Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 09:21:10 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jennifer Krauel Subject: [*FSFFU*] BDG: Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU It's time already to begin discussion of our next book, Joanna Russ's The Female Man. So dive right in! Don't be shy. Did you enjoy it? Did it make you laugh? Could you identify with any of the characters? (which one?) Did you understand it? Have any trouble figuring out who's voice was carrying the story? Do you feel the book stood up well to the test of time? Russ began writing it in 1969, thirty years ago. Unfortunately to me it seems we still have great need of this book. If you read it years ago, and just now re-read it for this discussion, how was the experience different for you? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 10:33:24 -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: [*FSFFU*] BDG: Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I have read this book several times and used it for classes in science fiction. Despite the ferocity with which it was greeted by some men upon publication, I have not found male students especially antagonistic toward it, (perhaps because I am/was not). Admiration and perplexity stem more from the book's fragmentation (most of these students are not literature majors) than its hectoring tone, which I happen to think is muted in part because the fragmented form distances some of its attacks ("it's only sf" like "it's only a movie"). Any of the five threads could be (and have been) developed further (mainly by others), but this particular assemblage of them is sui generis, defying sequelitis. It may be open to attack for having no males with redeeming qualities, but for it to have any would (I think) defeat the purpose; besides, any book is (to some extent) an expression of feelings and opinions that may not be universal, even in the author's biography. The fragmented form may weaken the immersion factor (we don't get to know anyone in depth, unless we read all the protagonists as one), but that's true of most impressionistic narratives (cf. Delany, Dick, Disch, and LeGuin, emerging at the same time). Naturalism and sf don't usually get along. I think Jeff Riggenbach in the *National Review* was prescient at the time of publication in terms of the book's staying power (less so with regard to Dhalgren). The issues have not gone away and the style is still incisive. I'm not sure it was completely to our benefit as readers that Joanna vented her spleen so well in this book that she has published little sf since. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 14:02:59 -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: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG: Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On Mon, 1 Feb 1999, Jennifer Krauel wrote: > It's time already to begin discussion of our next book, Joanna Russ's The > Female Man. > > Did you enjoy it? Did it make you laugh? > Could you identify with any of the characters? (which one?) > Did you understand it? Have any trouble figuring out who's voice was > carrying the story? > > Do you feel the book stood up well to the test of time? Russ began writing > it in 1969, thirty years ago. Unfortunately to me it seems we still have > great need of this book. > > If you read it years ago, and just now re-read it for this discussion, how > was the experience different for you? I first read The Female Man in the early 1970s and didn't like it much at the time--probably hadn't had my consciousness raised adequately as a 24 year old, male graduate student. I reread it last year, however, for a class I was teaching on gender and science fiction and enjoyed the heck out of it. Unfortunately, as I noted on this list at that time, my students, a mixed bag of English majors and minors and Women's Studies minors, couldn't make heads or tails out of the book. They couldn't get most of the jokes and insisted that most of the scarey parts were too exaggerated to be worthwhile. >Unfortunately to me it seems we still have great need of this book. I agree, but I wonder if the book will work for those who didn't live through the sixties and seventies as adults. Mike Levy ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 14:14:14 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jocelyn & Sheryl Denton-LeSage Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG: Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU >>Unfortunately to me it seems we still have great need of this book. > >I agree, but I wonder if the book will work for those who didn't live >through the sixties and seventies as adults. > > >Mike Levy And here's an opening for me. I was born in 1964, and didn't find this book until I was in my mid-twenties (and married and in the army). I found it astonishing--a guilty pleasure, knowing that my husband wouldn't think any of it was funny. It served as one of the the texts that allowed me to come out to myself, too (as lesbian). To me, reading it then in the mid-1980's it was a wonderful, revealing, righteously angry book, and one that had by no means become dated or stale. Sheryl LeSage ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 13:21:15 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Stephany Burge Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG: Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Mon, Feb 01, 1999 at 02:02:59PM -0600, Michael Marc Levy writes... > > Did you enjoy it? Did it make you laugh? I found it very hard to follow. If there was humor to the book, I didn't get it. Basically, I don't think I understood the book. I could only vaguely identify how the story may be applicable to today's society. It wasn't very relevant in my own life. I did enjoy the ending though. It brought some overall sense to the story (for me at least...) > > Do you feel the book stood up well to the test of time? Russ began writing > > it in 1969, thirty years ago. Unfortunately to me it seems we still have > > great need of this book. > I agree, but I wonder if the book will work for those who didn't live > through the sixties and seventies as adults. It didn't work for me. I was born in 1974. I just graduated from college & this is my first year as an engineer in the San Francisco Bay area. I also have an fantastic boyfriend who is very proud of my degree in chemical engineering. If anything, this book helped me see just how far we've come in the last 30 years. -Stephany ps. Greetings to everyone! I only joined this list a few weeks ago. I hadn't sent out introductory email yet.... ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 19:30:28 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bertina Miller Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG: Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Gosh that reminds me-I gotta reread the darn thing! Right now I am reading "Jingo" by Terry Pratchett. Gotta love a Pratchett novel! Anyway, I want to say, what I remember about Female Man is that I identified with all of the main female characters. Yes I know some characters are almost exact opposites of each other, but that is what I believe makes up modern day women anyhow. Maybe that was Russ' point? My early 2 cents, Bertina bmiller@medmail.mcg.edu On Mon, 1 Feb 1999, Jennifer Krauel wrote: > It's time already to begin discussion of our next book, Joanna Russ's The > Female Man. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 19:38:20 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bertina Miller Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG: Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I agree Sheryl. I was born in 1967 and first read it when I was around 19 and understood its anger and its message. Being bisexual may have something to do with it (then again I believe everyones bisexual they just dont want to admit it). Bertina bmiller@medmail.mcg.edu On Mon, 1 Feb 1999, Jocelyn & Sheryl Denton-LeSage wrote: > And here's an opening for me. I was born in 1964, and didn't find this book > until I was in my mid-twenties (and married and in the army). I found it > astonishing--a guilty pleasure, knowing that my husband wouldn't think any > of it was funny. It served as one of the the texts that allowed me to come > out to myself, too (as lesbian). To me, reading it then in the mid-1980's > it was a wonderful, revealing, righteously angry book, and one that had by > no means become dated or stale. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 17:13:57 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Todd Mason Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG: Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Another 1964 baby here, so I don't think that generations are going to make the difference...oddly (perhaps) enough, the two lesbians I've leant this two have been utterly thrown by it, one seeing it as humorlessly didactic (didactic at times, yes), the other not making any sense of it, and when she lent it to another friend of hers, the friend pronounced it unintelligible (as she gravely reported to me). Another good friend, a gender-bending woman, also had difficulty with it--but none of these people was much of a reader of the kind of non-linear fiction that Russ gives us here. I've loved this book since reading it ca. age 17, and think it a much braver statement even than "When It Changed" (though some of what's here didn't become clear to me until I read ON STRIKE AGAINST GOD, some of her essays, and her interview with Charles Platt in DREAM MAKERS II over the next several years). I'm finally reading THE ADVENTURES OF ALYX right now, and it's interesting to see her building toward what she would do with TFM. I hope her physical problems and the lukewarm commercial response she's met won't keep her from attempting something of TFM's complexity in novel form again. ---Bertina Miller wrote: > I agree Sheryl. I was born in 1967 and first read it when I was around 19 > and understood its anger and its message. Being bisexual may have > something to do with it (then again I believe everyones bisexual they just > dont want to admit it). _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 17:15:20 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Todd Mason Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG: Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU The genius of this book, in part, is in showing us the "utopia" has horrible aspects, as well as showing us female characters as conflicted, not completely noble creatures without any of that undermining the well-deserved critique of misogyny in our society, as mirrored in the four we see. _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 20:27:38 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Big Yellow Woman Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG: Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Michael Marc Levy wrote: > I wonder if the book will work for those who didn't live > through the sixties and seventies as adults. I was born in 1965 and this is the first time I've read The Female Man. I thought it was interesting and well done, but I wasn't entertained by it, nor did I find it humorous in the least. I suppose I would have reacted differently if I had read it in college, before I had a clue about feminism, or 8-10 years ago when I was waking up. I have to confess I am not quite to the end, but so far there have been only two things that strongly effected me - one, the whole section where Jeannine decides to marry Cal made me feel sick. Well, it's supposed to. At the same time, she seemed dated (for the 90's). I pictured a young woman of the fifties, and fortunately I think there are few of those left, at least none quite as extreme in their indoctrination as Jeannine seemed to be. The second thing that struck me and I really loved, was this passage (138-139 in my edition, quoted in full because who knows what page it may be in your books), I think by Joanna, on becoming a female man: To resolve contrarieties, unite them in your own person. This means: in all hopelessness, in terror of your life, without a future, in the sink of the worst despair that you can endure and will yet leave you the sanity to make a choice - take in your bare right hand one naked, severed, high tension wire. Take the other in your left hand. Stand in a puddle. (Don't worry about letting go; you can't.) Electricity favors the prepared mind, and if you interfere in this avalanche by accident you will be knocked down dead, you will be charred like a cutlet, and your eyes will be turned to burst red jellies, but if those wires are your own wires - hang on. God will keep your eyes in your head and your joints knit one to the other. When She sends the high voltage alone, well, we've all experienced those little shocks - you just shed it over your outside like a duck and it does nothing to you - but when She roars down in high voltage and amperage both, She is after your marrow-bones; you are making yourself a conduit for holy terror and the ecstasy of Hell. But only in that way can the wires heal themselves. Only in that way can they heal you. Women are not used to power; that avalanche of ghastly strain will lock your muscles and your teeth in the attitude of an electrocuted rabbit, but you are a strong woman, you are God's favorite, and you can endure; if you can say "yes, okay, go on" - after all, where else can you go? What else can you do? - if you let yourself through yourself and into yourself and out of yourself, turn yourself inside out, give yourself the kiss of reconciliation, marry yourself, love yourself - Well, I turned into a man. We love, says Plato, that in which we are defective; when we see our magical Self in the mirror of another, we pursue it with desperate cries - Stop! I must possess you! - but if it obligingly stops and turns, how on earth can one possess it? Fucking, if you will forgive the pun, is an anti-climax. And you are as poor as before. For years I wandered in the desert, crying: Why do you torment me so? and Why do you hate me so? and Why do you put me down so? and I will abase myself and I will please you and Why, oh why have you forsaken me? This is very feminine. What I learned late in life, under my rain of lava, under my kill-or-cure, unhappily, slowly, stubbornly, barely, and in really dreadful pain, was that there is one and only way to possess that in which we are defective, therefore that which we need, therefore that which we want. Become it. It was worth reading the whole book just for that! (Susan says, exposing her Jungian obsessions)... I'll let you know if the ending of the book changes my mind. Susan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 22:10:28 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: [*FSFFU*] BDG: Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I read it back in the 70's and thought it was quite witty, but that it would date. (That is to say, I expected rapid progress in what the author assumed would be immutable problems.) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 23:31:02 -0500 Reply-To: Lilith Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Lilith Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] the female man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU OK I haven't read the book yet - but I am going to as soon as [enter excuse here]. I have read other Russ works though, and despite the occasional disagreements with some of her ideology and stuff like that, and despite the fact that in _my own life_ I have thankfully not had to endure the sort of discrimination that women in the 50's had to (I was born in '63) - though I have had to deal with the sort of petty every-day little put-downs and instances that are always like little speedbumps in the path to me enjoying my life - I think that some of us are premature in saying that Russ' concerns as outlined in _Female Man_ are "dated." Because tonight I just got back from Barnes & Noble where I was sitting and having a cup of hot cocoa and a scone and reading some magazines I would not buy, including the latest issue of New Yorker wherein a (male) columnist (Michael something?) wrote a commentary on columnist Maureen Dowd, and the whole article could have been written in the oh, I don't know, the fifties or sixties or something, so cattily anti-woman was it. There was a whole subthread concerning the men Ms. Dowd was dating and how maybe they are the impetus behind her "venomous" writing style; there was the title "Why is Maureen Dowd so Angry?"; there was the unfavorable comparison to Anna Quindlen, a "nurturing, comforting" columnist who wrote about family matters more to the New Yorker article writer's liking, apparently ( _I_ remember thinking that much of the stuff Ms. Quindlen wrote was sentimental cack); there was the implication that Ms. Dowd got where she is by shmoozing with the editors and owners of the publication she works for (as if men don't get ahead by old-boy networks); and the frank astonishment (with an obvious undercurrent of resentment) that Ms. Dowd does not choose to flaunt her private life in public - at a time when people are bemoaning the lack of privacy and discretion in society! - and then in another paragraph seeming to chastise her for daring to bring her date and mingle with people _at a party_ instead of huddling off to the sidelines with friends like "she usually does." That was only one of the many wonderful examples of "how far we've come" that I got to see in just a few magazines (I am not even going to bother with the ads featuring doe-eyed, barely-prepubescent models with that "touch me in inappropriate ways" looks on their faces). No wonder I stick to _PC World_ most of the time. Lilith ********************************************* ************Hell's Half Acre*************** * http://www.concentric.net/~Ligeia * ********************************************* ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 21:00:46 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jessie Stickgold-Sarah Subject: [*FSFFU*] BDG: The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I read this last summer on a cross-country drive (CA to MT), so I don't remember it clearly enough to make specific points. For what it's worth, though, I was born in 1974 and a lot of the basic "discussion points" were *soooo* familiar. There's obviously a lot of improvement. I got to go to an engineering school that was almost exclusively male one generation ago. Only one person asked me if I was going to meet men. Only one other person went out of his way to tell me that I could get in with lower grades because I was a woman. (I was 4th in my class of 550. Whatever.) How long ago was this? You can do the math. It was six years ago. I strongly suspect that a lot of 50-year-old women don't have to take as much shit as they did thirty years ago in part because they're no longer 20. To some degree, every 20-year-old has to take a lot of shit. That's exacerbated by whatever else contributes to a given twenty-year-old's lack of power (female, gay, non-white, anything). This is a bit off-topic. But you may be sure that very few of the issues that Russ talks about are inaccessible. (The structure threw me for the first 30 pages. Then I just said the hell with it, and stopped trying to understand it, which made it much easier to read.) jessie the young'un ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 09:01:50 +0000 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Edward James Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG: Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU THE FEMALE MAN is fresh in my mind at the moment; I had a class on it last week. The sixth or seventh time I have done it, and reactions are slightly different each time. As usual, there were a few men who hated it, and a few who didn't see what the fuss were about, and this time (unusually) ALL the women enjoyed it, and did not find it dated at all. Mind you, were are talking of quite a small sample: I have a dozen or so in my "Modern American Utopias" class, with a slight preponderance of men. A couple of things have surprised me about the comments so far. The comment that someone had found it humourless: I think it is one of the funniest sf novels around. And the comment that aspects of Whileaway were "horrible". Which? The duelling is the only thing I can think of. Yes, the women are not shown as perfect; they are still human, after all. But, were I not debarred from it by an accident of nature, I think it is one of the VERY few Utopias where I could live happily. In part, of course, it is because it is one of the very few utopias where people are shown to have a strong sense of humour and of the ridiculous: and we have to wonder how much of the description of Whileaway is part of Russ's joke... Edward .............................................................................. Professor Edward James, Dept of History, Faculty of Letters and Social Sciences, University of Reading, Whiteknights, READING RG6 6AA, UK Director, Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies Editor, FOUNDATION: THE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION Director of Studies, MA in Science Fiction: Histories, Texts, Media http://www.rdg.ac.uk/~lhsjamse/home.htm .............................................................................. