________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 08:10:58 +0000 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Mike Stanton Subject: Re: segregated slash stories Comments: cc: ajhsusa.net@postmaster.co.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On 11 Jan 99, at 15:36, S.M. Stirling wrote: > Men are rarely honest around women when sex is discussed, > because it leads to involuntary celibacy. Men are NEVER honest around _men_ when sex is discussed. My observation is that men tend to be a lot more boastful in discussing sex with other men than with women - possibly because there inevitably comes a time in any male/female sexual relationship when the man has to "put up or shut up". Too much boasting would, I think, be much more likely to lead to "involuntary celibacy"! > Gay men are often (not invariably, but often) an excellent > guide to the way straight men would act, if they didn't > have to compromise with womens' expectations. Can this be true? Surely gay men operate under analogous constraints to those of heterosexual men? I would have thought that gay men would be very unlikely to admit to deficiencies in the sexual "size / performance" department to anyone - male _or_ female. Mike Stanton (m_stanton@postmaster.co.uk) __________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 04:07:09 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Syela Shratdeshm Organization: Indiana University of Pennsylvania Subject: Janna Sckarline MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII "Janice E. Dawley" wrote on 25 December: >I am currently reading Maureen McHugh's novel *Mission Child*, which is an >expansion and substantial reworking of her novella "The Cost to Be Wise." I joined the list on 30 November, which was early enough to catch part of the discussion of the novella, but late enough not to have had it spoiled. In the past two weeks, I've picked up several anthologies second-hand; basically anything I could find that had anything recommended here in it. "The Cost to Be Wise" was one of the first selections I read, and I found it compelling - the ending in particular. Just now I've read the short story "The Missionary's Child", published 1992 in Asimov's and 1994 in New_Eves, but taking place when Janna Sckarline is thirty-one. I knew too much to read it at the level which was intended, but from that insider's perspective I found it creditable and wondered why I hadn't heard of it before. I'm wondering if anyone else here has read it, and innocently, and whether having read it would spoil large parts of Mission_Child. I'm also wondering whether anyone has read both the short story and the novella; I think that the ending of the former is spoiled somewhat by the latter, and that the gimmick of the latter is spoiled somewhat by the former. That said, I'm more interested in the novel having read both McHugh's portrayal of Janna as a girl and of Janna as a man and the hints in the short story about what happens inbetween. Syela ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 09:02:12 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Kristina Solheim Subject: ??? In-Reply-To: <802566F7.002CEB4D.00@nun.postmaster.co.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 08:10 AM 1/12/99 +0000, you wrote: >> Gay men are often (not invariably, but often) an excellent >> guide to the way straight men would act, if they didn't >> have to compromise with womens' expectations. > >Can this be true? Surely gay men operate under analogous constraints to >those of heterosexual men? I would have thought that gay men would be very >unlikely to admit to deficiencies in the sexual "size / performance" >department to anyone - male _or_ female. I'm not sure what this has to do with SF lit.... but having a handful of best friends who are gay and being in the middle of writing an SF story with several gay characters... I thought I'd respond. I agree with Mike... gay men act the exact same way hetero men do about penis size and performance. Though they might be a little more loud and humorous about it. I think what the first comment (above) meant was that the way a friendship is between a gay man and a gay/straight/whatever woman is what a hetero man and a whatever woman COULD have (but sex usually gets in the way.. not always.. just usually). I don't think it really has much to do with a woman's expectations. Men instigated the gender roles long ago... women helped enable them. just an opinion... Kristina ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 09:52:28 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Dave Samuelson Subject: Re: segregated slash stories MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I'm reminded of John Stuart Mill's comment, 150 years ago, that you can only tell something about a man's "marriage" from his opinions about women and relationships. How can we know that anyone (male/female/lesbian/gay/other) is being "honest" about sex without clear principles of verification? Even assuming the best of intentions, no two (or more) people involved in a relationship will experience the "same" thing the same way. For that matter, even the distinction between fact and fiction approaches fetishism, in my opinion. All we ever have to deal with is impressions, imperfectly perceived, remembered, and communicated from a biased observer to a biased audience. As Aldous Huxley once pointed out, "sincerity is a matter of technique." Mike Stanton wrote: > On 11 Jan 99, at 15:36, S.M. Stirling wrote: > > > Men are rarely honest around women when sex is discussed, > > because it leads to involuntary celibacy. > > Men are NEVER honest around _men_ when sex is discussed. My observation is > that men tend to be a lot more boastful in discussing sex with other men > than with women - possibly because there inevitably comes a time in any > male/female sexual relationship when the man has to "put up or shut up". > Too much boasting would, I think, be much more likely to lead to > "involuntary celibacy"! > > > Gay men are often (not invariably, but often) an excellent > > guide to the way straight men