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 01:18:40 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joyce Jones Subject: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I loved this book, though much in it was infuriating. The worst part was though the book was written in 1971 the attitudes that were its impetus have not changed. There are more females in colleges and graduate school, when you call a plumber you might now get a woman instead of a man. That's nice. But women are still the one's made to feel guilty when children suffer emotional disturbances, are socially maladjusted, or just can't read. And the solution to all of life's ills seems to be that we need to make sure every family has a man at its helm. Jeannine might not feel too out of place in 1999. I was so possessed by Female Man that as soon as I finished I had to read Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time which has lead to Tepper's Decline and Fall. It's just an orgy of feminism. What a wonderful month it's been. So much to discuss, I'll just touch on a few thoughts. My favorite character was Jael. When s/he allowed the adrenaline to rush through her so that she could kill as she needed, I just loved it. No, I didn't love the killing, but I was uplifted by her complete sense of mastery, her lack of physical fear (kind of like when Connie in Woman on the Edge goes to the "bad" future and feels no fear when terrorized by the male cyborg) I think many males, even now (I'm thinking of those self important, feather ruffling MD's I know) are first amazed then angered at a woman's lack of fear. Good for Jael, no wonder Jeannine felt an attraction. Another favorite scene was when Jeannine was cleaning her house before going to spend the week with her brother. She just cleaned and cleaned, then washed the windows even though she knew they'd "be filthy" when she came back in a week and she'd have to wash them again. (What would have got them so dirty except her perception of the endless work of cleaning that was her duty?) I've seen this woman, a couple of times in my life I've even been her. Clean, clean, clean, serve, serve, serve, don't think, be a good girl. Then there's Whileaway, a difficult utopia where people aren't considered to be emotionally disturbed if they get irritated with each other. A utopia where people work hard, expect to work hard, expect to work at what they want, thoroughly enjoy having children, expect their children to grow and find their own interests. I've thought about this utopia and the future utopia in Woman on the Edge and the sacrifices the authors have thought necessary to achieve full humanity for woman. On Whileaway there are no men, in Woman on the Edge there are men but they mother and breastfeed just like women, but women have given up the right, then the ability to bear children. It seems these authors (and Nicola Griffith in Ammonite?) think full equality between the sexes cannot be achieved as long as only one sex can bear and nourish children. That's such a harsh pronouncement. How I hope it isn't true. Did anyone see the Mo Gaffney-Kathy Najimy sketch in which they're creating earth and decide on a whim to have women be the ones to bear children. Kathy mentions that this will make the men feel too deprived, what can they do to make the privilege seem less wonderful? Mo has the brilliant idea, they'll have the babies pass through a little hole in the woman's body, the pain will make it easier for the men to be deprived of the process. Then they laugh uproariously. Poor men--womb envy was the title mentioned on the woman's spirituality list. I think it's true. Now, since probably there's not going to be a plague to wipe out men, and probably woman aren't going to give up bearing children, how do we solve the problem, or are we always destined to be at war? Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 13:55:54 0100 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Petra Mayerhofer Subject: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man/Bibliography/When It Changed To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I had read _The Female Man_ (TFM) for the first time 4-5 years ago and remembered it as a difficult and angry book. When I read it this time I thoroughly enjoyed it. I had no difficulties with the 'New Wave', 'deconstructivist', 'non-linear' writing (or whatever the correct term is). At the beginning I thought I could distinguish who the current story-teller was, in the latter part of the book it became difficult to impossible (the viewpoint switches from sentence to sentence sometimes) but I simply accepted that. What I had forgotten was that the book has a lot of humour, at least the first half of it. In some of the messages on TFM so far the posters said they did not find any humour. I am thinking e.g. of the scenes when Janet is interviewed on TV or when at the party a man tries to flirt with her or sentences like 'She loved her father and once was enough' or that paragraph about the black poodle and the final sentence 'At least she is white.' (I've read that paragraph several times before I've got it.). It is not humour to lough out loud and what's behind it is sometimes horrible but I at least had to grin at these parts. However, IMO the latter part of the book is more angry and less 'humorous'. On 1 Feb 99 Todd Mason wrote: > The genius of this book, in part, is in showing us the "utopia" has > horrible aspects, ... What horrible aspects? I think it is not a 'comfortable' utopia. Every person has to be extremely (emotionally) self-sufficient, is completely rootless after her 5th life year, has to create her own family, etc. Perhaps it is because I did not have a Whileawayan upbringing but the description chilled me. But I would not describe it as horrible. On 2 Feb 99 Joyce Jones wrote: > Then there's Whileaway, a difficult utopia where people aren't > considered to be emotionally disturbed if they get irritated with > each other. A utopia where people work hard, expect to work hard, > expect to work at what they want, ... Several times in the description of Whileaway the hard work was stressed but then it was said that a Whileawayan work week is 16 hours. So what is true? Whileawayans work hard in our sense of the word (I think more than 40 hours a week a lot of work) or that they call 16 hours a week hard work or that they work especially hard in these 16 hours (I tend to the last interpretation). On 2 Feb 99 Joyce Jones wrote: > My favorite character was Jael. When s/he allowed the adrenaline to > rush through her so that she could kill as she needed, I just loved > it. No, I didn't love the killing, but I was uplifted by her > complete sense of mastery, her lack of physical fear ... Which of the four 'J' characters we like or not probably says a lot about us. I did not like Jael, could not stand Jeannine while at the same time I pitied her, empathized the most with Joanna and admired Janet. And why use 's/he' for Jael? I was out of the office most of November and December and could not follow the discussion. When I've read up the BDG discussion in the archive I've noticed that Kathleen Friello no longer provides the online bibliography for the current BDG books. I at least always loved to read the reviews and as I have a special interest in TFM at the moment I've done an online search. However, the result is meager: Science Fiction Weekly Review by Doug Fratz http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue66/classic.html Strange Words Review by ??? http://www.strangewords.com/archive/female.html Anger, Laughter, Silence, Transformations and Transgression in Women's Language (Explorations in the Fiction of Joanna Russ and the Dutch Film "A Question of Silence."). Essay by Keridwen N. Luis In: Feminista 1 (1997) 2 (TFM is discussed in the middle of the essay) http://www.feminista.com/v1n2/luisv1n2.html Single-Sexed Utopias and Our Two-Sexed Reality, essay by Susan Stone-Blackburn, discusses TFM, _The Wanderground_ and _A Door into Ocean_ http://math.uwaterloo.ca/~dmswitze/slonczewski/stone-blackburn.html The Unofficial Joanna Russ Homepage, by 'Spirit, the University of Connecticut Libraries Information Server' http://www.lib.uconn.edu/~jlinden/russ.htm C.R.O.N.E.S - Open forum for discussion of the writings of Joanna Russ (organized by FSFFU list members) http://www.breakingset.org/ Student paper on Joanna Russ by Michelle Tabo http://www.english.uiuc.edu/vaughn/english120/russ.htm After I finished TFM I wanted to reread _When it changed_ (WIC) which I thought I had read in LeGuin's Norton SF anthology. But what a surprise, the Russ' story in there is 'Some things I know about Whileaway' (or so). And WIC is not in 'Women of Wonder: The Classic Years' either. Then I looked it up in the Locus Guide but according to that website it is not in print currently and all the older anthologies and collections (the most recent one being _The Best of the Nebulas_ of 1990) are not at the libraries I have access to. Can somebody suggest a collection containing the story and currently in print? Petra *** Petra Mayerhofer **** mayerhofer@usf.uni-kassel.de *** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 06:46:44 PST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Daniel Krashin Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG: Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU >Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 10:33:24 -0800 >From: Dave Samuelson >Subject: Re: BDG: Female Man [snip] >It may be open to attack for having no males with redeeming >qualities, but for it to have any would (I think) defeat the purpose; >besides, any book is (to some extent) an expression of feelings and >opinions that may not be universal,even in the author's biography. [...] There's one male with one redeeming quality: the well-hung wired he-chimp. I really liked that part, kind of an anticipation of cyberpunk and beyond. I thought the section with the mildly depressed woman with the cat and the jerky boyfriend was very good, it had a certain clang of truth to it. I liked the section set on Whileaway (can't remember which name is which). BTW, can any litcrit types out there comment on this? I always had the feeling that Whileaway was sort of a response to the Skoptsies in Cordwainer Smith's "The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal." ( For those who haven't read it, a major spoiler: # # # # said Commander Suzdal encounters a lost colony of humans who have suffered through a plague which killed all the females; they live on in an all-male society which is only hinted at, but seems nightmarishly vivid and exotic. One distinct parallel to Whileawayan society is the practice of lethal duels.) # end spoiler # # # I didn't mind the braided technique because, as someone else on the list said, I just read them as separate stories and I ignored a lot of the more confusing stuff that happened when they all come together towards the end of the book. Danny ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 14:16:02 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Janice E. Dawley" Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man / When It Changed To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Petra Mayerhofer wrote: > Can somebody suggest a collection containing the story and currently > in print? As far as I know, none of the collections in which it has been printed are still available new. However, there are a number of used book services that are helpful. The Advanced Book Exchange (www.abebooks.com) lists 21 copies of *The Zanzibar Cat*, some for as little as $5 US; they also list about 100 copies of *Again, Dangerous Visions*. I could also photocopy the story for you as I have both of these books. :) -- Janice E. Dawley ............. Burlington, VT http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/jedhome.htm Listening to: Tori Amos -- From the Choirgirl Hotel "Reality is nothing but a collective hunch." - Lily Tomlin ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 13:00:04 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bonnie Gray Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I read this book for the first time a couple of years ago (and not since, so I may be a little rusty on it, although I am holding it right now). I read it about the time I read "Woman on The Edge of Time" (Marge Percy) and "Egalia's Daughters" (Gerd Brantenberg). I suppose all of these books can be considered somewhat "dated"... but so can any classic dating all the way back to the Iliad and beyond. What makes a "dated" book worth reading is its relevancy to human nature and society, and I think that Russ' book is VERY relevant (as are the other two). People still read Aldous Huxley and George Orwell and don't discuss their "dated-ness", although I would make the arguement that they are MORE "dated". Even though it has been a couple of years, just sitting here and thinking about it I am filling with images of my favorite scenes, the artistry and the humor of the book (and, okay, the preaching, too). One thing I did want to mention was that when I lent the book out to a male friend a couple of years ago, not only did he not "get it", but he was really upset about the whole "Davy" thing (among many others), Davy being the boy toy that is a "lovely limb of the house". I found these scenes extremely amusing, because the concept of a beautiful female android to serve the needs of her (male) master is such a stupid stereotype... and the language that Russ uses in those scenes is very loving. Very loving... but unmistakably referring to a completely pure sex object. Keep up the great discussions! Bonnie ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 14:29:08 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jennifer Krauel Subject: [*FSFFU*] BDG: Female Man -- what's your favorite quote? To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU When I was reading it I kept wanting to get the highlighter so I could go back and find the bits that were just perfect so I could quote them later. I enjoyed the quote that Susan typed in of her favorite part. What were your favorite lines? Of course I didn't stop and mark my favorite parts, nor do I have the book right in front of me... One line I remember particularly was about how she used to want approval, now she just says "move over!" I think it was in the same section that Susan quoted, as a matter of fact, the part that's the big payoff. Jennifer jkrauel@actioneer.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 16:25:45 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Todd Mason Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG: Female Man: James To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU > A couple of things have surprised me about the comments so far. The > comment that someone had found it humourless: I think it is one of the > funniest sf novels around. And the comment that aspects of Whileaway > were "horrible". Which? Most prominently, that Janet Evason's job requires her to kill people who withdraw from the community...Russ's choice of rationalization that Janet blithely drops in defense of the practice is, well, choice. Well, now we have a first-hand as well as second-hand votes for humorlessness (I'm sorry, I deleted your message, and don't remember your name now)...I certainly found the book (often grimly) hilarious. _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 16:38:07 -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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Several years ago I tried to raise the consciousness of students taking and faculty reading our M.A. comprehensive exams by promulgating an exam reading list that included *The Golden Notebook* (which, like its author, was unfamiliar to most of our faculty). One student preparing for the exam engaged me in a fairly lengthy conversation about how "dated" that book was, since "we" (liberated women) had come so far since then. She also wanted to take more seriously books that were "timeless," a position I told her I found hard to accept. Every book is of its time timely and we like to think (but may not be able to prove) that the best of them continue to be timely (albeit sometimes for different reasons, as Frank Kermode has argued), which I find true of both the Lessing and the Russ. Bonnie Gray wrote: >I read this book for the first time a couple of years ago (and not >since, so I may be a little rusty on it, although I am holding it >right now). I read it about the time I read "Woman on The Edge >of Time" (Marge Percy) and "Egalia's Daughters" (Gerd Brantenberg). >I suppose all of these books can be considered somewhat "dated"... >but so can any classic dating all the way back to the Iliad and >beyond. What makes a "dated" book worth reading is its relevancy >to human nature and society, and I think that Russ' book is VERY >relevant (as are the other two). ...... ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 17:56:52 +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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Everybody who's commented on _The female man_ has tacitly or explicitly assumed the main thrust of the book is the conflict between men as the oppressors and women as the oppressed. But is that really the case? It's true, of course, that Russ' nightmare vision of male oppression fills the entire book and many incidents hinge around oppression by individual males. But all males are portrayed as brutish, amorphous enemies fit only for destruction or conversion (by lobotomy) into sex machines. And, to jump ahead, all four principal characters have a rabid, implacable hatred of men and consciously or unconsciously wish to destroy them; the only way in which they differ is how they express or conceal this hatred. In *my* opinion Russ uses "men" to create the aura of menace and fear necessary to set the stage in the same way that Orwell used "Big Brother" in _1984_. The real conflict is that between the women themselves and reflects the despair Russ felt/feels about what is (I am told) the continuing rejection of lesbians by so many "ordinary" feminists. I believe that Russ describes - in fictionalised, hyperbolized form - the 'Lavender Menace' struggle which was raging at the time she wrote _The female man_ and in which she was (I understand) intimately involved. I'd go further and say that _The female man_ was a statement of Russ' most cherished political beliefs to which she has devoted her life. It might be argued here that I'm "confusing the singer and the song" (as Anthea once said), but, unusually, we have proof to the contrary. And that proof is Russ' achingly digressive but painfully honest _What we are fighting for_ written 22 years after _The female man_. In a very real sense, _The female man_ was a precursor to _What..._ because its characters, their motivation, attitudes and actions all foreshadow the main themes of that book. Viewed in this way, it becomes clear that Jeannine, Joanna and Jael are defined not in terms of their attitude to men or to Joanna as I at first thought, but in terms of their attitude to *Janet* who, as an inhabitant of Whileaway, the single-gender, lesbian, socialist Utopia, closely fits Russ' ideal feminist - a "crazy, man-hating separatist" (_What..._ Chapter 3). Mike Stanton (m_stanton@postmaster.co.uk) _______________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 13:46:27 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Demetria M. Shew" Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 2/4/99 10:03:59 AM Pacific Standard Time, m_stanton@POSTMASTER.CO.UK writes: << - a "crazy, man-hating separatist" (_What..._ Chapter 3). >> Well. I see Russ' work focusing on male BEHAVIORS that women are not supposed to mention, but that drive us nuts. These behaviors are quite real and we encounter them in ordinary life. The questions of how to deal with the behaviors, how to respond to them, how much to excuse, whether one can be be both strongly human and acceptably female in light of the demands of these behaviors, are questions that must be met on a daily basis in one way or another for most of us. These male BEHAVIORS also effect history, the environment and, resources. Whether we can name the behaviors and respond to them morally is a terrible wilderness for women and a tangled path still. To label Russ' work as political, or gendered, is the same as labeling work by Ghandi, or Ericson, or Plato as gendered and political when the very heart of the discourse is recognition of a human problem and all of the human responses to facing and dealing with the problem..and, of course, the consequences of so doing. And perhaps, after decades of corsets and paint, tippy shoes and diets and endless efforts to meet the visual requirements that satisfy some male BEHAVIORS, we may be forgiven for throwing our heads back and laughing uproariously at the very thought of Davy... And if she has male characters that show male behaviors which are offensive and despicable...what morality play does not show folly? Madrone ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 10:50:58 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joyce Jones Subject: [*FSFFU*] BDG Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Rather than responding to Santanico who sings paeans to the wondrous changes to American culture due to youthful 60's activists (and ignores the fact that those same activists are yet alive and I'm thinking not completely incompetent) or Marina who thinks hand cream and estrogen replacement are the same thing and appears to know a lot of very undernourished, overworked gray haired 30 year olds, let me mention one of my favorite quotes, there are so many, but just one today. partial pages 52-54 Whileawayan psychology locates the basis of Whileawayan character in the early indulgence, pleasure, and flowering which is drastically curtailed by the separation from the mothers. This (it says) gives Whileawayan life its characteristic independence, its dissatisfaction, its suspicion, and its tendency toward rather irritable solipsism... Taboos on Whileaway: sexual relations with anybody considerably older or younger than oneself, waste, ignorance, offending others without intending to. And of course the usual legal checks on murder and theft--both those crimes being actually quite difficult to commit. ("See," says Dhilia, "it's murder if it's sneaky or if she doesn't want to fight. So you yell 'Olaf!' and when she turns around, then---") No Whilewayan works more than three hours at a time on any one job, except in emergencies. No Whileawayan marries monogamously. (Some restrict their sexual relations to one other person--at least while that other person is nearby--but there is no legal arrangement.) Whileawayan psychology again refers to the distrust of the mother and the reluctance to form a tie that will engage every level of emotion, all the person, all the time. And the necessity for artificial dissatisfactions. "Without which" (says Dunyasha Bernadetteson, op. cit.) 'we would become so happy we would sit down on our fat, pretty behinds and soon we would start starving, nyet?" And my favorite ideas of all the great ideas that are here are: it's taboo to offend someone without intending to. I love that. Here in our 1999 the apology is "Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to offend." How much more honest that way would be. Which leads to the other favorite idea that artificial dissatisfactions are necessary. No prolonged naval gazing there. I don't like offensive people and I see no point in artificial dissatisfactions "Can't we all just get along?" But I like the idea of liking it. Her people are so feisty. It makes me smile just to type this. Oh, and the idea that fat behinds are sexy, gotta love that. Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 16:45:50 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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 2/4/99 11:03:59 AM Mountain Standard Time, m_stanton@POSTMASTER.CO.UK writes: << Everybody who's commented on _The female man_ has tacitly or explicitly assumed the main thrust of the book is the conflict between men as the oppressors and women as the oppressed. But is that really the case? >> -- interesting post. Personally, I always viewed separatism as simply irrelevant, rather like a passionate conviction that everything would be great if only everybody obeyed the Golden Rule. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 13:53:46 -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: [*FSFFU*] BDG: Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I have to admit that at first I didn't like this book-- I was alienated by its anger, and it made me uncomfortable because I had to rethink my feminism. (I suppose that's a good thing.) But reading the posts from the group has helped me to warm up to it. I think it's a very powerful book, and some passages are just brilliant, but on the whole it was too didactic for me. I did find many parts funny, though the vitriol driving some of the humor put me off. If I would have read this book when I was 17 or so, (I'm 29 now) I think I would have been affirmed by it. I was very angry when I was younger-- burning up with righteous anger, and then, well-- I burnt out. So it makes sense that a book like this would throw me-- I haven't made peace with my politics. I find it's easier on a day to day basis not to prick up my ears to every bit of sexism around me. That's what I used to do. And I was one angry girl. I found the style of the book a bit like Kathy Acker's style, but Russ seems less interested in ambiguity and junk language than Acker. Some have discussed whether this book is obsolete-- as Russ so cleverly hints in the end, that her little book not despair if it is not needed anymore. But the irony is that once I finished it I thought, yes-- it's not needed any more, but I also thought, Of course it's needed. So I was torn. Mike Levy points out that the book is actually discussing feminists relationships with each other, and not so much women's relationships with men. I think this is a good way to look at it. But I also began to wonder what the "third wave" of feminism is all about, the "new feminism" and it's ability to go beyond polemics and embrace ambiguities, kind of a post modern sensibility. This book is on the threshold of an older feminism and a newer one. It has a postmodern, fragmented construction and yet its sentiments are unambiguous. To me, the enemies and heroes of the book are clear. Though I must say that reading others comments has helped me see that the book is more complicated than I had first thought--- and also that it made me uncomfortable is a good sign. Plus, a codpiece wearing, deep fried grease- eating patriarch named Lenny, is funny-- as was all the random stupid advice men give throughout the book-- "Is your dog drinking cold fountain water?!" How many times I've had to suffer men trying to be useful like that. I guess it's easier to laugh at the less tragic stuff. (ie. I didn't find the Davy thing funny, just creepy.) --Allyson ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 16:57:10 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: [*FSFFU*] BDG Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 2/4/99 11:54:05 AM Mountain Standard Time, hoop5@EMAIL.MSN.COM writes: << This (it says) gives Whileawayan life its characteristic independence, its dissatisfaction, its suspicion, and its tendency toward rather irritable solipsism... >> -- well, that's the thing about utopias -- they generally don't have to coexist with (or compete against) other societies. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 16:10:36 -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: [*FSFFU*] BDG: Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I think we were meant to find the Davy thing creepy, myself. I've never really viewed Female Man as an unduly angry book. Maybe I stand alone and lonely, like the Cold Duke of Coffin Castle (place _that_reference anybody?) or maybe I'm just young enough so that I have the luxury of separating criticizing bad male behavior from criticizing men in some essentialist sense. And women don't come off incredibly well either. Who is perfect? Whileaway, though I'd go there like a shot, is a rather disturbing place. I love this book because it is so literary, it leaves so much to the reader's initiative. Also because the prose is humorous and lucid and strong, rather reminiscent for me (weirdly enough) of Orwell's essays. Has anyone commented yet on the fact that Janet is actually considered rather stupid on Whileaway? This is a fixation of Russ's--future societies where everyone has become so smart that today-type smart people are dumb by comparison. And has anyone read the short story "A Few Things I Know About Whileaway", which is mainly an excerpt from the book with a few crucial differences? And that story in Women of Wonder II? About the Cross-Temporal Military Police, or whatever they're called? Russ has a rather interesting set of fixations about futures, rather similar to Delaney's. >>> Allyson Shaw 02/04 3:53 PM >>> >How many times I've had to suffer men trying to be useful like that. I guess >it's easier to laugh at the less tragic stuff. (ie. I didn't find the Davy >thing funny, just creepy.) >--Allyson ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 16:20:52 -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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU >>> "S.M. Stirling" 02/04 3:45 PM >> >Personally, I always viewed separatism as simply irrelevant, rather like a >passionate conviction that everything would be great if only everybody obeyed >the Golden Rule. This is why I like Samuel Delaney. His exhaustingly diverse futures are postulated on a lot of different groups doing different things at the same time- -that is, he might well say that separatism was not irrelevant (honestly...) but a choice that some people might want to make, people who (being people) were relevant, acceptable, worthy of interest, and so forth. The logic that something is irrelevant if only a few people do it leads eventually to the conclusion that everything is irrelevant, since every action is ultimately different from every other, with different motives and results. Separatism is probably irrelevant if you are studying interracial marriages or heterosexual sexual positioning, but the separtist impulse itself is extremely interesting as a cultural indicator. It depends on your approach, or, as they put it on Sesame Street, "the whole thing's 'bout the size of where you put your eyes...that's about the size of it." (That's it, cancel Sesame Street, that sink of postmodernism and moral relativism!) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 14:35:16 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bonnie Gray Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG: Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU A couple of people have mentioned that they don't find the Davy thing amusing at all, just creepy. Perhaps I should have been a little more explicit in my first post about that. Of COURSE I also find him creepy; in fact, very scary because I see him as a future possibility. However, whether Russ intended me to find it amusing or not, I do. Probably because I have read and seen too many stories and movies where the female character is the sex object... or a beautiful android in love with an undeserving hero/maker... only Russ takes it to such an extreme that it is ludicrous, as well as disturbing. But enough about that. Not even my favorite part of the book, by a long shot! And maybe this is a misinterpretation (sorry; I'm an engineer, I don't do this stuff for a living :) ), but I often wondered if the four women in the story also represented different views of "feminism". Even Jeannine. Or maybe it's just because the back of the book jacket in my edition asks the question: "Are these four women -- or one?" Probably just the publishers trying to be clever. I'm glad people are finally diving into the discussion; although I really liked the book, I have also found it "uncomfortable" and felt like I was missing alot. I'm hoping we can fill in some of my gaps. Bonnie ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 16:49:16 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jocelyn & Sheryl Denton-LeSage Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU >Oh, and the idea that fat behinds are sexy, gotta love that. > >Joyce Well, hell, darlin---mine sure is! Sheryl ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 16:54:39 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jocelyn & Sheryl Denton-LeSage Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU S.M. Stirling wrote: >Personally, I always viewed separatism as simply irrelevant, rather like a >passionate conviction that everything would be great if only everybody obeyed >the Golden Rule. I would tend to agree. I went through a separatist phase, and found it to be fun and strengthening for awhile, but eventually tedious. It's nice to have the possibility of separating (and I would imagine this to be true whether one is male or female), but still--the world is stubbornly composed of men and women, and it's a useful skill to be able to get along with both. Sheryl ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 16:42:00 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Todd Mason Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG: Female Man: Gray To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU > And maybe this is a misinterpretation (sorry; I'm an engineer, I don't > do this stuff for a living :) ), but I often wondered if the > four women in the story also represented different views of > "feminism". Even Jeannine. Or maybe it's just because the back > of the book jacket in my edition asks the question: "Are these > four women -- or one?" Probably just the publishers trying > to be clever. I would say that you've got it as much as I have--and I'd suggest that the four characters are similarly-named so that you'd consider them four aspects of the fictional Joanna Russ (and how she might act in her current reality, and in the three potential other ones), capable of self-criticism and criticism of fellow feminists (lesbian, separatist and not) as well as of men and patriarchy. However, the most egregious acts are mostly committed by men, 'cause that's what's most prevalent. That someone's reading led them to take All the critique as against other feminists is narrowing too much I'd say (thought that kinda strange), but throughout the book JR doesn't let anyone completely off the hook, even mocking the notion of "the rescue of the female child" to some extent in Janet's agonizing over her lust for the teen. And that the "utopian" Whileaway features some of the same sort of mindless cruelty that other real and imaginary societies incorporate does slap at any notion that JR is putting forward a Golden-Rule paradise of the kind Stirling dismisses... _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 16:45:14 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Todd Mason Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Stanton To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I don't think "Joanna's" attitude toward men is rabid or implacable. Janet is not impressed with our culture (I don't get the impression that most current women would gain her admiration too quickly, either); the others have good reason to hate men thoroughly. Feeling guilty? > all four principal characters have a rabid, implacable hatred of men _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 17:48:17 -0700 Reply-To: camiller@gte.net Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Cathie Miller Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU S.M. Stirling wrote: >Personally, I always viewed separatism as simply irrelevant, rather like >a passionate conviction that everything would be great if only everybody >obeyed the Golden Rule. I don't mean to be daft, but I don't know what this means. Pls splain. (Understand all the words, just not the point.) Chris ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 17:46:42 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Maryelizabeth Hart Subject: [*FSFFU*] markets / BDG To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I agree with Mike and the others who said basically that most of the SF houses are looking to publish good sf, regardless of the preferences of the characters. DAW, Tor, Baen and Del Rey have all been cited as major houses. Circlet is a good small house source. FWIW, as a SF bookstore buyer, I would recommend all of these above Naiad, if only because for them the sex element seems to be more important than the story element. RE: Davey, the "boy toy" I wonder if people's comfort levels with this character depend on whether they read him more as a "boy" or a "toy." Is he a male character reduced to a mechanical existance, or a biological machine? My $.02 on the age thing. Born in 1965, read FEMALE MAN for the first time fairly recently, was angry at the number of issues which still are present, given the time which has passed since it was written. Don't comprehend anyone who can read it and think that it doesn't apply to her life in 1999. 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: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 21:07:44 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: [*FSFFU*] BDG: Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 2/4/99 3:14:22 PM Mountain Standard Time, JFrankln@FAMPRAC.UMN.EDU writes: << I think we were meant to find the Davy thing creepy, myself. >> -- I always thought it was satirical in intent. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 19:20:09 -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: [*FSFFU*] BDG To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU > Maryelizabeth wrote: > > RE: Davey, the "boy toy" > > I wonder if people's comfort levels with this character depend on whether > they read him more as a "boy" or a "toy." Is he a male character reduced to > a mechanical existance, or a biological machine? This is an interesting question-- I to me it's irrelevant. I understand, As Mr. Stirling points out, that it is satire-- but it is almost too effective. I can't watch this kind of stuff when women are involved, and we're usually never put in the position of watching men dehumanized in this way. I suppose Jael's (it was Jael, right?) tenderness for him(it) made it all more disturbing. As if her hatred had lead her away from the possiblity of loving an actual person. So it wasn't so much his plight as hers that disturbed me. --Allyson ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 23:06:33 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Janice E. Dawley" Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU At 04:45 PM 2/4/99 EST, S.M. Stirling wrote: >Personally, I always viewed separatism as simply irrelevant, rather like a >passionate conviction that everything would be great if only everybody obeyed >the Golden Rule. Huh. So separatism is irrelevant, eh? Sort of like "immortality". At least separatism is somewhat possible in today's world. And thinking about it is VERY interesting for some women. ----- Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/jedhome.htm Listening to: Sunny Day Real Estate -- How It Feels to Be Something On "...the public and the private worlds are inseparably connected; the tyrannies and servilities of the one are the tyrannies and servilities of the other." Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 23:30:33 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: donna simone Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU At 04:45 PM 2/4/99 EST, S.M. Stirling wrote: >>Personally, I always viewed separatism as simply irrelevant, rather like a >>passionate conviction that everything would be great if only everybody obeyed >>the Golden Rule. JDawley: Brava. And it is also very interesting to members of any oppressed or "subordinate" group in any social or cultural milieu, and it is practiced in many variations in many places. No surprise that the vocalization of its irrelevance here is made by a american white male. donna donnaneely@earthlink.net ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 04:42:27 +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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man Comments: cc: ajhs@usa.net To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On 4 Feb 99, at 13:53, Allyson Shaw wrote: > Some have discussed whether this book is obsolete >-- as Russ so cleverly hints in the end, that her > little book not despair if it is not needed anymore. One of the points that struck me very forcibly when comparing _The female man_ and _What we are fighting for_ was the the difference in tone of the endings. As I read it, _The female man_ ended up on a vaguely optimistic note - Russ apparently saw some hope for the future (although there have been suggestions that this was added for commercial reasons at the behest of her publisher). _What..._ on the contrary has, in spite of Russ' somewhat pious denials, a deep sense of pessimism and despair. Not about men, I hasten to add because Russ has implicitly written them off but about "intra-female" relations, specifically those between lesbians and other feminists. Mike Stanton (m_stanton@postmaster.co.uk) ____________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 04:44:00 +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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man Comments: cc: ajhs@usa.net To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On 4 Feb 99, at 13:46, Demetria M. Shew wrote: > To label Russ' work as political, or gendered, is the same as > labeling work by Ghandi, or Ericson, or Plato as gendered and > political when the very heart of the discourse is recognition of a > human problem and all of the human responses to facing and dealing > with the problem..and, of course, the consequences of so doing. Madrone I'm not sure what you mean by "gendered" so I won't comment on that. But I didn't use "political" pejoratively, but simply repeated what *Russ* said about herself (that she DEFINES HERSELF among other things as "socialist" is well-known). On your examples: I don't know which Ericson you're referring to. Mahatma Gandhi described himself as a politician when he was leader of the Indian Nationalist Movement and when he was active (and probably the dominant figure) in the Indian National Congress. _The Republic_ which is widely regarded as Plato's most influential work is perhaps the quintessential political work. My comments on Russ weren't intended to be unconstructively judgmental, but were meant to suggest reasons for a different interpretation of _The female man_. It's seldom that a writer has the courage to lay her political soul bare as Russ has in _What we are fighting for_ and by doing so she's given us an extremely powerful tool for analysing her work. We owe it to Russ to use the gift she's given us. Mike Stanton (m_stanton@postmaster.co.uk) _____________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 00:02:33 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: donna simone Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU MStanton < _What..._ on the contrary has, in spite of Russ' somewhat pious denials, a deep sense of pessimism and despair. Not about men, I hasten to add because Russ has implicitly written them off but about "intra-female" relations, specifically those between lesbians and other feminists. > What?!?!?!?!??!?! Russ has implicity written off men? What are you trying to say here? Regardless, I would suggest that you are mistaken. I saw Cherrie Moraga last evening. She was recalling a talk she attended by August Wilson were he explained that when he writes he is very much writing from within the 'Slave house' rather than the 'Masters house'. I believe for Russ' text 'What Are We Fighting For?' an analogy can be drawn. Russ is standing in womens space for the entirety of her book. It is a dialogue with her sisters opened to all. Men especially could approach/read this book with awe and respect, for it is an open door onto hearfelt, poignant and earnest dialogues on womens concerns as we would discuss them amongst each other. donna donnaneely@earthlink.net ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 23:33:54 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joanna Goltzman Subject: [*FSFFU*] Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I think The Female Man is a great book. A professor of mine that I really admire said she thinks the book is poorly written because it is hard to figure out what's going on and who is speaking, but I loved it. I admit I read an article on it before reading the actual book ( I can dig up the name of the article if anyone is interested) but once I understood who the speakers were, I enjoyed the book. Some of my favorite parts and quotes: *The superwoman section: Joanna talking about a beautiful, intellectual, charming woman who has eight kids, does her own cooking, keeps her home spotless, has a demanding nine-to-five job, and turns into a Playboy fantasy for her husband every night "dispelling the canard that you cannot be eight people simultaneously with two different sets of values" *"everyone must have his own abortion" --I just love it when Russ makes fun of the notion that the "generic" male pronoun "he" includes women. *when Joanna instructs her daughter book to "wash your face and take your place without a fuss in the Library of Congress" and warns her not to punch anyone in the nose *There's also lots of cat imagery that I get a kick out of. I also see connections between The Female Man and Nicola Griffith's Ammonite. In Ammonite there is the all-female society, a virus that killed all the men (although at the end of The Female Man there's the hint that the women of Whileaway killed off all the men rather than a plague), also the new settlement the mirrors in Ammonite start toward the end of the book is called what translates to something like "in a while" which makes me think of Russ's Whileaway. I find The Female Man very funny and don't feel like it's dated. Joanna G. (How could I not like a book with so many Joannas in it?) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 00:54:59 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Nicola Griffith Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 2/4/99 9:34:47 PM Pacific Standard Time, jgoltzma@IX.NETCOM.COM writes: > I also see connections between The Female Man and Nicola Griffith's > Ammonite. In Ammonite there is the all-female society, a virus that killed > all the men (although at the end of The Female Man there's the hint that the > women of Whileaway killed off all the men rather than a plague), also the > new settlement the mirrors in Ammonite start toward the end of the book is > called what translates to something like "in a while" which makes me think > of Russ's Whileaway. You're absolutely right. Though my novel was written more as an answer to "When It Changed" than to _The Female Man_. Nicola Nicola Griffith http://www.sff.net/people/Nicola ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 23:38:12 -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: [*FSFFU*] the female man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU As I said a month ago, I have a few copies (I think it's only appeared in paperback) which I could part with, though I am unwilling to pay everyone's postage and there's obviously delay time in getting it through the mail. Santanico wrote: > I can't find the damn thing anywhere. The cornerstone of > modern feminist literature (or so I've heard), and every bookshop and > library seems to be mysteriously out of stock. > > And yet, the Gor novels are readily available. Sigh... > > Sant. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 02:59:42 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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 2/4/99 11:56:32 PM Mountain Standard Time, donnaneely@EARTHLINK.NET writes: > -- Canadian, actually... 8-). In this case, we have a _literal_ application of the argument _ad hominem_. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 03:15:04 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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 2/5/99 12:39:33 AM Mountain Standard Time, jdawley@TOGETHER.NET writes: >At least separatism is somewhat possible in today's world. -- depends what you mean by "possible". Eg., is it possible to have a separate politics, which exercises real power? A separate economics, with real money and _economic_ power? Not very likely. Is it possible that women _in general_ will become separatist? (Which is the premise of "The Female Man". Not very likely either. It is possible for individual women to chose not to have more than they must to do with men, and if that's their choice, that's fine -- it's a free country, after all. It just isn't very culturally or politically significant. Some women chose to live on Hutterite religious communes... and _they're_ not very significant, either, big-picture-wise. (Neither are male Hutterites, of course.) >And thinking about it is VERY interesting for some women. -- Didn't say it wasn't. I was merely questioning its general utility, except as a basis for literary satire, like Swift's lands of talking horses and Lilliputians. Eg., it's very interesting for some black Americans to think about the CIA creating AIDS as part of a plot, but it probably doesn't do much about reducing the level of racial discrimination in our society. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 03:18:17 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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 2/5/99 12:54:38 AM Mountain Standard Time, m_stanton@POSTMASTER.CO.UK writes: << _The Republic_ which is widely regarded as Plato's most influential work is perhaps the quintessential political work. >> -- also rather feminist, by Classical Greek standards. Of course, it was based on Sparta, where the position of women was better than in most of the Greek world. (Upper-class women, at least.) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 08:01:44 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: donna simone Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU -----Original Message----- From: S.M. Stirling To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Date: Friday, February 05, 1999 3:03 AM Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man > -- Canadian, actually... 8-). last I checked Canada was in america. i am well aware of your "cultural roots". ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 08:10:43 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: donna simone Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Stirling: >>And thinking about it is VERY interesting for some women.>> -- Didn't say it wasn't. I was merely questioning its general utility, except as a basis for literary satire, like Swift's lands of talking horses and Lilliputians. Significance and utility in bunches. Men have been using separatism for eons to maintain their power and control. I believe men occupy your 'big picture". donna ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 07:16:12 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Santanico Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU At 08:01 AM 5/02/99 -0500, you wrote: >> > >-- Canadian, actually... 8-). > >last I checked Canada was in america. i am well aware of your "cultural roots". She knows your secret, SM! Run for the hills! Come on, Donna. I may not always agree with everything SM says (though that thing about listening to hippies ramble about the Summer of Love forever was damn funny), but I won't stoop to the "You're an American white man, so what would you know?" defense. That's not feminism, that's just reverse chauvinism. Imagine the reaction in these parts if a man said, "You're an American white woman, so what would you know?" If you can't participate in a debate without getting personal, perhaps you shouldn't participate. Sant. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 08:59:06 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Robin Reid Subject: [*FSFFU*] BDG: The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I haven't read this novel recently, but it is one of my favorite books (cherished at home rather than in my office because reprints are hard to find, and I've gone through three copies), and I thought I'd jump in with a few comments here. I was born in 1955, in Moscow, Idaho (where the Sixties never came!), and started reading Russ with "When It Changed," printed in Ellison's _Dangerous Visions_ in the late sixties. I read TFM pretty soon after it came out--cannot recall the exact date--and have read it regularly ever since, like every year or so. Yes, it is difficult to read--extremely literary SF, extremely EARLY (with Delaney) example of narrative techniques that some people think Thomas Pynchon and others invented (like James Joyce gets credit for stream of consciousness storytelling when I think Virginia Woolf did it earlier and better in _Mrs. Dalloway_, but that's nother issue). The four women: Jael makes it pretty clear in a discussion with the others that all four ARE the "same" person (genetically) although all four were raised in four different human cultures. It might not be clear on first readings, but the other hints (all those "J" names, plus a fifth unnamed J, Joanna I think, being the author) "attack" the idea that there is some essential identity/self, that this essential identity/self is tied to gender, and so on and so forth. Same person/different people--at the same time. I agree that a major issue in the book is the 'heterosexual' women's reactions to the 'lesbian' (if all four are genetically the same, then what does that say about sexuality.....?) Anger/humor: I have had a lot of discussions with women who are younger than I am, and have more or less accepted that most of them see the anger as offputting and believe firmly that "we" are all past that. But then ate age 20 I had quite firm ideas about life, the universe and everything. And that included the fact that "I liked men" so I couldn't be a feminist. At age 43 I also have firm, passionate ideas about life, the universe, and everything. The problem is they aren't the same ones! And I can remember it fairly well, partly through all the writing I did. Generational conflicts in feminism have the potential to be as or more vicious than the conflicts around "race" and "sexuality." I see some intersting things starting up again (like quite passionate dystopia/utopian feminist SF novels by Esther Friesner and others who are of the "younger" generation", plus lots of gender bending stuff by the writers we've been talking about.) In terms of attitudes, I think region has as much to do with it as age. I teach in a "buckle of the Bible Belt," rural Texas, small towns of a few thousand where there are dozens of Southern Baptist churches. I see the same attitudes the "fifties" J (Janine?--sorry, I don't have the book here) expresses being expressed by students. I also see a whole lot of young women, early twenties, back in school, divorced, with several children because the husband they married right out of high school isn't their husband any more. I see students who think the ONLY thing a woman can do to support herself is being an elementary school teacher or a nurse. While these professions are important (and horribly paid), I do not believe they are the ONLY professions available to women. As a single woman in a mostly male dominated profession (English isn't as much anymore, but university teaching is), I have had to learn not to sit by the other woman in committee meetings because half the males present will make "jokes" about the secret feminist agenda we are pursuing. A lot of Russ' humor may make more sense to people working in the same academic culture she worked in throughout her life. (Oh, a sidenote as to why she hasn't written another novel--she has written quite eloquently of major disability issues because of back probloems--she switched to short pieces in Extra(Ordinary) People, I think, because she couldn't sit and had to write standing up. _What are We Fighting For_ probably took a long time because of those problems.) Different times? Yes and no. And don't forget what happens in other cultures/countries. I don't believe feminism is limited to one individual woman being happy with her good job and successful partnership (straight or lesbian or bi); I believe feminism is a commitment to an on-going process of working for all women. Women in industrialized nations may feel secure, that things like what is going on by the Taliban cannot happen to "us," but how secure are the "rights"? Separatism: As in so many things, it all depends on how you define it. In my own life, I interact professinally and I believe on the whole (there are some men on this list I've interacted electronically with before who can speak to this issue) pleasantly with many men, including scholars on other campuses, my colleagues, and my department head (there are only two women department heads on this campus, and one heads an all-female department--social work--and the other is my housemate who was recently appointed ad interim head before she got tenure because of a major crisis in the department), Dean, President, and so on. However--perhaps through a conscious choice or perhaps because of other factors, I have to say that ALL of my closest friends and emotional supporters are female. I consider that in some ways I lead a separatist life--but it's not just some sort of stomping off and refusing to talk to men. As I have often said, as long as the bombs/weapons/governments/banks/keep going with the list are primarily controlled by men, there is no way to do the fictional separatism of utopian novels. But I do not believe those writers advocate that in some simplistic way. I never wanted to get married, never wanted to have children, and did want to read, write, and have a lot of cats. So I did. I believe men can be feminists, if they choose to rethink a whole lot of things and commit to it, just as I believe women must go through a similar process. We have all been raised in a sexist culture (the degree of overt sexism may differ), and nobody is perfectly pure. Ditto for racism. In my classes, I have to moderate sexist generalizations by women students about men more often than I had to moderated sexist genrealizations by men students about women--an interesting situation I haven't entirely figured out. Must go get ready for class! Robin ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 10:22:39 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jocelyn & Sheryl Denton-LeSage Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] the female man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU My copy is anthologized in a book called Radical Utopias (including work by Delany and Charnas) which I think I got from the Quality Paperback book club. It's been a few years, though, and one thing I've learned from working at a bookstore is how dang FAST books seem to go out of print. Sheryl ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 12:55:46 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Janice E. Dawley" Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU "S.M. Stirling" wrote: > It is possible for individual women to chose not to have more than > they must to do with men, and if that's their choice, that's fine -- > it's a free country, after all. > > It just isn't very culturally or politically significant. Some women > chose to live on Hutterite religious communes... and _they're_ not > very significant, either, big-picture-wise. (Neither are male > Hutterites, of course.) > > >And thinking about it is VERY interesting for some women. > > -- Didn't say it wasn't. I was merely questioning its general > utility, except as a basis for literary satire, like Swift's lands of > talking horses and Lilliputians. "Culturally and politically significant": this begs the question, "significant to whom?" A large measure of feminism is realizing that for quite a lot of recorded history the opinions and lives of women were not deemed significant enough to even mention except as asides. The writing of history and the determination of what is "culturally significant" is a subjective process, if only because it means choosing not to include certain things, much as the process of physically seeing with one's eyes is a subjective process. I would like you to explain how you have arrived at the conclusion that separatism is insignificant. Maybe that would be an enrichment of the discussion rather than a blanket statement that insults all those who *do* find the idea or (incomplete) practice of separatism significant. I think Russ' chapter on separatism in *What Are We Fighting For?* quite ably outlines some of the reasons that it is an important concept in the feminist toolbox, even if many feminists don't take it seriously or are downright opposed to even thinking about it. And personally I find the question "what would we be like if we were not taught to be women" (to paraphrase Karen Joy Fowler) fascinating and intimately tied with ideas of separatism, women-only spaces and single-sex education. I think Whileaway is a thoughtful, full-blooded imagining of an answer to that question. Ditto the Riding Women of S.M. Charnas' *Motherlines* and the people of Jeep in Nicola Griffith's *Ammonite*. -- Janice E. Dawley ............. Burlington, VT http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/jedhome.htm Listening to: Tori Amos -- From the Choirgirl Hotel "Reality is nothing but a collective hunch." - Lily Tomlin ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 10:15:32 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jessie Stickgold-Sarah Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] the female man & separatism To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU As I see it there are a whole lot of ways to practice separatism. One can have a primarily female social circle (I'm using female separatism as the example but one can generalize to any group); one can have a woman-only living arrangement; one can temporarily abstain from all contact with men, as in a short retreat or a sort of hermitage. In my experience, all of these things have a profound impact on the person practicing them, an impact which is almost always used to reinterpret the "rest of the world". To see oneself as normative is an amazing experience if you don't grow up with it. To read someone else's fantasy of a world in which you are normative does something to your head: you start to recognize the ways in which you adjust to the world, you realize you don't always have to be the exception. Whileaway makes us all think, doesn't it? Then for all of us, it has made a change. When I'm not up for that, sometimes I'll go read two random chapters of E. Lynn's _The Northern Girl_ just to hear sentences in which "she" is the indefinite pronoun. What I learn from my various mini-separatist moments, I bring to my life, to my job, to my relationships, to my writing. I suspect that's true of everyone. And that ain't irrelevant at all. jessie ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 19:00:35 +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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On 5 Feb 99, at 0:02, donna simone wrote: > Russ is standing in womens space for the entirety > of her book. It is a dialogue with her sisters > opened to all. Men especially could approach/read > this book with awe and respect, for it is an open > door onto hearfelt, poignant and earnest dialogues > on womens concerns as we would discuss them > amongst each other Donna No one has any right to "awe and respect"; every author has to repeatedly earn awe and respect from each of her readers. That said, I would hate to give the impression that I found Russ' work boring or useless. On the contrary, both _The female man_ and _What..._ were endlessly fascinating and have both proven invaluable to me during the writing of my manual on assessing and evaluating staff during risk analysis. Mike Stanton (m_stanton@postmaster.co.uk) _________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 15:21:58 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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 2/5/99 6:13:52 AM Mountain Standard Time, donnaneely@EARTHLINK.NET writes: >Men have been using separatism for eons to maintain their power and control. >I believe men occupy your 'big picture". >> --Actually, men have been using _exculsion_ for eons to maintain their power and control, which is a very different thing. Men have occupied the locus of power and unjustly excluded women therefrom. If you want power, you have to get in to the locus. Separating yourself from it just dis-empowers you all the more thoroughly. Eg., suffrage activists didn't set up a separate Parliament -- they demanded votes and a place in the _real_ Parliament. Real politics has to involve society-as-a-whole, great gobs of people, and the levers of power. The whole game is about access to those levers. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 15:37:46 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: [*FSFFU*] BDG: The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 2/5/99 8:09:30 AM Mountain Standard Time, Robin_Reid@TAMU- COMMERCE.EDU writes: >I see some intersting things starting up again (like quite passionate >dystopia/utopian feminist SF novels by Esther Friesner -- I'll have to tell Esther that's she's a member of the younger generation... 8-). She'll be tickled pink. >In terms of attitudes, I think region has as much to do with it as age. -- very good point. "Time" happens at different rates in different areas. >A lot of Russ' humor may make more sense to people working in the same >academic culture she worked in throughout her life. -- and, re: your earlier point, a West Texas college is a very different environment from, say, Berkeley. >Women in industrialized nations may feel secure, that things like what is >going on by the Taliban cannot happen to "us," but how secure are the >"rights"? -- personally I'd advocate "emphatic re-education" for the Taliban. (Something on the order of strapping them over the muzzles of cannon and pulling the lanyard... 8-). It's a bad sign that there isn't more agitation and militancy about what's going on in Afghanistan -- partly, I suppose, because it's so bad it's unbelievable. >As I have often said, as long as the bombs/weapons/governments/banks/keep >going with the list are primarily controlled by men, there is no way to do the >fictional separatism of utopian novels. -- well, yeah. Glad to have someone else point this out. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 12:41:47 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jessie Stickgold-Sarah Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU >Real politics has to involve society-as-a-whole, great gobs of people, and the >levers of power. The whole game is about access to those levers. I guess the personal isn't political anymore. The master's tools now are the *only* thing that will tear down the master's house. Thank goodness we no longer have those dippy, irrelevant consciousness raising groups which have *no relationship whatsoever* to the feminism of the 60s and 70s. jessie ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 16:23:18 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: gingembre Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On Fri, 5 Feb 1999, S.M. Stirling wrote: > Men have occupied the locus of power and unjustly excluded women therefrom. > > If you want power, you have to get in to the locus. Separating yourself from > it just dis-empowers you all the more thoroughly. Alternately, you can refuse to play entirely and stop depending on the locus of power that the other group has. You can re-invent the rules. Not everyone wants to do this--most people just want to be able to succeed under the current rules. But that's not the only option. Has anyone here read "The City, Not Long After" by Pat Murphy? That book changed the way I think about concepts of power struggles, although it's hard to tell if that was an intended effect or not. -- Susan susan@apocalypse.