would act, if they didn't > > have to compromise with womens' expectations. > > Can this be true? Surely gay men operate under analogous constraints to > those of heterosexual men? I would have thought that gay men would be very > unlikely to admit to deficiencies in the sexual "size / performance" > department to anyone - male _or_ female. > > Mike Stanton (m_stanton@postmaster.co.uk) > __________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 10:40:07 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Sophia Hegner Subject: Re: Siskel & Ebert In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm love to write a letter to the TV stations. Anybody got the address? -Sophia Hegner Marina wrote: >I'm with you on that. Yesterday, while flipping the channels I saw those >two talking, remembered their reaction to the "Wifebeaters" -- and flipped >right through. Those two guys never impressed me as particularly smart, >and now I am not going to listen to them altogether. > >By the way, I think they would make another two great artifacts in the >Museum of Cultural Rejects. Displayed as "The Relics of Sexism" >collection, together with John Carpenter himself and other folks of the >same sort -- like Neal Stephenson and his "male thinking saves the world" >pseudo-cyberbabble. > >Seriously, I think Siskel and Ebert might be really good candidates >for an early retirement. They really do not belong in the modern world >anymore nor seem to have any clue about it. > >Why don't we write a letter to the TV stations that employ them, asking to >find someone less offensive to the viewers to put their thumbs in >different directions? The TV people may not care too much about women, but >they seem to care about their program's ratings. After all, even if you >cannot teach an old dog new tricks, it is still possible to make it quit >performing the old ones. I think that if there is enough >public objection to violence against women (like in case of on-screen >cruelty to animals) the reatings-fearing producers might start thinking >twice before endorsing anything that could cause public protest in the >future. Even if that involves telling the esteemed movie critics to >praise their beloved wife-beating movies in the privacy of their own homes >-- off-air. > >IMHO, >Marina > > http://members.aol.com/Lotaryn/index.html > > "Femininity is code for femaleness plus whatever society > is selling at the time." > Naomi Wolf > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 11:30:54 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Sophia Hegner Subject: Nominees to the Sexism Hall of Infamy Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I'm sure there are others, but none really come to mind at the moment. Any >ideas, people? >Sant. -Alfred Hitchcock. I'm sure the story of his sweet gift to little Melanie Griffith when her mommy, Tippy Hedren, said "no" is pretty well known. Also, please don't get me started on the Freudian symbolism his movies are littered with. -Freud himself. 'Nuff said. -Frank Capra (I think--who made the movie _Twelve Angry Men_? There's a scene in it that compares women talking to chickens in a henyard.) -Whoever wrote, directed, and produced _9 1/2 Weeks_ -Jane Campion (I have only seen _The Piano_ and so far I am the only person I know who didn't see this movie as a great feminist statement. Hello, the mute woman falls in love with the man who forces her to prostitute herself for her "voice," and by the end of the movie he has given her real voice back to her). -Michael Douglas: every movie he makes it seems involves some kind of violent crazy woman. -Norman Mailer. Need I elaborate? -Pat Robertson. That's my list for now. I'm sure I'll think of some more. :) Sophia ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 14:47:25 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "S.M. Stirling" Subject: Re: segregated slash stories Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 1/12/99 1:07:49 AM Mountain Standard Time, m_stanton@POSTMASTER.CO.UK writes: >Can this be true? Surely gay men operate under analogous constraints to those of heterosexual men? -- well, no. (I'm refering to courtship and sexual patterns here.) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 14:49:08 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "S.M. Stirling" Subject: Re: segregated slash stories Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 1/12/99 1:07:49 AM Mountain Standard Time, m_stanton@POSTMASTER.CO.UK writes: >Men are NEVER honest around _men_ when sex is discussed. >> -- true, but not relevant to my original comment. Men tend to tell very different lies to other men vs. a vs. those they tell women. The characteristic falsehood to women is to promise or pretend to undergo more emotional committment and interest than they really feel. The characteristic lie to men is to boast about sexual athletics. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 16:54:12 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Prudence Merton Subject: Re: segregated slash stories In-Reply-To: <19990111.153647.-223823.1.jjggww@juno.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi all, I'm new to this list and have been trying to figure out what "slash" means, holding out hoping I'd get it from future messages, I'm really confused now with this reference to Kirk/Spock being the first slash. Help! and thanks in advance. Prue At 03:36 PM 1/11/99 -0500, you wrote: >A very simplistic rule of thumb for woman-written m/m gay fiction (slash >and otherwise) versus man-written gay fiction is that women write >emotions and are really not interested in equipment size! I'm always >surprised (not offended) when reading slash if size is mentioned more >than very fleetingly. > >Of course slash is supposed to be fantasy for women's pleasure, not >realistic gaysex depiction; and man-written lesbian fiction generally >feeds into male fantasy. > >And most female slashers I know read male-written gay fiction avidly. > >And of course there are many exceptions! > >I believe the original slash was Kirk/Spock, and the term just became >adopted from there. > > > > > > > > > >On Mon, 11 Jan 1999 02:44:37 EST "S.M. Stirling" >writes: >>In a message dated 1/8/99 7:00:41 PM Mountain Standard Time, >>hathor@FLINK.COM >>writes: >> >>>They also say that the m/m slash women write is often different from >>the m/m >>slash gay men write.> >> >>-- probably. From my observation, the thing that women authors do >>worst at >>with male characters is, specifically, sex -- the subjective >>experience of it >>from a male p.o.v. >> >>When I'm doing that in reverse, I always run it by at least 3 or 4 >>women >>first. >> > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 19:26:04 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Terri Wakefield Subject: No subject was specified. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Would someone please send me Nicola Griffith's e-mail address? There is a fan of hers on another list that would like to forward a review, (very positive), she wrote about THE BLUE PLACE. I changed systems over the holidays and I lost my bookmarks and address book in the shuffle. Thanks in advance Terri ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 20:05:41 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "S.M. Stirling" Subject: Re: segregated slash stories Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 1/12/99 5:33:24 PM Mountain Standard Time, p0m3543@UNIX.TAMU.EDU writes: << Hi all, I'm new to this list and have been trying to figure out what "slash" means, holding out hoping I'd get it from future messages, I'm really confused now with this reference to Kirk/Spock being the first slash. Help! and thanks in advance. Prue >> -- originally, it was fan-written fiction (fanfic, to devotees) about Kirk and Spock in a romantic/sexual relationship, almost always written by women. Since then, the word has gained a broader application. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 19:40:24 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Allyson Shaw Subject: Re: Dead Ringers MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Santanico wrote: > > You know, there's a rather amusing story about "Dead Ringers" I once heard > from someone on Usenet: > > Apparently, the poster (a woman) was watching "Dead Ringers" with a male > friend, who immediately turned pale and started gasping "What the hell are > they DOING to that woman?!" This was in the early scene, the poster said, in > which a woman is undergoing a _normal_ gynecological examination! > > Sant. That's funny. Actually, the person who recommended Dead Ringer to me was a man. He was looking at my paintings to see if he wanted to have one. I think they kind of sickened him. He said they were beautiful, but he couldn't stand to have them around him. They were abstractions of gynecological instruments and diagrams. He said I should watch that movie-- and I found the movie-- especially the beginning credits, to have uncanny similarities to my paintings. It's funny but I've never had that squeamish reaction from women, just men. --Allyson ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 23:37:26 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Marina Subject: Re: Siskel & Ebert for early retirement In-Reply-To: <199901121832.KAA00722@mail.sdsu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 12 Jan 1999, Sophia Hegner wrote: > I'm love to write a letter to the TV stations. Anybody got the address? I think the address might be on the Internet. If anyone reminds me which station they are on (I only check the channel when I see something I really like), I could look it up. By the way, how did it come to pass that those two jerks became such autorities in movies? I never heard them saying anything that brilliant. Marina > >Seriously, I think Siskel and Ebert might be really good candidates > >for an early retirement. They really do not belong in the modern world > >anymore nor seem to have any clue about it. > > > >Why don't we write a letter to the TV stations that employ them, asking to > >find someone less offensive to the viewers to put their thumbs in > >different directions? http://members.aol.com/Lotaryn/index.html "Femininity is code for femaleness plus whatever society is selling at the time." Naomi Wolf ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 09:29:49 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Maryelizabeth Hart Subject: more of Nalo's writings Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Those of us who did/do not have access to "Fireweed" magazine get to read Nalo's short story "A Habit of Waste" when it appears in the NORTHERN SUNS (companion to the NORTHERN STARS) anthology here in the US in April. Yay! Maryelizabeth Mysterious Galaxy 619-268-4747 3904 Convoy St, #107 800-811-4747 San Diego, CA 92111 619-268-4775 FAX http://www.mystgalaxy.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 19:50:28 +0000 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Mike Stanton Subject: Re: segregated slash stories Comments: cc: ajhs@usa.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On 12 Jan 99, at 14:49, S.M. Stirling wrote: > The characteristic falsehood to women is to promise or pretend to undergo > more emotional committment and interest than they really feel. I wonder, Steve, whether these things are really falsehoods or just the ritualistic posturing that our cultures seem to demand in such cases? I think the men lie, the women know that they lie but accept the insincerities almost as a tribute and the price that the men must pay to gain access to the "prize". Sometimes I think it's just a game - albeit a self-deceiving one that must surely erode the self-respect of both players! Mike Stanton (m_stanton@postmaster.co.uk) ______________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 15:20:05 -0500 Reply-To: Kate.Elliott@sff.net Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Alis Rasmussen Subject: Re: segregated stories MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mike Stanton wrote: > > On 12 Jan 99, at 14:49, S.M. Stirling wrote: > > > The characteristic falsehood to women is to promise or pretend to undergo > > more