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "I wanna be mesmerizing too" --Liz Phair ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 13:45:27 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Stephany Burge Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] the female man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Thu, Feb 04, 1999 at 10:27:18PM -0600, Santanico writes... > Same here. I swear, I can't find the damn thing anywhere. The cornerstone of > modern feminist literature (or so I've heard), and every bookshop and > library seems to be mysteriously out of stock. I got mine through amazon.com. It only takes about three days to arrive. -stephany ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 13:57:04 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Keith Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On Fri, 5 Feb 1999, Janice E. Dawley wrote: > And personally I find the > question "what would we be like if we were not taught to be women" (to > paraphrase Karen Joy Fowler) fascinating and intimately tied with ideas > of separatism, women-only spaces and single-sex education. I think > Whileaway is a thoughtful, full-blooded imagining of an answer to that > question. Ditto the Riding Women of S.M. Charnas' *Motherlines* and the > people of Jeep in Nicola Griffith's *Ammonite*. As was the much shorter, but equally apt Sylvia answer to one of Harry's customers: "Face it, Syl, you need us. Can you imagine a world without men?" "No crime, and lots of fat, happy women." Kathleen ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 14:27:31 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Stephany Burge Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG: Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU (for those of you who don't remember, I'm the one who didn't get the humor of the book or understand it. i can finally recall finding parts of it amusing, especially those recounted by the people on this list) Thu, Feb 04, 1999 at 01:53:46PM -0800, Allyson Shaw writes... > I have to admit that at first I didn't like this book-- I was alienated by > its anger, and it made me uncomfortable because I had to rethink my > feminism. (I suppose that's a good thing.) I agree here. Between the writing style & the anger, I was completely lost. The book did make me think about my feminism too. Although, I'm not sure if I've ever really thought about it. I've always just assumed things... like it was fine to study engineering, not get married, not wear makeup, etc. Sure, other people did different things, but it never mattered to me (with the exclusion of junior high). On a personal level, I couldn't understand where the characters were coming from. The more I thought about it, the more I could see how applicable this book could still be. Regardless, this has been a fascinating discussion. I've decided to give it Russ another chance. I'm reading "The Hidden Side of the Moon." Short stories will probably be easier for me to follow... Although even in the first story (Little Dirty Girl), I can see where my background/assumptions differ from hers. She describes all the little girls of Seattle as "obedient and feminine." The dirty girl is different (my intrepretation) because she goes out and plays, gets dirty & enjoys herself. I'm not even going to ask "didn't all little girls go catch frogs, climb trees and get dirty?" :) The point of my original post was to say that things have in fact improved if people like myself can honestly say they don't understand where Russ is coming from. Don't get me wrong here, there are parts of it I do "get" but a lot of it simply escaped me. > I found the style of the book a bit like Kathy Acker's style, but Russ seems > less interested in ambiguity and junk language than Acker. I never could follow her books either... Robin, I really enjoyed your post. I also grew up in Idaho and went to school in Moscow. Perhaps my experience in Idaho was abnormal. My parents were hippies. Mom went to work while dad stayed home to raise my brother & I. It was always my father & my male science teachers who were the most encouraging to me. I had forgotten that such an attitude is not prevalent in all of the US. Thanks for reminding me. -stephany ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 19:53:43 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: donna simone Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Mike Stanton said: Mike, try as I might, I cannot find where I said that Russ "has any right to" anything in my comments. Believe the key word was "could" in fact. donna ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 20:53:37 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Janice E. Dawley" Subject: [*FSFFU*] The Female Man vs. "When It Changed" To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU At 07:08 PM 2/5/99 EST, Nicola Griffith wrote: >I don't recall _The Female Man_ in great detail (I >read it nearly twenty years ago), but I seem to remember thinking, when I read >it, that Janet's attitude in the novel (self-confidence) was *much* more >consistent with her history and upbringing than her attitude in the novella >(instant feelings of inferiority on meeting men for the first time). It would >be interesting to find out what others think about this. I felt exactly the same thing. I read "When It Changed" several years after *The Female Man* and found myself wondering why anyone would prefer it. It struck me as psychologically false and irritating that the narrator would be so worried by the men. As in the novel *Angel Island* (which I have not read, but which has been discussed on the list), there seemed to be an underlying assumption that men would always be able to intimidate women, no matter when, no matter where. I don't believe it, and I think it's a safe bet that Russ doesn't believe it any longer either, if she ever truly did. ----- Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/jedhome.htm Listening to: Sunny Day Real Estate -- How It Feels to Be Something On "...the public and the private worlds are inseparably connected; the tyrannies and servilities of the one are the tyrannies and servilities of the other." Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 17:56:08 -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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Hi Jessie-- I'm sure you are being sarcastic here, but I wish we wouldn't have to resort to that. I'm interested in what you are saying-- Is there a need for consciousness raising groups now? When I was in college I belonged to one and I don't know if it really helped my politics or my sense of self-- it might have been the group. Plus, we were not in the middle of a large movement (this was the late 80's-- things were pretty inward looking and defeatist). I don't think we should let certain people bait us, and I think we should address each other, those who are sympathetic or who are wanting a dialog instead of those are on this list for non-constructive reasons. I don't want to get into the fray here, but I don't think we should let those who are approaching discussion with cynicism effect how we phrase our arguments. And as for Lorde's idea of not using the master's tools to dismantle the master's house-- I was wondering if that would apply to Russ' non-linear narrative. If she can use a fragmented narrative and blend the identities of her characters she avoids a linear, demarcated structure, a structure which could be associated with patriarchy. Any ideas on this? Jessie Stickgold-Sarah wrote: > >Real politics has to involve society-as-a-whole, great gobs of people, and the > >levers of power. The whole game is about access to those levers. > > I guess the personal isn't political anymore. The master's tools now are the > *only* thing that will tear down the master's house. Thank goodness we no > longer have those dippy, irrelevant consciousness raising groups which have > *no relationship whatsoever* to the feminism of the 60s and 70s. > > jessie ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 18:11:29 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Maryelizabeth Hart Subject: [*FSFFU*] FEMALE MAN availability To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Mysterious Galaxy still has copies, FWIW. Sad to hear it's not available on every library shelf, though... 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: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 21:58:24 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Tanya M. Bouwman-Wozencraft" Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 99-02-05 14:07:07 EST, you write: << > Russ is standing in womens space for the entirety > of her book. It is a dialogue with her sisters > opened to all. Men especially could approach/read > this book with awe and respect, for it is an open > door onto hearfelt, poignant and earnest dialogues > on womens concerns as we would discuss them > amongst each other Donna No one has any right to "awe and respect"; every author has to repeatedly earn awe and respect from each of her readers. >> Mike, I don't read anywhere in Donna's posting that she said Russ is "entitled to" or "has a right to" awe and respect. What she said was, "Men especially could approach/read this book with awe and respect". "Could"--not "have to". But, in the next part of that statement she gives you the reason why men (my words) should approach this book with awe and respect, namely that it is a chance for men to see our "heartfelt" discussions about the world around us as "we would discuss them with each other". In other words it is a chance for you men to get a glimpse into the world that women inhabit and share with each other, but not with men--not even those we love. In other words, she states that Russ has earned awe and respect. Tanya ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 18:58:40 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Keith Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Hi, all, I haven't yet finished this round of reading the Female Man - the proper time for me came around about five months ago, so this is sluggish and against the grain - but I have to cheer Jessi Strickgold on here. Like Walk to the End of the World, I found the Female Man as timely and necessary in its unapologetic anger as Walk still is. Especially to remember a time before it changed, when women were angry without permission, without conciliation, without placating, as a badge of our right to humanity. Sarcasm is still entirely appropriate. Kathleen On Fri, 5 Feb 1999, Allyson Shaw wrote: > Hi Jessie-- I'm sure you are being sarcastic here, but I wish we wouldn't have to > resort to that. I'm interested in what you are saying-- Is there a need for > consciousness raising groups now? When I was in college I belonged to one and I > don't know if it really helped my politics or my sense of self-- it might have > been the group. Plus, we were not in the middle of a large movement (this was the > late 80's-- things were pretty inward looking and defeatist). > > Jessie Stickgold-Sarah wrote: > > > >Real politics has to involve society-as-a-whole, great gobs of people, and the > > >levers of power. The whole game is about access to those levers. > > > > I guess the personal isn't political anymore. The master's tools now are the > > *only* thing that will tear down the master's house. Thank goodness we no > > longer have those dippy, irrelevant consciousness raising groups which have > > *no relationship whatsoever* to the feminism of the 60s and 70s. > > > > jessie ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 19:26:12 -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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Sometimes I find this list way too edgy. Despite my earlier posts which discussed ambivalence about anger, I have no problem with the anger driving Jessi's post, and in fact share her frustration. I just think sarcasm really doesn't work on email at all, and I was trying to engage some of the ideas she brought up. Why would you take my post as an attack? Can you cut a "sister" some slack? (my attempt at email sarcasm) --Allyson Keith wrote: > Hi, all, > > I haven't yet finished this round of reading the Female Man - the proper > time for me came around about five months ago, so this is sluggish and > against the grain - but I have to cheer Jessi Strickgold on here. Like > Walk to the End of the World, I found the Female Man as timely and > necessary in its unapologetic anger as Walk still is. Especially to > remember a time before it changed, when women were angry without > permission, without conciliation, without placating, as a badge of our > right to humanity. Sarcasm is still entirely appropriate. > > Kathleen > > On Fri, 5 Feb 1999, Allyson Shaw wrote: > > > Hi Jessie-- I'm sure you are being sarcastic here, but I wish we wouldn't have to > > resort to that. I'm interested in what you are saying-- Is there a need for > > consciousness raising groups now? When I was in college I belonged to one and I > > don't know if it really helped my politics or my sense of self-- it might have > > been the group. Plus, we were not in the middle of a large movement (this was the > > late 80's-- things were pretty inward looking and defeatist). > > > > Jessie Stickgold-Sarah wrote: > > > > > >Real politics has to involve society-as-a-whole, great gobs of people, and the > > > >levers of power. The whole game is about access to those levers. > > > > > > I guess the personal isn't political anymore. The master's tools now are the > > > *only* thing that will tear down the master's house. Thank goodness we no > > > longer have those dippy, irrelevant consciousness raising groups which have > > > *no relationship whatsoever* to the feminism of the 60s and 70s. > > > > > > jessie ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 23:17:33 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Demetria M. Shew" Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 2/5/99 1:23:42 PM Pacific Standard Time, susan@APOCALYPSE.ORG writes: << "The City, Not Long After" by Pat Murphy? >> This is a new one to me. Anybody know what it was about? Madrone ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 21:50:33 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jessie Stickgold-Sarah Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man & The City, Not Long After To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I was indeed being sarcastic. Here's the thing: I think that one of the greatest things feminism has given me is the understanding that one does not have to work "within the power structure" to get results; indeed, sometimes the power structure is exactly what is oppressive. To follow up the example given previously, the suffragettes didn't try to form a parallel government, but to truly work within the power structure would have involved "getting the vote" by campaigning to get men to vote the way women wanted them to. Sure, that's what was done in order to *give* women the vote; but the activity itself was an acknowledgement that women weren't interested in doing that any longer than they had to. Likewise, although I was born too late for the original consciousness-raising groups, my understanding is that their value was that by working *outside* the political norms, they allowed women to give a name to their problems and their own ideals. No workshop with helpful men would have let a women in 1960 say "women are an oppressed group". It was stepping outside of that context, coming together without the powerful people, that allowed women to make up a whole new vocabulary of ideas. I felt overwhelmingly that I should never have to explain that on a list devoted to discussion of feminist works. I don't mind discussing it; I like to hear the way in which other people found this to be true or not true for themselves. I deeply, deeply resent feeling that I have to lay that all out for people who, frankly, must have heard it all before. So I meant it as a sort of shorthand to say, "that statement is in direct opposition to some of the basic principles of feminism". My way of, as you suggested, not being baited (too much). To answer another question which actually turns out to be sort of related: _The City, Not Long After_ is about a post-apocalyptic (plague, I believe) society; it's set in the Bay Area and the main action occurs in San Francisco, which is almost uninhabited. The residents use a unique form of non-violent resistance to defeat an army. This is a vast oversimplification. It's a lovely book, and it's easy to read it as a meditation on using one's own tools to bring down the master's house. In this case the lesson is double, because to engage the army on its own terms is not only hopeless (there are maybe a couple dozen resisters), but also self-destructive because the peaceful residents of the city would have to become killers. To win under those conditions would be to lose what they were fighting for. jessie ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 01:23:57 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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 2/5/99 2:57:35 PM Mountain Standard Time, kmhouse@HALCYON.COM writes: >"Face it, Syl, you need us. Can you imagine a world without men?" >"No crime, and lots of fat, happy women." >> -- Russ is rather more realistic than that. Back when I was in law, I met fair number of extremely violent criminal women -- everything from murder through sexual assault to extortion. And in fact, while the absolute number is still smaller, the rate of violent offenses among women has increased by an order of magnitude more than among men. Changes in the sexual division of labor apply to the criminal sector, too. I read the transcript of an interview with one inmate, who'd doing time on penny-ante raps much of her life (the usual, prostitution, drugs, shoplifting) and then got sent up for hard time -- assault with a deadly weapon, attempted homicide. When asked why the change, she said she'd been stealing a sweater from a J.C. Penny, when it suddenly struck her -- why was she wasting her time with this **it? "So I got a gun and went to the bank." Raised consciousness comes in all varieties... 8-). ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 01:28:26 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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 2/5/99 1:41:58 PM Mountain Standard Time, jss@PA.DEC.COM writes: >I guess the personal isn't political anymore. >> -- all politics starts with the personal, and then -- if it's to accomplish anything -- moves on to the collective. Individuals are weak; the collective is strong. Nobody cared if 6 women met in their living rooms to exchange 'click' moments. When 600,000 or 6,000,000 did, and then got together and then started arguing and demonstrating and organizing (and voting), things were quite different. "Necessary but not sufficient" is the phrase that comes to mind. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 01:35:37 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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 2/5/99 8:34:20 PM Mountain Standard Time, allyshaw@earthlink.net writes: >Despite my earlier posts which discussed ambivalence about anger, >> -- as an aside, our society does tend to make women ambiguous about expressing anger (or outright aggression.) We ran into this at my dojo -- women would come in and be unable, even in a practice situation, to hit somebody in any but an extremely symbolic "patting" manner, tentative and apologetic. It usually required several weeks of "reprogramming" to overcome this conditioned reflex, but when we did, the results were often spectacular. (Then we had to work on when it was appropriate to hit and when to stop, short of jumping up and down on a pile of splintered bone and gray goo... 8-).) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 01:43:39 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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man & The City, Not Long After To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 2/5/99 10:50:50 PM Mountain Standard Time, jss@PA.DEC.COM writes: non-violent resistance... -- in fact only works on... ummm, "nice guys". (Relative to, say, Heinrich Himmler and the Waffen SS, even "Bull Connor" was a nice guy.) Unless you have the author on your side, that is... ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 03:38:12 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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 2/6/99 1:36:33 AM Mountain Standard Time, kmhouse@HALCYON.COM writes: >Especially to remember a time before it changed, when women were angry >without permission, without conciliation, without placating, as a badge of our >right to humanity. >> -- by all means... 8-). Although it's important to be angry at the right people. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 08:52:10 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Phoebe Wray Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man & The City, Not Long After To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 2/6/99 5:50:50 AM, Jessie wrote: <> This has a resonance with the other discussion about separateness and Womanspace. Part of their "value" also was that they were WERE Woman-space. No Men Allowed, a fact that caused them to be ridiculed and/or suspected by both men and women. There were many women who found it difficult to say "women are an oppressed group." They felt guilty, embarrassed and sometimes downright scared. Within the group, however, they were able to confront the issue and their own feelings about it. To be able to say, out loud: I feel guilty saying this was the first step towards acknowledging their own oppression. The Space created that opportunity. And yes, we all know this. Doesn't hurt to remember. best phoebe ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 13:38:01 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Demetria M. Shew" Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 2/6/99 12:39:29 AM Pacific Standard Time, JoatSimeon@AOL.COM writes: << Although it's important to be angry at the right people. >> If it was people she was angry at, I don't think she would have done such multiple-inner examinations, or used separate worlds, or included that ubiquitous unspoken loneliness for male humanity. I think it is terribly important to listen to philosophers like Russ as speaking to a condition, not dismiss them as 'man-haters'. We don't consider Abraham Lincoln a man-hater, just someone who placed his power on the side of freedom. Russ is on the side of freedom and humanity. Anger, being angry at someone, fighting, drawing one's six-shooter...these are 'problem solving' techniques associated with male behavior that is promulgated in so many stories. It is easy to misidentify something new, as anger. It is easy to identify being fed-up, being desperate for some real discourse, for a literate and human Davy, for anger. But it is not. Madrone ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 17:10:43 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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man/expression of anger To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 2/6/99 11:40:24 AM Mountain Standard Time, DMadrone@AOL.COM writes: >If it was people she was angry at... -- if someone does you the dirty, it's illogical not to be angry at them. That's what anger's _for_; it mobilizes your resources against an enemy, the good old fight-flight reflex. Nothing wrong with it at all; someone who can't feel and express anger is going to be a victim. A friend of mine once dislocated the thumb of a man who groped her, then broke his elbow and nose. I've always considered that perfectly acceptable -- an act of social hygene, in fact, and I wish it happened more often, to teach imbeciles to respect other people's boundaries. Strong emotions are like fire, though -- a good servants but poor masters. Uncontrolled anger makes you so dangerous that everyone else will get together to put you out of the picture. Uncontrolled love makes you a sucker, just as uncontrolled suspicion makes you a paranoid isolate. Gotta balance your _chi_, as the saying goes. >Anger, being angry at someone, fighting, drawing one's six-shooter...these are 'problem solving' techniques associated with male behavior that is promulgated in so many stories. -- associated with human behavior, actually; as Russ' characters illustrate. They're as innate as breathing, like altruism and self-sacrifice. All part of the human condition. One of the things I liked about "The Female Man" was that the all-female 'utopia' was _not_ some blissed-out huggy-wuggy love-fest, with everyone going around cooing understanding and dripping with empathy in a perpetual bath of lukewarm emotional chicken soup. Given the intial premise, I found Whileaway quite believable; that's one reason it was very good SF. Far superior to most utopian fiction. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 17:43:36 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Janice E. Dawley" Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG: Female Man -- what's your favorite quote? To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU At 02:29 PM 2/3/99 -0800, Jennifer Krauel wrote: >When I was reading it I kept wanting to get the highlighter so I could go >back and find the bits that were just perfect so I could quote them later. >I enjoyed the quote that Susan typed in of her favorite part. What were >your favorite lines? Here are a few: "It is the old who are given the sedentary jobs, the old who can spend their days mapping, drawing, thinking, writing, collating, composing. In the libraries old hands come out from under the induction helmets and give you the reproductions of the books you want; old feet twinkle below the computer shelves, hanging down like Humpty Dumpty's; old ladies chuckle eerily while composing The Blasphemous Cantata (a great favorite of Ysaye's) or mad-moon cityscapes which turn out to be do-able after all; old brains use one part in fifty to run a city (with checkups made by two sulky youngsters) while the other forty-nine parts riot in a freedom they haven't had since adolescence. The young are rather priggish about the old on Whileaway. They don't really approve of them." (p. 53) "Boys don't like smart girls. Boys don't like aggressive girls. Unless they want to sit in the girls' laps, that is. I never met a man yet who wanted to make it with a female Genghis Khan. Either they try to dominate you, which is revolting, or they turn into babies." (p. 67) "There is an unpolished, white, marble statue of God on Rabbit Island, all alone in a field of weeds and snow. She is seated, naked to the waist, an outsized female figure as awful as Zeus, her dead eyes staring into nothing. At first She is majestic; then I notice that Her cheekbones are too broad, Her eyes set at different levels, that Her whole figure is a jumble of badly-matching planes, a mass of inhuman contradictions. There is a distinct resemblance to Dunyasha Bernadetteson, known as the Playful Philosopher (A.C. 344-426), though God is older than Bernadetteson and it's possible that Dunyasha's genetic surgeon modelled her after God instead of the other way round." (p. 103) "Romance is bad for the mind." (p. 153) ----- Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/jedhome.htm Listening to: Sunny Day Real Estate -- How It Feels to Be Something On "...the public and the private worlds are inseparably connected; the tyrannies and servilities of the one are the tyrannies and servilities of the other." Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 17:51:01 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Keith Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG: Female Man -- what's your favorite quote? To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU > At 02:29 PM 2/3/99 -0800, Jennifer Krauel wrote: > >When I was reading it I kept wanting to get the highlighter so I could go > >back and find the bits that were just perfect so I could quote them later. > >I enjoyed the quote that Susan typed in of her favorite part. What were > >your favorite lines? Here is one of mine (besides the many already posted, esp. the lovely one about electricity): "There's no being _out too late_ in Whileaway, or _up too early,_ or _in the wrong part of town_ or _unescorted_. You cannot fall out of the kinship web and become sexual prey for strangers, for there is no prey and there are no strangers - the web is world-wide.... "You can walk around the Whilewayan equator twenty times (if the feat takes your fancy and you live that long) with one hand on your sex in in the other an emerald the size of a grapefruit. All you'll get is a tired wrist. "While here, where _we_ live-!" From someone who had to wait until she was old enough and the daily harrassment on the streets and in all public places stopped to realize a twenty year dream of hiking for a week alone. Long before that, I knew that for American women, our "heritage" of the National Parks and Forests was ours by permission of males. Women who hiked with men weren't "protected", they simply weren't attacked or threatened. Women who hiked alone or with other women were attacked or threatened. By men. Kathleen ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 22:45:27 -0800 Reply-To: shander@cdsnet.net Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Sharon Anderson Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG & Separatism To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I think the concept of separatism is an extremely important one. Russ was responsible for introducing the idea to me, and even though I wouldn't pass muster in the eyes of any true separatist, in my heart of hearts I am. And while I may not count as significant numerically, there are a whole lot of ways to be significant. Numbers don't tell the whole story. Russ was the first one to put into words for me my anger, frustration, and disgust at the attitudes of all the women around me, including my best friends: "Finding The Man. Keeping The Man. Not scaring The Man, building up The Man, pleasing The Man, interesting The Man, following The Man, soothing The Man, changing your judgment for The Man, changing your decisions for The Man, polishing floors for The Man, being perpetually conscious of your appearance for The Man, being romantic for The Man, hinting to The Man, losing yourself in The Man." As a teenager, seeing my friends behave this way enraged me. Pushing 50, it still enrages me. The difference now is that while plenty of my acquaintances still act this way, very few of them are actually friends, by my definition. The notion that it might be possible to live in a world entirely absent of men was a revelation. The notion that you might choose to voluntarily have nothing at all to do with The Man on this earth, in real life, was a shock. For years, my personal living space, even though in the middle of a city, was not open to men. I mean, I simply did not allow them to intrude in the space I called home. I might have to deal with them at work, when shopping in certain kinds of stores, on the freeways, but they did NOT enter my personal space. Coming from the background I did, this felt like sanctuary. More, the very concept that there might someday be a plague allowing us to come into our own was an important part of my wish-list,, my daydreams, for a long time. A close friend of mine, who works with women in their teens and early twenties tells me that they do not understand all the brouhaha, the noise and significance of the fact that there are now women surgeons, astronauts, lawyers etc. Young women today seem to view the opportunities open to them as their right and due, without owing anyone respect for making it so. If they have those options open to them and we didn't, it is simply because they are better people than we were. Yes, you heard me correctly. These young women would never value separatism for the same reasons that I do. Which is not to say that they would not wish for a women-only space. But they wouldn't understand the feeling that such a thing was even necessary for us "to come into our own." Like everything else in life, there are both positive and negative aspects to this. Sharon L. Anderson ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1999 02:18:46 -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: [*FSFFU*] The Female Man vs. "When It Changed" To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU At 07:08 PM 2/5/99 EST, Nicola Griffith wrote: >>I don't recall _The Female Man_ in great detail (I read it nearly twenty >>years ago), but I seem to remember thinking, when I read it, that Janet's >>attitude in the novel (self-confidence) was *much* more consistent with >>her history and upbringing than her attitude in the novella (instant >>feelings of inferiority on meeting men for the first time). It would >>be interesting to find out what others think about this. I realized what passage this referenced before checking the hyperlink to verify. I didn't read feelings of inferiority in "the day before, I would have said that was an exact description of me." I was a child prodigy, particularly in maths. When I went to Big Name U. and finally met someone with a similar talent, it was quite a shock to both of us. It wasn't that I felt inferior, merely that I was forced to acknowledge that I was now in a bigger pond with other big fish. That's how I read that passage. "Janice E. Dawley" writes: >It struck me as psychologically false and irritating that the narrator >would be so worried by the men. Janet seems quite contemptuous of the men as individuals. I suspect that if the condescending envoys of the culture with the big guns had been bug-eyed monsters, she would be similarly worried. If I were to sum up Janet's attitude in "When It Changed", I would quote: "I'm afraid that my own achievements will dwindle from what they were--or what I thought they were--to the not-very-interesting curiosa of the human race ... what's around the corner is a duel so big that I don't think I have the guts for it." The Earth-men are not simply men on Whileaway; they are much as the White Man was to Native Americans (and others). Knowing that history, Janet's reaction is understandable. Syela ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1999 15:15:48 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bertina Miller Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I wonder if that is a learned behavior? I grew up with very demonstrative parents and physically active siblings. We fought physically alot. Maybe it depends on how straightlaced one grew up. Sensing a stereotype flaring up, Bertina bmiller@medmail.mcg.edu On Sat, 6 Feb 1999, S.M. Stirling wrote: > In a message dated 2/5/99 8:34:20 PM Mountain Standard Time, > allyshaw@earthlink.net writes: > > >Despite my earlier posts which discussed ambivalence about anger, >> > > -- as an aside, our society does tend to make women ambiguous about expressing > anger (or outright aggression.) > > We ran into this at my dojo -- women would come in and be unable, even in a > practice situation, to hit somebody in any but an extremely symbolic "patting" > manner, tentative and apologetic. > > It usually required several weeks of "reprogramming" to overcome this > conditioned reflex, but when we did, the results were often spectacular. > (Then we had to work on when it was appropriate to hit and when to stop, short > of jumping up and down on a pile of splintered bone and gray goo... 8-).) ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1999 16:20:34 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Nicola Griffith Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] The Female Man vs. "When It Changed" To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 2/7/99 3:00:44 AM Pacific Standard Time, PPAQEBB@GROVE.IUP.EDU writes: > I didn't read feelings of inferiority in > "the day before, I would have said that was an exact description > of me." I was a child prodigy, particularly in maths. When I > went to Big Name U. and finally met someone with a similar talent, > it was quite a shock to both of us. It wasn't that I felt inferior, > merely that I was forced to acknowledge that I was now in a bigger > pond with other big fish. That's how I read that passage. Interesting. Thanks for this; it's not something I had considered. I'll have to go away and think about it. Do you have an interpretation of the "second class citizen" part of the passage? Nicola ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1999 22:38:16 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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 2/7/99 1:17:16 PM Mountain Standard Time, bmiller@MEDMAIL.MCG.EDU writes: >I wonder if that is a learned behavior? I grew up with very demonstrative >parents and physically active siblings. We fought physically alot. Maybe it >depends on how straightlaced one grew up. >> -- oh, it's undoubtedly a learned behavior. Not universal, just very widespread. Some women who came into the dojo had no problem with hitting people; but a good many did. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1999 02:22:30 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joyce Jones Subject: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I think a few days ago there was a post stating something to the effect that since Joanna Russ is a lesbian and men are of no interest to her, in The Female Man what appeared to be a condemnation of male domination was really a discussion of interaction among women, how lesbians are perceived by others and among themselves. Could someone have actually said such a thing? I think the book does a good job showing the interaction among women. The Whileaway world showed how lesbians could interact with safety, freedom, love and creativity while still accepting individual conflicts and irritations. When Joanna showed herself to women from the 1970's there was good discussion of how lesbians are perceived by heterosexual women, from fear to sexual acceptance. None of these discussions was colored as anything else. But when Russ spends a good portion of the book discussing male oppression whether by actual physical, political or psychological means, I think she meant just that. One of my favorite quotes from Jael, page 194: >>When you grow up as an old-fashioned girl, you always remember that cozy comfort: Daddy getting angry a lot but Mummy just sighs. When Daddy says, "For God's sake, can't you women ever remember anything without being told?" he isn't asking a real question any more than he'd ask a real question of a lamp or a wastebasket. I blinked my silver eyes inside my box. If you stumble over a lamp and you curse that lamp and then you become aware that inside that lamp (or that wooden box or that pretty girl or that piece of bric-a-brac) is a pair of eyes watching you and that pair of eyes is not amused--what then? Mommy never shouted, "I hate your bloody guts!" She controlled herself to avoid a scene. That was her job. I've been doing it for her ever since.>> I agree that the book was intended more for women than men. Russ could have given up on men, thinking that even if they perceived the pair of unamused eyes, they wouldn't be very interested in seeing the person behind them. Her interest was probably more in the area of women perceiving their own personhood. Separatism would be a liberating atmosphere for the woman's increased perceptions, and she probably didn't care how that would effect men. Thanks Sharon for your articulate perspective on separatism. I'm enriched by the many articulate women on this list. (Special thanks to you Tanya, I haven't seen much from you but have greatly enjoyed what there has been.) Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1999 05:46:35 -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: [*FSFFU*] The Female Man vs. "When It Changed" To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Nicola Griffith writes: >Interesting. Thanks for this; it's not something I had considered. I'll have >to go away and think about it. Such courtesy makes me glad to contribute. >Do you have an interpretation of the "second class citizen" part of the >passage? Whileaway is thinly populated and scarcely industrialized, and has a lower level of technology and less influence than Earth. In the context of an expanding interstellar empire, it is provincial in the literal and probably also in the figurative sense if its people are "hicks in overalls, farmers in canvas pants and plain shirts." The Earth-men regard Janet as second-class, which apparently no one else ever has. She needn't consider herself second-class to be aware of it. Janet is one of the "very few who can be free", "some sort of chief of police" with "more popular influence than anyone else." She could be, for example, the sheriff of a rural county visited by FBI agents, or the leader of a native tribe visited by colonizers. As stupid and ignorant as the Earth-men might be, they have authority on a grander scale and the weapons to enforce it. Janet can feel superior to them as individuals and yet acknowledge that to space travellers, Whileaway is "quaint but not impressive." I thought that was what made her for a moment feel small. Syela ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1999 02:46:39 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joyce Jones Subject: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man, Davy To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Others have said how uncomfortable they were with the Davy scene, and I agree. I can relate to the idea of loving men's bodies while disliking their minds, but the mental picture evoked by the scene was unpleasant. The unease comes from the fact that even though Davy was just a glorified vibrator, he still looked like a man, and there is a human response not to objectify other humans. I think it was to a minor degree the same emotion that is intentionally aroused by anti-abortionists when they show pictures of dead fetuses. Many who are pro-choice think that the fetus was a potential, not actual human being; but seeing that form evokes in us the intended feelings of shared humanity. I don't know Russ's feelings on abortion, I would assume she's pro-choice. Does anyone else think she could have been alluding to this situation? Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1999 11:42:02 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Demetria M. Shew" Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man, Davy To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 2/8/99 2:48:39 AM Pacific Standard Time, hoop5@EMAIL.MSN.COM writes: << Does anyone else think she could have been alluding to this situation? >> Wow. What a thought. It was disturbing, wasn't it, to have something described that was not and never would be human but looked to be so. And there was something fetal about Davy's nakedness within the protective structure of the house. I'll have to think about this...Thanks! Madrone ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1999 13:09:16 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: [*FSFFU*] The Female Man vs. "When It Changed" To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 2/8/99 3:46:46 AM Mountain Standard Time, PPAQEBB@GROVE.IUP.EDU writes: >Janet can feel superior to them as individuals and yet acknowledge that to >space travellers, Whileaway is "quaint but not impressive." I thought that >was what made her for a moment feel small. -- that was the impression I got, too. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1999 13:11:44 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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man, Davy To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 2/8/99 3:48:39 AM Mountain Standard Time, hoop5@EMAIL.MSN.COM writes: >Others have said how uncomfortable they were with the Davy scene, and I >agree. -- hmmm. I thought it was a funny piece of satire, myself -- sort of a takeoff of how women are shown in some pornographic material -- but I can see your point. >Many who are pro-choice think that the fetus was a potential, not actual >human being; but seeing that form evokes in us the intended feelings of shared >humanity. I don't know Russ's feelings on abortion, I would assume she's pro- >choice. Does anyone else think she could have been alluding to this >situation? -- was that tactic used by anti-choice propaganda back when TFM was written? I'm not sure. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1999 15:04:54 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Nicola Griffith Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] The Female Man vs. "When It Changed" To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Syela, thanks. Nicola ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1999 16:53:40 -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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man, Davy To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Is there a significant difference in your (plural) reaction to sex with the golem in Piercy's *He, She and It*? Is it the difference between a character and a prop? I'm aware that women (pace Andrea Dworkin) may have a different attitude toward penetration than men, and that my own mild repulsion toward sex with artificial objects may not be shared by all or most men. I'm leaving the whole prompting message on my response because I think it's relevant; indeed the discussion has more elements to it than what are mentioned here. I'm also not apologizing for taking space as a man on a feminist listserv, since I don't think I have abused the privilege. Joyce Jones wrote: >Others have said how uncomfortable they were with the Davy scene, and I >agree. I can relate to the idea of loving men's bodies while disliking >their minds, but the mental picture evoked by the scene was unpleasant. >The unease comes from the fact that even though Davy was just a glorified >vibrator, he still looked like a man, and there is a human response >not to objectify other humans. I think it was to a minor degree the same >emotion that is intentionally aroused by anti-abortionists when they show >pictures of dead fetuses. Many who are pro-choice think that the fetus was >a potential, not actual human being; but seeing that form evokes in us the >intended feelings of shared humanity. I don't know Russ's feelings on >abortion, I would assume she's pro-choice. Does anyone else think she could >have been alluding to this situation? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1999 12:01:16 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: gingembre Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man, Davy To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On Mon, 8 Feb 1999, Dave Samuelson wrote: > Is there a significant difference in your (plural) reaction to sex > with the golem in Piercy's He, She and It? Is it the difference > between a character and a prop? I'm aware that women (pace Andrea > Dworkin) may have a different attitude toward penetration than men, > and that my own mild repulsion toward sex with artificial objects > may not be shared by all or most men. That's a parallel that never occurred to me--I haven't read "The Female Man" in a few years, so the Davy scene is vague at best for me, but I just read "He, She and It" recently. I probably wouldn't even call it a parallel--I felt that part of Marge Piercy's point was the golem was a real person despite being of non-organic origin, while apparently Davy isn't? My reaction to the golem having sex wasn't particulary biased by the fact that he was a golem, but that might just be because I tend to slot really easily into the mindset Marge Piercy is trying to create. I'm curious, though, to know if people could read "He, She and It" and still be bothered by the golem (Yod, his name was, right?) being considered a real person? More to the point, I guess, would anyone characterize the reactions to Yod as being caused by his physical resemblance to a human rather than anything else about him? -- Susan susan@apocalypse.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "Miss Manners is afraid that you have mistaken her for someone who has nothing better to do." --Judith Martin ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1999 17:01:48 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bertina Miller Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Does Jael hate men? This is what I am wondering about the Jael character. She kills a man who attacks her, who doesnt allow her to say "no" to his advances. I really dont believe she hates men. I think she is the most fascinating character that goes beyond the 70s attitudes and is futuristic in that she clearly has what many women still dont have. Autonomy from men. Is that a hatred of men? Responding after being away for awhile, Bertina bmiller@medmail.mcg.edu On Thu, 4 Feb 1999, Todd Mason wrote: > I don't think "Joanna's" attitude toward men is rabid or implacable. > Janet is not impressed with our culture (I don't get the impression > that most current women would gain her admiration too quickly, > either); the others have good reason to hate men thoroughly. > > Feeling guilty? > > > all four principal characters have a rabid, implacable hatred of men > > _________________________________________________________ > DO YOU YAHOO!? > Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1999 01:18:13 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joyce Jones Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Bertina asks "Does Jael hate men?" Didn't she say somewhere that she loved men's bodies but hated their minds? I've been looking for that statement and can't find it, but it sounds like Jael, doesn't it? Here's another of my favorite long quotations from this fun book: "But how do you expect me to stand it all year? Week after week? For twenty years? Little male voice says: It Was Her Menstrual Period. Perfect explanation! Raging hormonal imbalances. His ghostly voice: "You did it because you had your period. Bad girl" Oh beware of unclean vessels who have that dir-ty menstrual period and Who Will Not Play!" (long snip) "After a long silence--"Was that necessary?" from The Weak One. Still hurt, still able to be hurt by them! Amazing. You'd think my skin would get thicker, but it doesn't. We're all of us still flat on our backs. The boot's on our neck while we slowly, ever so slowly, gather the power and the money and the resources into our own hands. While they play war games. I put the car on Autom. and sat back, chilly with the reaction. My heartbeat's quieting. Breath slower. Was it necessary? (Nobody says this.) You could have turned him off--maybe. You could have sat there all night. You could have nodded and adored him until dawn. You could have let him throw his temper tantrum; you could have lain under him--what difference does it make to you?--you'd have forgotten it by morning. You might even have made the poor man happy. There is a pretense on my own side that we are too refined to care, too compassionate for revenge--this is bullshit, I tell the idealists. "Being with Men," they say, "has changed you." "Look, was it necessary?" says one of the J's, addressing to me the serious urgency of womankind's eternal quest for love, the ages-long effort to heal the wounds of the sick soul, the infinite, caring compassion of the female saint. An over-familiar mode! Dawn comes up over the waste land, bringing into existence the boulders and pebbles battered long ago by bombs, dawn gliding with its pale possibilities even the Crazy Womb, the Ball-breaking Bitch, the Fanged Killer Lady. "I don't give a damn whether it was necessary or not," I said. "I liked it." Guess that calls for one more candle on the Jael alter. Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1999 12:46:38 MET Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Anthea Hartley Stanton Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On 21 Feb 99, at 17:01, Bertina Miller wrote: > Does Jael hate men? This is what I am wondering a > bout the Jael character.She kills a man who attacks > her, who doesnt allow her to say "no" to his advances. > I really dont believe she hates men. I think she is the most > fascinating character that goes beyond the 70s attitudes > and is futuristic in that she clearly has what many women > still dont have. Autonomy from men. Is that a hatred of men? If a male character believed that all women should either be killed or lobotomised into sex- and baby-machines, we'd have no hesitation in calling him a "woman hater". We'd think no differently if the character had only one lobotomized sex-machine who he treated with the affection we'd give to a cat. The husbands in _The Stepford Wives_ who "loved" but also lobotomised their wives chemically are clearly "women haters" as - in a different context of mutilation - are the real-life monsters that Mary Daly describes so eloquently in _Gynecology, the Metaethics of Radical Feminism_. So, in the reverse case, why should we blench at calling Jael a "man-hater"? We have to accept Jael as she is, not use mental gymnastics to twist her into a "nice girl". AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net). _______________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1999 06:26:30 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Keith Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Very apt, Joyce! ./lit major mode on One thing that struck me on this reading of The Female Man was the connection of Anna, the "changed" wife of the Big Boss, with Davy. Placed as "she" is immediately before Davy is introduced, she presents a mirror-image of the human/object duality that stands out so sharply when the human is a woman and the object is male. But with differences: Anna, like real women, really is a human, made to completely simulate an object in order to survive. "Her" behavior is somewhat of a caracture of women's in the 1960's, but read any 1950's novel, and she wouldn't stand out at all. She is what Jeannine's world considers the peak of womanly ambition. The objectification is complete in that this is not even a being most men had been raised to believe was not quite human, but a man like themselves that they _knew_ had been turned into this. Then take Davy. "He" does minimal personal services for Jael, has almost no mind, was never human to begin with. He is specifically not the convolution of a complete human being into a thing fit into the confines of another human being's will. He fills the physical and some of the emotional needs for Jael that Anna and the other changed and half-changed do for the men, but he is not parrallel, he is not a woman humiliated, cut up and stuffed into service by other women, the way Anna was by the men. But he is what shocks the other three women, and us too, by implication. I think this was cleverly done: to take the normal, everyday, accepted inhumanity of making women into life-long servants of men, show how taken for granted it is, and then allow a woman a little of that power to satisfy the same needs without negotiation, without recognition of the Other's humanity, and let the shock this generates tell its own story. One other note: the four characters from four different times reminds me of the way Virginia Woolf tells the same events from different points of view. Each of the four responds to events in a way consistent with the background that made her, but also as the person "J" would anywhere. So when one does something, the reaction of the other comments on it, highlights, helps define it, in a way that a single character would not. ./lit major mode off Seems to me a good way of presenting the consequences of choice, too. If women had stuck to their guns during the eighties and nineties, if the same men who found war and racism abhorent had not claimed as their own the one prejudice that does them the most personal good, women might now, for instance, be able to fight back against murderous husbands, boyfriends and strangers and claim provacation and self-defense. Instead, the accepted violence women occasionally defend themselves against had turned into an abstract debate and become an academic topic, and any violence women use in protection is shocking and "appropriately" punished by the impersonal forces of the law. Kathleen ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1999 10:55:26 -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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I recognize how perceptive the literary analysis here is, and I suspect the last paragraph is as well, but I find it gnomic. I just don't know what the generalities refer to. Maybe my disconnect is part of the problem? Kathleen wrote: > Very apt, Joyce! > > ./lit major mode on > > One thing that struck me on this reading of The Female Man was the > connection of Anna, the "changed" wife of the Big Boss, with Davy. > Placed as "she" is immediately before Davy is introduced, she presents a > mirror-image of the human/object duality that stands out so sharply when > the human is a woman and the object is male. But with differences: Anna, > like real women, really is a human, made to completely simulate an object > in order to survive. "Her" behavior is somewhat of a caracture of women's > in the 1960's, but read any 1950's novel, and she wouldn't stand out at > all. She is what Jeannine's world considers the peak of womanly ambition. > The objectification is complete in that this is not even a being most men > had been raised to believe was not quite human, but a man like themselves > that they _knew_ had been turned into this. ... Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bertina Miller Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I dont think I thought of her as nice. I think that the point that was made for having her world come last was Russ' point. Surely the only way (especially from a 70s perspective) that a world could come about where women could actually have autonomy is a Jael world. Because the Janet Everson world is incomplete-meaning that it isnt a logical conclusion to the 70s war of the sexes. Why did Russ have Janet cry when she saw Jael kill? Why did Russ have Jael say that Jeannine was the most intelligent of all the "j" women? Which world is utopian? I at first thought when I read it for the first time that there really wasnt a utopia that Russ was trying to convey. I thought each world she portrayed was equally stressful. Now I think the Utopia isnt Janet's world (which I tried to imagine must have been the utopia Russ was seeking, but why then end with Jael's world?). It must be Jael's world. Though I assume different people would find different worlds utopian for different reasons. Am I thoroughly off tract here? Curious, Bertina bmiller@medmail.mcg.edu On Mon, 22 Feb 1999, Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: > On 21 Feb 99, at 17:01, Bertina Miller wrote: > > > Does Jael hate men? This is what I am wondering a > > bout the Jael character.She kills a man who attacks > > her, who doesnt allow her to say "no" to his advances. > > I really dont believe she hates men. I think she is the most > > fascinating character that goes beyond the 70s attitudes > > and is futuristic in that she clearly has what many women > > still dont have. Autonomy from men. Is that a hatred of men? > > If a male character believed that all women should either be killed or > lobotomised into sex- and baby-machines, we'd have no hesitation in calling > him a "woman hater". We'd think no differently if the character had only one > lobotomized sex-machine who he treated with the affection we'd give to a cat. > The husbands in _The Stepford Wives_ who "loved" but also lobotomised their > wives chemically are clearly "women haters" as - in a different context of > mutilation - are the real-life monsters that Mary Daly describes so eloquently > in _Gynecology, the Metaethics of Radical Feminism_. > > So, in the reverse case, why should we blench at calling Jael a "man-hater"? > We have to accept Jael as she is, not use mental gymnastics to twist her into > a "nice girl". > > AJ > Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net). > _______________________________________ > > ____________________________________________________________________ > Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 08:33:29 MET Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Anthea Hartley Stanton Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On 22 Feb 99, at 19:59, Bertina Miller wrote: > Which world is utopian? I at first thought when I read it for the > first time that there really wasnt a utopia that Russ was trying to > convey. I thought each world she portrayed was equally stressful. > Now I think the Utopia isnt Janet's world (which I tried to imagine > must have been the utopia Russ was seeking, but why then end with > Jael's world?)...It must be Jael's world... Am I thoroughly off > trac[k] here? On the contrary, I think you're exactly right. The Utopia is Jael's world - NOT ONLY a utopia in which women are strong enough to beat up and kill men BUT, more importantly, a Utopia where men are destined to exist only as lobotomized, sub-human sex machines. Sometimes a book has one relationship - perhaps described in only a few lines - which defines it absolutely. For me, the Jael-Davy relationship defines _The female man_ even more than Jael's other characteristics of strength, controlled violence and, paradoxically, simmering, inchoate rage. Let's look at it from a reverse point of view: suppose a male character kept a dehumanized, lobotomised woman as a sex-slave. Regardless of how the woman was dehumanised, chemically, physically, psychologically or genetically, there's only one word to describe each and every sex act that the male commits upon the woman - rape. So why should it be any different if the genders are reversed? Jael's Utopia is a world in which women oppress, dehumanise, rape and kill men. In fact, it's exactly the reverse of the world of Jeannine, Joanna and (especially) Anna where men oppress, dehumanise, rape and kill women. Utopia then is a world in which women enjoy perpetual revenge for intolerable oppression. >From the discussion to date, it appears that everyone has looked for deeper, allegorical meanings within _The female man_. The "meanings" people have found range from the reasonable to Mike[ Stanton]'s somewhat weird reading of the book as a reflection of the "lavender menace" conflict. I too had a problem understanding the book because I was looking for a deeper meaning when the author's meaning was the obvious, surficial one. It's for this reason that I must warn again against "confusing the singer and the song" and thus of attributing to an author the opinion one of her characters expresses in a novel. I cannot believe that Russ herself would like to live in Jael's world. The problem, I think, is that Russ writes in the (dated) vocabulary and rhetoric of the 60s/70s which appears ridiculously extremist to many younger women. AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ______________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 10:42:30 +0000 Reply-To: chuard@earthlink.net Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Comments: Authenticated sender is From: geminiwalker Organization: Gemini Walker Ink Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU > Let's look at it from a reverse point of view: suppose a male character kept a > dehumanized, lobotomised woman as a sex-slave. Regardless of how the woman was > dehumanised, chemically, physically, psychologically or genetically, there's > only one word to describe each and every sex act that the male commits upon > the woman - rape. So why should it be any different if the genders are > reversed? Funny, I didn't see it that way, as Davy *is* a machine. He does not appear to have any feelings at all, albeit whatever sexio/physical ones that lead him to the ejaculate he has. What, then, is the difference between him and a vibrator (which, frankly, I would prefer)? Are we raping every time we use a vibrator, because the vibrator has no choice, and we have all the control? ...geminiwalker chuard@earthlink.net To learn more about me, go to: http://home.earthlink.net/~chuard updated 2/22/99 ICQ #27240345 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 10:42:30 +0000 Reply-To: chuard@earthlink.net Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Comments: Authenticated sender is From: geminiwalker Organization: Gemini Walker Ink Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU > On 21 Feb 99, at 17:01, Bertina Miller wrote: > > > Does Jael hate men? This is what I am wondering a > > bout the Jael character.She kills a man who attacks > > her, who doesnt allow her to say "no" to his advances. > > I really dont believe she hates men. I think she is the most > > fascinating character that goes beyond the 70s attitudes > > and is futuristic in that she clearly has what many women > > still dont have. Autonomy from men. Is that a hatred of men? > > If a male character believed that all women should either be killed or > lobotomised into sex- and baby-machines, we'd have no hesitation in calling > him a "woman hater". We'd think no differently if the character had only one > lobotomized sex-machine who he treated with the affection we'd give to a cat. > The husbands in _The Stepford Wives_ who "loved" but also lobotomised their > wives chemically are clearly "women haters" as - in a different context of > mutilation - are the real-life monsters that Mary Daly describes so eloquently > in _Gynecology, the Metaethics of Radical Feminism_. > > So, in the reverse case, why should we blench at calling Jael a "man-hater"? > We have to accept Jael as she is, not use mental gymnastics to twist her into > a "nice girl". > > AJ > Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net). But she didn't kill, or even advocate killing, all men. She just didn't feel bad, at all, for killing one who violently violated her personal space after repeated protestations. In fact, she enjoyed it. That does not mean she thinks all men should be dead. She simply reserves, for herself, the right not to have to interact with them beyond her own wishes to do so. I realize, in our culture, that is considered disloyal, but I think it is an option that should exist and be carefully guarded. ...geminiwalker chuard@earthlink.net To learn more about me, go to: http://home.earthlink.net/~chuard updated 2/22/99 ICQ #27240345 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 06:00:08 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: donna simone Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU > Which world is utopian? I at first thought when I read it for the > first time that there really wasnt a utopia