emotional committment and interest than they really feel. > > I wonder, Steve, whether these things are really falsehoods or just the > ritualistic posturing that our cultures seem to demand in such cases? I > think the men lie, the women know that they lie but accept the > insincerities almost as a tribute and the price that the men must pay to > gain access to the "prize". Sometimes I think it's just a game - albeit a > self-deceiving one that must surely erode the self-respect of both players! > > Mike Stanton (m_stanton@postmaster.co.uk) > ______________________________________________ Certainly I agree that all said above does sometimes and even often happen in our culture, but I feel constrained to point out that some men actually desire emotional commitment (in other words, to echo Mike, I see this as more of a cultural than a biological expression). My experience as I raise children of both sexes is that our society cages and prunes boys as much as it does girls, just in different ways but with equally often disastrous results. As some radio psychologist once said of O.J. (and I paraphrase): "How did you expect him to react? All his life he'd been told that the only two acceptable emotions available to him, as a man, are rage and lust." We continue this trend in raising our children at our own peril, in my opinion. I've read a number of sf stories and novels that deal with separated sexes. Some examples that come immediately to mind are Tepper's GATE TO WOMEN'S COUNTRY, Eleanor Arnason's wonderful A WOMAN OF THE IRON PEOPLE, Pamela Sergaent's SHORE OF WOMEN, and a novelette by Le Guin whose title I can't recall. I'm sure others can list many more. [Have any men written these kind of stories, or are many--especially earlier--sf/f novels by default segregated since the women's roles hardly count?] While I often find them interesting and even quite enjoyable, I don't in the end find them persuasive. Maybe that's not the right word. In some ways I find them perilous--evoking the notion that the male of the species is so limited by his biology and so at the mercy of his biology that he must be pushed outside 'civilized' society--even while I find them thought provoking. After all, this is the same argument used for years, even centuries, against women's participation in public life and prayer and you name it. Alis Rasmussen ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 12:47:50 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Laura Quilter Subject: Naomi Mitchison RIP (fwd) Comments: To: feministsf@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 11:10:02 -0800 From: Freddie Baer Tuesday January 12 3:42 AM ET Author Naomi Mitchison Dies at 101 CARRADALE, Scotland (AP) - Lady Naomi Mitchison, who was often called the doyenne of Scottish literature, has died at the age of 101, her family said. The cause and location of her death, which occurred Monday, were not immediately available. A poet and novelist, Lady Mitchison was a prolific writer - completing more than 80 novels in her lifetime. She never confined herself to one style, writing historical novels, science fiction, travel writing and a three volume autobiography. Her first novel, ``The Conquered,'' was published in 1923 and was based on her wartime experiences. In 1935, Lady Mitchison published her most controversial work. ``We Have Been Wanted'' explored sexual behavior, including rape, seduction and abortion. The book was rejected by leading publishers and ultimately censored. In addition to her writings, Lady Mitchison was also a vocal women's rights campaigner, actively lobbying for birth control. Born in Edinburgh in 1897, she began a science degree at Oxford University, but gave up her studies to become a nurse. She married Dick Mitchison in 1916. He later became a member of Parliament for the Labor Party, and was eventually made into a life peer. Lady Mitchison was also made a life peer in 1964 for her literary contributions. Throughout her life, she was a spokeswoman for the island communities of western Scotland, where she made her home. She is survived by five children. Her husband died in 1970. Funeral arrangements were not yet available. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 21:19:06 -0000 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Lesley Hall Subject: Re: Naomi Mitchison RIP (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit While I'm glad to see that this has been sent to the list, the report seems to have a number of inaccuracies: >Her first novel, ``The Conquered,'' was published in 1923 and was >based on her wartime experiences. It's set in Roman Gaul, and according to NM's autobiographies, was deeply rooted in childhood fears and fantasies (and the brother-sister relationship possibly owes something to her own relationship to her brother, JBS Haldane) rather than anything that happened in WWI > >In 1935, Lady Mitchison published her most controversial work. ``We >Have Been Wanted'' explored sexual behavior, including rape, seduction >and abortion. The book was rejected by leading publishers and >ultimately censored. _We Have Been Warned_: and, as she pointed out in the 'Essay on Censorship' published in her autobiographical volume _You May Well Ask_, she had happily and uncensored been dealing with all these topics with protagonists clad in togas, chitons, wolfskins, etc: but to deal with them as contemporary issues among 'ordinary people' was a no-no. > >Born in Edinburgh in 1897, she began a science degree at Oxford >University, but gave up her studies to become a nurse She could not have been registered for a degree at Oxford at the time, as the University did not admit women to degrees until after the war, the grant of the suffrage, etc, but she did undertake study at one of the women's colleges. Like many other young women of the period (e.g. Vera Brittain), she gave up her studies to undertake VAD work as part of the war effort (rather than choosing nursing as a career) >Lady Mitchison was also made a life peer in 1964 for her literary >contributions. Her _husband_ was made a Life Peer in 1964 for his political contributions (long career in Labour politics), and according to Lena Jeger's obit in today's _Guardian_, NM thought it 'funny, as long as nobody called her Lady Mitchison. Lesley Hall lesleyah@primex.co.uk ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 16:44:59 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "S.M. Stirling" Subject: Re: segregated slash stories Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 1/13/99 1:05:58 PM Mountain Standard Time, m_stanton@POSTMASTER.CO.UK writes: >I wonder, Steve, whether these things are really falsehoods or just the ritualistic posturing that our cultures seem to demand in such cases?> -- oh, they're lies, all right. I told them myself, and carefully studied how to make them effective; so did virtually all the men I know. In fact, a test was done on this one. A university psych department had some student volunteers (equal number of both sexes, all personable and attractive young people) approach members of the opposite sex at random. The approach was: "Hi! My name is ---. I think you're very attractive. Would you like to have sex with me?" Over 80% of the men approached said "yes". (At which point the student volunteers explained it was an experiment.) Of the 20% or so of men who said "no", a large majority then _apologized_ for saying no, explaining why -- religious prohibitions, monogamous relationship, that sort of thing. Over 80% of the _women_ approached said no, sometimes...ah... extremely emphatically. "I have no interest in you as a person; I just want to satisfy an instinctual craving" is an _extremely_ inefficient make-out line. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 17:05:54 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "S.M. Stirling" Subject: Re: Naomi Mitchison RIP (fwd) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 1/13/99 2:17:37 PM Mountain Standard Time, lquilter@IGC.APC.ORG writes: << A poet and novelist, Lady Mitchison was a prolific writer - completing more than 80 novels in her lifetime. She never confined herself to one style, writing historical novels, science fiction, travel writing and a three volume autobiography. -- she did some excellent work; I've read her stuff since I was 7 or 8. Ave atque vale. >> ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 04:19:07 CST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Barbara Benesch-Granberg Subject: Re: segregated stories Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Alis Rasmussen wrote: >My experience as I raise children of both sexes is that our society >cages and prunes boys as much as it does girls, just in different >ways but with equally often disastrous results. > >As some radio psychologist once said of O.J. (and I paraphrase): >"How did you expect him to react? All his life he'd been told that >the only two acceptable emotions available to him, as a man, are rage >and lust." > >We continue this trend in raising our children at our own peril, in >my opinion. > >I've read a number of sf stories and novels that deal with separated >sexes. Some examples that come immediately to mind are Tepper's GATE >TO WOMEN'S COUNTRY, Eleanor Arnason's wonderful A WOMAN OF THE IRON >PEOPLE, Pamela Sergaent's SHORE OF WOMEN, and a novelette by Le Guin >whose title I can't recall. > >I'm sure others can list many more. [Have any men written these kind >of stories, or are many--especially earlier--sf/f novels by default >segregated since the women's roles hardly count?] > >While I often find them interesting and even quite enjoyable, I don't >in the end find them persuasive. Maybe that's not the right word. >In some ways I find them perilous--evoking the notion that the male >of the species is so limited by his biology and so at the mercy of >his biology that he must be pushed outside 'civilized' society--even >while I find them thought provoking. After all, this is the same >argument used for years, even centuries, against women's >participation in public life and prayer and you name it. Oh my! Am I the only one who found themselves grotesquely fascinated by this week's episode of "The Outer Limits"? (It plays on the Fox network in the U.S., and it was on Sunday night in my corner of the world.) For those who missed it, the premise was that the year was 2055, and after a third World War, a plague struck which affected (and killed) all the men on earth. Most of technology had been wiped out in the war, and so women lived in groups called "enclaves" and the different enclaves all worked under a "Council of Elders"-type thing. Children are possible due to a store of sperm that was collected and frozen in the early stages of the plague - however, while male children are born, all so far have contracted the plague and died shortly after birth. Into this 'happy' scene comes a man - a soldier from who had been cryogenically frozen (for some undisclosed reason) during the war, before the plague broke out. He comes across this town, and wreaks all kinds of havoc in short order. I would explain in more detail the kinds of havoc the presence of this single man wreaks upon the all-female society, but about 20 minutes into the show, I was simply disgusted by the way the whole scenario was handled. My husband encouraged me to change the channel, but by that time, I was ensnared, and had to see it through to the final, pathetic end. The most disappointing part of it, I think, was that there was no effort made to make any of the women anything more than stereotypes. And the man was a stereotype as well, so of course the end was fairly expected. While I don't actually *expect* 'The Outer Limits' to really challenge predisposed notions of our reality, I always *hope* they will, since that is, after all, supposed to be the point of the show. Did anyone else see this episode? And was anyone else as disappointed as I was? Barbara Benesch-Granberg (who is more than willing to carry on this discussion off-list, if necessary) BJBenesch@hotmail.com ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 08:10:44 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: No Name Available Subject: Griffith interview online Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Quoting this from a mailing this morning: Event Horizon online interview: FLASHPOINT: CHAT ON JANUARY 14 http://www.e-horizon.com/eventhorizon/chats/index.html Our guest this week is Nicola Griffith, author of the Nebula-winning SLOW RIVER and, most recently, THE BLUE PLACE. Flashpoint Thursday, January 14 | 10:00 - 11:30 PM Eastern time Guest: Nicola Griffith, author of THE BLUE PLACE The show will spend its first half-hour or so in interview format, as host Jim Freund questions Griffith about her work. Then we'll open it up to the audience so you can ask Griffith your own questions during the last hour. See you then! ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 06:07:11 PST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Daniel Krashin Subject: OT Foucault Again Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Just a thought: there was a recent article in SALON Magazine's "Ivory Tower" section on Foucault's effect on historiography. It puts into words some of the misgivings I have about the guy's theories, better than I could. The URL is something like http://www.salonmagazine.com/it/ Danny ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 09:22:28 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Syela Shratdeshm Organization: Indiana University of Pennsylvania Subject: Re: segregated stories MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Alis Rasmussen writes: >I've read a number of sf stories and novels that deal with separated >sexes. Some examples that come immediately to mind are Tepper's GATE TO >WOMEN'S COUNTRY, Eleanor Arnason's wonderful A WOMAN OF THE IRON PEOPLE, >Pamela Sergaent's SHORE OF WOMEN, and a novelette by Le Guin whose title >I can't recall. "The Matter of Seggri" sounds like the title in question. >While I often find them interesting and even quite enjoyable, I don't in >the end find them persuasive. Maybe that's not the right word. In some >ways I find them perilous--evoking the notion that the male of the >species is so limited by his biology and so at the mercy of his biology >that he must be pushed outside 'civilized' society--even while I find >them thought provoking. I didn't get that notion from A_Woman_of_the_Iron_People at all. The characterization of men such as Enshi, the oracle, Ulzai, and Inzara convinced me that the men were not limited by their biology and that segregation itself was to blame for the disparity between the sexes. The attention given to Nia (including POV) and to Tanajin also conveyed that women had no need to segregate themselves from men. I would recommend the novel; I did find it interesting, thought-provoking, and quite enjoyable. I would also be glad to discuss it; I searched through the archives after finishing it two weeks ago, and was surprised to find nothing. I suspect that Arnason was arguing for integration and was persuasive in that way. Syela ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 10:02:06 -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: Nalo Hopkinson interview In-Reply-To: <19990114101907.16776.qmail@hotmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII There's a dynamite interview with Nalo in the latest issue of Locus. It contains a lot of interesting info on the genesis of Brown Girl in the Ring as well as some interesting thoughts on being a woman of color writing science fiction. Mike Levy Michael M. Levy levym@uwstout.edu Department of English levymm@uwec.edu University of Wisconsin-Stout off. ph: 715-834-6533 Menomonie, WI 54751 hm. ph: 715-834-6533 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 09:47:09 -0500 Reply-To: Kate.Elliott@sff.net Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Alis Rasmussen Subject: Re: segregated stories MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Syela Shratdeshm wrote: > > I didn't get that notion from A_Woman_of_the_Iron_People at all. > The characterization of men such as Enshi, the oracle, Ulzai, and Inzara > convinced me that the men were not limited by their biology and that > segregation itself was to blame for the disparity between the sexes. > The attention given to Nia (including POV) and to Tanajin also conveyed > that women had no need to segregate themselves from men. I would recommend > the novel; I did find it interesting, thought-provoking, and quite enjoyable. > I would also be glad to discuss it; I searched through the archives after > finishing it two weeks ago, and was surprised to find nothing. I suspect > that Arnason was arguing for integration and was persuasive in that way. > > Syela I really liked the Arnason, and it's clear from your comments that I'll have to go back and re-read and see if I have forgotten elements that I gleaned from it the first time. I don't keep many fiction books because I have so little room in my bookshelves, and it's one of the rare ones I have never felt inclined to haul off to the used book store. Alis ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 09:51:53 -0500 Reply-To: Kate.Elliott@sff.net Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Alis Rasmussen Subject: Re: segregated stories MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Barbara Benesch-Granberg wrote: > > The most disappointing part of it, I think, was that there was no effort > made to make any of the women anything more than stereotypes. And the > man was a stereotype as well, so of course the end was fairly expected. > While I don't actually *expect* 'The Outer Limits' to really challenge > predisposed notions of our reality, I always *hope* they will, since > that is, after all, supposed to be the point of the show. Now I'm curious: What --was-- the end? I suppose the ability of a show like 'The Outer Limits' to, as you say, challenge those predisposed notions of our reality lies with the writers. Kind of like Heinlein's Mars in, say, RED PLANET. Alis ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 12:18:31 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Barclay Blanchard Subject: Re: Nominees to the Sexism Hall of Infamy Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit What's the Hitchcock/Tippi Hedren/Melanie Griffith story? Absolutely agree about _The Piano_... it was sickening. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 13:41:27 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "S.M. Stirling" Subject: Re: OT Foucault Again Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 1/14/99 7:09:59 AM Mountain Standard Time, dkrashin@HOTMAIL.COM writes: Good article, with an excellent summation: "Foucaldians," in Windschuttle's view, now ensure that in any historical debate, "any question about the facts of a statement is ignored and the focus is directed to the way what is said reflects the prevailing 'discursive formation.'" Thus history discussion seminars increasingly consist less of "talk about real issues" than of an endless cycle of "talk about talk." It's like talking to a believer in classical Freudian psychoanalysis. If you criticise psychoanalysis, they interpret that as "resistance" in psychoanalytical terms -- or as Monty Python put it in Eric the Viking, "That's a circular argument, then." ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 10:44:40 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Sophia Hegner Subject: Re: Nominees to the Sexism Hall of Infamy In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Well, as you know Tippy Hedren starred in at least two Hitchcocks (_The Birds_ and _Marnie_). Apparently--and it's been a while since I read about this, so if I get it wrong, somebody please correct me--Alfred wanted a more intimate relationship with Tippy, and she refused. So he gave Melanie (Tippy was her mom, in case you didn't know) a coffin with a blonde barbie doll dressed like her mother in it for her birthday. Melanie was understandably upset. -SH At 12:18 PM 1/14/99 -0500, you wrote: >What's the Hitchcock/Tippi Hedren/Melanie Griffith story? > >Absolutely agree about _The Piano_... it was sickening. > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 14:19:47 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jane Franklin Subject: Re: OT Foucault Again Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit (Jane returns to beat her favorite dead horse....) (But will be happy to discuss off list, so PLEASE let me know PROMPTLY if I should move this) I am neither a Foucauldian (yes, there is an adjective, alarmingly enough) nor a Marxist. I defend Foucault on occasion because I think that ill-informed and reactionary criticism of him (which seems to me to be Salon's forte) will not move us forward toward a more useful philosophy. Why defend Foucault and the postmoderns in general? Consider: Okay, postmodern history books are full of jargon. But they've also legitimized new areas of study--gay and lesbian history, all kinds of minority cultural history, all kinds of aspects of women's history. Everyone jumps on the post-modernists for blurring boundaries between progress and regression, oppressed and oppressor, right and wrong, and all that. But that very blurring of boundaries gives us the intellectual tools for describing histories that aren't cut and dried. To me, the blurring and drawing of boundaries needs to be a dialectical process rather than one of "okay, that's where truth is, and it's forever different from everything else". Major problems I see with postmodernism: Jargon, and the use of flowery prose. This does render postmodernism pretty elitist. The jargon is rarely defined clearly, so it's hard for the uninitiate to grasp what's going on. No acknowlegement of limitations. Foucault proposes that power and subjugation are two-way streets and that all use of power is corrupting, totalizing, etc, even power used to resist power. (To oversimplify) This is sort of true--to take crude examples, look at the people who start in community organizations and get bought out by the state or the Ford Foundation and end up surpressing the very change the sought to bring about. It is also a rather abstract musing on the nature of power. It is limited simply because people must get up in the morning and live. We can't all say "I am not going to move because I don't want to engage in power relations". However, it's a pretty useful subsidiary thing to think about if you engage, as I do, in regular community organizing. Idealism. Postmodernism holds out for concepts like "power" in pure forms and, for all its social histories, operates at a fairly high level of abstraction. Pro-capitalism. This is where the left should attack. Post-modern theory tends to say that people's primary identity and chief form of resistance lies in consumption, that TV watching can be radical. This is moderately true--people really do interpret movies in ways not intended by the capitalist machine that produced them--but again, it's pretty limited. It also accepts the idea that resistance to consumer culture must always be totally contained by consumer culture. This very assumption that people can resist consumer culture within consumer culture is quite useful, since it's a corrective to the assumption that women, working people, people of color always suffer from "false consciousness", which will be corrected by revolutionaries who know what we really should read, say, and think. In fact, this whole resistance thing is a very useful way of looking at women's history. A lot of those books that talk about how women shop, what women's patterns of consumption or rejection of consumption say about how they felt about gender roles--a lot, in fact, of women's social history from the past ten years--is informed by postmodernist historical theory. One of the most interesting analyses of post-modernism I've ever read is in a book callled The Black Atlantic, which is a set of essays on historical figures who integrated Afro-Caribbean culture and that of the Southeastern U.S. That book uses post-modern methods (and not much of the pomo language) but it also suggests that "post-modernism" (post-industrial, extremely fluid, able to frivol around with the nature of truth a la Baudrillard's comment that "the Gulf War never happened") merely describes the First World in the late 20th century, and only part of the First World at that. Plain old modernism, with its old-style economic exploitation, materiality, and ideology, goes right on in the nations of the economic periphery. Post-modernism explains some things in some places, and its core mistake is to assume that it explains all things everywhere. This is why post-modernism has run out of steam, and also why I think some of its less jargon-laden methodologies will probably be integrated into a revised modernism a la Jurgen Habermas. This is my pet philosophical project, and I think it's the crucial one for radical social change. A very interesting book on modernity (a sort of intro, but still informative) is called All That Is Solid Melts Into Air. The other project I'm interested in is writing a material history of post-modernism. Everyone talks as though the postmodernists hijacked philosophy, which would of course have gone in a different, correct, and productive direction if they hadn't fooled everybody. That's silly. It's like saying that there would have been no World War Two or anti-semitism in Germany if Hitler got hit by a bus in 1930. Those things would have perhaps been very different from how they turned out, but historical forces are a bit larger than one or two people. Why did we get postmodernism, and why did it have such an allure for so many people? If you read European cultural stuff, you realize that postmodernism is a pretty big force, not just restricted a few people off at school somewhere. My guess is that it has to do with the instability of post-war France, war guilt from cooperation with the Germans, and the growing American hegemony in Europe resulting from the Marshall plan, also from the general surpression of the left following WWII, which turned left-wingers away from a more popular front type method and made them more inward-turning and doubtful. That's not to say that post-modernism was anyone's "fault", just that it had material causes. As far as Foucault and our collective snickering over his death from AIDS goes (and let me tell you I thought that was a laugh riot...), has anyone ever considered that his comment to his doctors may have come from being a regular scared human being? You all must have known someone with AIDS by this point--denial and continiung stupid selfish behavior patterns are pretty common. People are scared because they are going to die. That's one reason why AIDS spreads so fast among the urban poor in Africa--who are not noted postmodernists--they sometimes maintain that they don't have the disease, that it won't really kill them, etc. >>> Daniel Krashin 01/14 8:07 AM >>> Just a thought: there was a recent article in SALON Magazine's "Ivory Tower" section on Foucault's effect on historiography. It puts into words some of the misgivings I have about the guy's theories, better than I could. The URL is something like http://www.salonmagazine.com/it/ Danny ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 12:41:58 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Freddie Baer Subject: Re: OT Foucault Again Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Jane? Steven? This horse has gotten particularly dead and has begun to stink up the list. Can you take it offline? FB ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 16:54:40 -0500 Reply-To: releon@syr.edu Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Rudy Leon Organization: Syracuse University Subject: outer limits ep -- and the short story from whence it came MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT This is in response to the Outer Limits episode that Barbara Bensch wrote about. I have read that short story somewhere. Some anthology of early (60's-70's) feminist SF.... I just checked the Penguin anthology and the Women of Wonder anthology, and it's not in either of them. I also checked out the Outer Limits web site, and they don't credit it to anyone I've ever heard of... Has anyone else read the short story I might be confusing this with? Rudy Leon PhD Candidate Dept. of Religion Syracuse University releon@syr.edu Rudy Leon PhD Candidate Dept. of Religion Syracuse University releon@syr.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 20:02:46 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Marina Subject: Re: Nominees to the Sexism Hall of Infamy In-Reply-To: <199901141844.KAA29275@mail.sdsu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Wow. And what was Tippy's reaction to that? If someone pulled that on my daughter, I'd kick the living daylights out of the guy. By the way, my nomination for Relics of Sexism is Howard Stern. Marina On Thu, 14 Jan 1999, Sophia Hegner wrote: > Well, as you know Tippy Hedren starred in at least two Hitchcocks (_The > Birds_ and _Marnie_). Apparently--and it's been a while since I read about > this, so if I get it wrong, somebody please correct me--Alfred wanted a > more intimate relationship with Tippy, and she refused. So he gave Melanie > (Tippy was her mom, in case you didn't know) a coffin with a blonde barbie > doll dressed like her mother in it for her birthday. Melanie was > understandably upset. http://members.aol.com/Lotaryn/index.html "Femininity is code for femaleness plus whatever society is selling at the time." Naomi Wolf ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 23:46:40 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: John & Jessica Connor Subject: [FSFFU] Thanks to all about children in SF suggestions MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0004_01BE4018.22068D00" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0004_01BE4018.22068D00 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I just want to thank everybody who responded to my query about children = in SF utopian works.. it was a huge help. THANK YOU! Jessica ------=_NextPart_000_0004_01BE4018.22068D00 Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
I just want to thank everybody who = responded to=20 my query about children in SF utopian works.. it was a huge help.  = THANK=20 YOU!
 
Jessica
------=_NextPart_000_0004_01BE4018.22068D00--