that Russ was trying to > convey. > good question Bertina. I guess I grow ever more confused about the word Utopian and, I want to pointedly interject, Dystopian. My understanding is limited, but is best captured by a few lines from a long ago article by Peter Fitting "The Turn From Utopia in Recent Feminist Fiction" (that I am able to lay hands on right this minute). I quote: "Both utopias and dystopias have a performative function; they are intended ideally to push the reader to action....in dystopian novels, in terms of their ability to warn the reader and to push her or him to act on that knowledge; and, in utopian works, in terms of their effectiveness in evoking a world in which I would like to live." My opinion is that the world of Jael is most clearly a Dystopia. Especially as evidenced by the points made that "each world [Russ] portrayed was equally stressful" and Jael's "other characteristics of strength, controlled violence and, paradoxically, simmering, inchoate rage." Would anyone want to live in a world that leaves one in rage? I do not believe that every fictional conjecture that "removes men" is automatically an author's (male or female) idea or creation of a Utopia? I believe absenting from our explanatory tools the idea of Dystopia/dystopian from description and analysis of feminist works skews our perception of what an authors intent may have been. And perhaps leads to unjust assessments of a writers individual beliefs. I also believe it limits ones ability to see the _benefits_ in what an author may be trying to convey to her/his readers. I personally do not believe that Joanna Russ intended Jael's world, or any of her four world views, to be anything but the most powerful _Dystopian_ visions. Calling up Fitting again - I believe she is trying to warn _this Reader_ and push me to act on that knowledge. I have been trying do so for all these many years since my first reading of The Female Man. donna donnaneely@earthlink.net ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 08:31:47 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pat Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On Tue, 23 Feb 1999, Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: > On the contrary, I think you're exactly right. The Utopia is Jael's world - > NOT ONLY a utopia in which women are strong enough to beat up and kill men > BUT, more importantly, a Utopia where men are destined to exist only as > lobotomized, sub-human sex machines. Sometimes a book has one relationship - > perhaps described in only a few lines - which defines it absolutely. For me, > the Jael-Davy relationship defines _The female man_ even more than Jael's > other characteristics of strength, controlled violence and, paradoxically, > simmering, inchoate rage. Isn't the word here DYStopia? > It's for this reason that I must warn again against "confusing the singer and > the song" and thus of attributing to an author the opinion one of her > characters expresses in a novel. I cannot believe that Russ herself would like > to live in Jael's world. The problem, I think, is that Russ writes in the > (dated) vocabulary and rhetoric of the 60s/70s which appears ridiculously > extremist to many younger women. The world she was revolting against *was* ridiculously extremist. Ask anyone who was there. But I always took it for granted that Janet's world was the Utopia and the others were distorted reflections. Jael, in particular, is NOT sane. Patricia (Pat) Mathews mathews@unm.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 12:26:23 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Janice E. Dawley" Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: > The Utopia is Jael's world - NOT ONLY a utopia in which women are > strong enough to beat up and kill men BUT, more importantly, a > Utopia where men are destined to exist only as lobotomized, > sub-human sex machines. Sometimes a book has one relationship - > perhaps described in only a few lines - which defines it absolutely. > For me, the Jael-Davy relationship defines _The female man_ even > more than Jael's other characteristics of strength, controlled > violence and, paradoxically, simmering, inchoate rage. > Jael's Utopia is a world in which women oppress, dehumanise, rape > and kill men. In fact, it's exactly the reverse of the world of > Jeannine, Joanna and (especially) Anna where men oppress, dehumanise, > rape and kill women. Utopia then is a world in which women enjoy > perpetual revenge for intolerable oppression. And Jael's utopia is whose utopia? Not mine. Not Russ's either I am willing to bet. I found myself less affected by Jael than any of the other Js. The Davy section, especially, seemed like a simple rhetorical device -- the old "reversal unmasks the double-standard" trick. I found the scene itself a bit icky, but not very involving in either a vengeful or enraging way. That's just me. I was much more intrigued by Whileaway. That, to me, was the utopia. Several others have remarked that they found it to be a DYStopia, but I still can't understand why. Sure, they have duels... at least they don't go to war against one another. At one point Janet says they work all the time, but later it is revealed that the work week is 16 hours long. (A nice little statement about how people can get used to almost anything -- we complain about 40-hour work weeks --at least I do!-- but before the labor unions fought for and won the 40-hour work week in the United States people could be required to work twice as many.) Despite work assignments there seems to be ample personal freedom. The environment is in good shape. What am I missing? Joanna and Laura were the characters I identified with most closely. Jeannine was alien to me, though I have certainly known women like her. I think Russ made an interesting point by having Jeannine join forces with Jael at the end. It jibes with my observation that women who identify with the patriarchal power structure are more likely to engage in "reverse sexism" than feminist women. (I put that term in quotes because I agree with Robin Reid that in the context of the existing power structure a simple reversal is not possible.) Part of the genius of Russ's book is that it is stuffed with so many alternative viewpoints and framings of reality that people can pull so many meanings out of it. I imagine Russ spreading it before her readers like a smorgasbord, waiting to see who will pick what. >The problem, I think, is that Russ writes in the (dated) vocabulary >and rhetoric of the 60s/70s which appears ridiculously extremist to >many younger women. I have a feeling that it appeared ridiculously extremist to many women in the 60s/70s also. But now the book, by virtue of age, can be dismissed as "dated" AS WELL AS "strident", "making a big deal out of nothing", "filled with rage", etc. Personally, I see nothing in *The Female Man* that dates it enough to lessen its impact, and I am definitely a "younger woman" (age 29) -- Joanna Russ is just about my mother's age. -- Janice E. Dawley ............. Burlington, VT http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/ Listening to: Mercury Rev -- Deserter's Songs "Reality is nothing but a collective hunch." - Lily Tomlin ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 18:46:53 MET Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Anthea Hartley Stanton Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On 23 Feb 99, at 7:28, Pat wrote: > Isn't the word here DYStopia? I think it's obvious that I meant "Utopia" in the sense of JAEL'S ideal world. Jael, I believe, actually enjoyed her world especially when she considered the prospect of ultimate victory (and ultimate revenge). "Utopia" is very much a personal thing - I *personally* regard both Jael's world and Janet's Whileaway as DYStopias. > The world she was revolting against *was* ridiculously extremist. > Ask anyone who was there. Again "extremist" is another thing that is very much in the eye of the beholder. I wasn't there (born 1967), the women I know and *trust* who were there didn't think it was a "ridiculously extremist" world and the books describing the era were written too close to the time to be objective. All I said and meant was something that is common cause (and described, for example, in _Time_ last year). > But I always took it for granted that Janet's world was the > Utopia and the others were distorted reflections. Jael, in particular, is > NOT sane.> I did too at first; clearly Whileaway would seem to be the perfect world that a radical like Russ would invent, given the time the book was written and of the "lavender menace" struggle of the 60s/70s. But I simply couldn't make sense of the book from that perspective; taking Jael's world as the projected Utopia, made sense immediately I thought of it. Your comment that Jael was insane is, I think, wrong in that sanity is a relative thing. In terms of her world and of the pressures on her, Jael was eminently sane - because Jael was perfectly adapted to her world and insanity necessarily includes an inability to deal with "reality". Where she appear insane is on Whileaway and in Jeannine/Joanna's world - and even the last is doubtful if you consider the empathy that Jael's violence has aroused here. AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 12:38:57 -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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I don't really see Whileaway as a Utopia...when I think of Utopias, I think of, say, Ecotopia or Woman on the Edge of Time, or even such classical Utopias as, well, Moore's Utopia. That is, places where problems are not strutural, but rather result from "human nature" and are much reduced in number. Like in Woman on the Edge of Time, where everyone is happy happy almost all the time, except for the conflicted relationship between the artist guys. Too, "Utopia" seems to be a rather pejorative word in our modern and soured culture. If you're writing a Utopia, you're writing something essentially idealistic, pie-in-the-sky, one dimensional. Something that is easy to knock down by pointing to one flaw in it. Like one of the classical Utopias (I forget which one) involves slavery. Since it's supposed to be, um, utopian, as soon as slavery is unacceptable to us philosophically and morally, then that utopia pretty much falls apart. Whileaway, as we've said, has some pretty undesireable features, things I think Russ does not intend us to approve of. Like when Joanna goes into the mountains to track down that older woman. That is structural. It's not like the "human nature" problems of duels, where people choose to get all het up and shoot each other. It's about how society as a whole enforces its rules, consciously and using sanctioned force. I think Russ has a persistant tragic sensibility that is as much literary/philosophical as it is political. None of her futures (or pasts, for that matter) are happy, even the nice ones. Consider the several stories where everyone is really really smart, except for a few people who are mistakes and who get bored and unhappy because their intelligence is too limited for them to solve their problems. It would seem to me rather extraordinary if Russ both had this tragic sense about human potential and intelligence AND at the same time believed that Whileaway was a real utopia which one could create by killing people off. Another thing, or rather two things in one: what is UP with this constant denunciation of women writers as "too strident"? In a feminist book discussion group, no less?!? Are we really truly so afraid of offending men that we must police our science fiction writers and denounce them if they're not nice enough?/!? I don't know about you, but I still see many of the problems Russ describes all around me, on the activist left yet. And I'm a young woman, and not an especially theorized feminist, and Russ's stridency doesn't bother me. In fact, I applaud it, because it brings something to the surface: the contempt that a lot of women really do feel for men. I work in an office that's nearly all women, and, well, the conversations one hears. Of course, we would never admit that we really have contempt for men, that there is de facto hatred...we of course love men and wouldn't want to hurt their feelings. Feminist anger is nothing on everyday, nonfeminist contempt. I think that by writing as she does, Russ enables us to name and analyze--and ultimately integrate and make use of-- anger. Russ enables us to be angry and place it in a feminist, praxis-oriented framework. An awful lot of women are angry at a lot of men, and until this is acknowledged, it won't go away. And...one thing I've noticed in myself is what one might call "centrist drift". As I have become older (24 at the moment) I find myself constantly underestimating the radicalness of the young, their theoretical sophistication, etc. Also assuming that because I myself am past a certain point politically then other people should be too. If I, for example, have discussed the nature and constructedness of culture, then the movement needs to do something new, just for me. I think it's waaaayyy too easy to assume that "being strident" will alienate younger women. Long activist experience has told me, too, that soft-pedalling your own position to get over with people always backfires. It's a form of contempt, and people view it as dishonest. Long live stridency, at least as far as I'm concerned. And you know what? I'm not going to add anything about how I have male friends, or men I really like, or a boyfriend, and how they're the exception. Maybe I do, maybe I don't. That's not germane to the discussion, and is in fact reminiscent of __although explicitly NOT equivalent or analogous to__the white liberal remark that "some of my best friends are black"... ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 20:03:13 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bertina Miller Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Did I misinterpret something or isnt the men on Jael's planet robots? I think that is what she meant when she discussed the difference between a man lobotomized and a machine-she meant that the men on her planet are robots. Joanne was horrified of the prospect of robots being lovers-I think Jael thought saying the "men" were lobotomized would have been better than telling the Js that the men were in fact robots. I think that is why Jannine wasnt horrified about Jael sleeping with a robot, it would be better than sleeping with a lobotomized man. I still dont get the superficial idea I think it isnt meant to be profound, but I dont think it is superficial. The story's meaning is one of character study on possible futures and/or alternative feminist landscapes. How is that superficial? Bertina bmiller@medmail.mcg.edu On Tue, 23 Feb 1999, Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: > On 22 Feb 99, at 19:59, Bertina Miller wrote: > > > Which world is utopian? I at first thought when I read it for the > > first time that there really wasnt a utopia that Russ was trying to > > convey. I thought each world she portrayed was equally stressful. > > Now I think the Utopia isnt Janet's world (which I tried to imagine > > must have been the utopia Russ was seeking, but why then end with > > Jael's world?)...It must be Jael's world... Am I thoroughly off > > trac[k] here? > > On the contrary, I think you're exactly right. The Utopia is Jael's world - > NOT ONLY a utopia in which women are strong enough to beat up and kill men > BUT, more importantly, a Utopia where men are destined to exist only as > lobotomized, sub-human sex machines. Sometimes a book has one relationship - > perhaps described in only a few lines - which defines it absolutely. For me, > the Jael-Davy relationship defines _The female man_ even more than Jael's > other characteristics of strength, controlled violence and, paradoxically, (snip for space) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 18:25:16 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joyce Jones Subject: [*FSFFU*] : Re: BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Kathleen writes: >One thing that struck me on this reading of The Female Man was the >connection of Anna, the "changed" wife of the Big Boss, with Davy. >Placed as "she" is immediately before Davy is introduced, she presents a >mirror-image of the human/object duality that stands out so sharply when >the human is a woman and the object is male. (snip) >I think this was cleverly done: to take the normal, everyday, accepted >inhumanity of making women into life-long servants of men, show how taken >for granted it is, and then allow a woman a little of that power to >satisfy the same needs without negotiation, without recognition of the >Other's humanity, and let the shock this generates tell its own story. What a great analysis, one that hadn't even occurred to me. You did fail to mention one difference: Jael made sure Davy had an orgasm, even though he was just an object. Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 22:35:21 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bertina Miller Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Hey you may be right-they all are dystopias. Clearly women cannot have a utopia (at least in the "Female Man" worlds) - though I thought maybe janets world was meant to be one, though I didnt and still dont think it is one. I dont however find Jael's world frightening or Jael being insane. Am I "Jeannine?" She was the one person Jael said was the most intelligent and she seemed to like Jael's world. Bertina bmiller@medmail.mcg.edu On Tue, 23 Feb 1999, Pat wrote: > On Tue, 23 Feb 1999, Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: > > > On the contrary, I think you're exactly right. The Utopia is Jael's world - > > NOT ONLY a utopia in which women are strong enough to beat up and kill men > > BUT, more importantly, a Utopia where men are destined to exist only as > > lobotomized, sub-human sex machines. Sometimes a book has one relationship - > > perhaps described in only a few lines - which defines it absolutely. For me, > > the Jael-Davy relationship defines _The female man_ even more than Jael's > > other characteristics of strength, controlled violence and, paradoxically, > > simmering, inchoate rage. > > Isn't the word here DYStopia? > > > > It's for this reason that I must warn again against "confusing the singer > > and the song" and thus of attributing to an author the opinion one of her > > characters expresses in a novel. I cannot believe that Russ herself would > > like to live in Jael's world. The problem, I think, is that Russ writes in > > the(dated) vocabulary and rhetoric of the 60s/70s which appears ridiculously > > extremist to many younger women. > > > The world she was revolting against *was* ridiculously extremist. > Ask anyone who was there. > But I always took it for granted that Janet's world was the > Utopia and the others were distorted reflections. Jael, in particular, is > NOT sane. > > Patricia (Pat) Mathews > mathews@unm.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 22:45:55 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bertina Miller Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Hey I was born in 1967 too! I am glad I wasnt the only one out there who had a problem with all the worlds. Bertina bmiller@medmail.mcg.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 05:33:37 MET Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Anthea Hartley Stanton Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On 23 Feb 99, at 12:26, Janice E. Dawley wrote: > I was much more intrigued by Whileaway. That, to me, > was the utopia. Several others have remarked that > they found it to be a DYStopia, but I still can't > understand why. Sure, they have duels... > at least they don't go to war against one another. > At one point Janet says they work all the > time, but later it is revealed that the work week > is 16 hours long. [snip] Despite work assignments > there seems to be ample personal freedom. The environment > is in good shape. What am I missing? These comments are exactly why *I* think Janet's world is a dystopia (apart from the obvious reason that is). As I've hinted elsewhere, I don't think that this is Russ' ideal world either - however seductive it might be to think that Whileaway would be a Utopia for a "radical, socialist, lesbian feminist". Three things - taken in the context of her other writing - convince me of this. The first is "duels" - which I find completely out of sync with Russ' thinking in her apologia _What we are fighting for..._. The most insistent sub-theme (in my opinion) in Russ' corpus is the need for ALL women to work together both as individuals and as groups of differing sexuality etc but otherwise similar ideals. As Russ describes it, Whileaway is in some ways a society dominated by "bullygirls" preying on weaker members of society - something that would clearly be anathema to her. The second which follows on from "duels", is the state-sanctioned violence and arbitrariness in the way in which society's demands are brought home to dissenters. There's much of Orwell's "Big brother" in the rulers of Whileaway - even the hint of Newspeak. The third is the sheer blandness of Whileaway which guaranteed to drive any intelligent, ambitious, hardworking woman straight up the wall. It's almost a parody of Thoreu's _Walden_. Whileaway offers no challenges, permits no indivdual achievement other than in narrowly defined lines and the only personal freedom it allows is the freedom to "shut up and conform". I think Whileaway's women live lives of "monotonous languor", of quiet desperation and when they die, it's as if they've never been (notwithstanding Russ' pious hints to the contrary). Again totally incompatible with Russ as a person and a writer. All of the worlds are far deeply flawed to be Utopias, other than to some of their equally flawed inhabitants - which I think is Russ' point. > I have a feeling that it appeared ridiculously > extremist to many women in the 60s/70s also. But > now the book, by virtue of age, can be dismissed as > "dated" AS WELL AS "strident", "making a big deal > out of nothing", "filled with rage", etc. Personally, > I see nothing in *The Female Man* that dates > it enough to lessen its impact, and I am definitely > a "younger woman" (age 29) -- Joanna Russ is just > about my mother's age. Someone commented to me offlist that _The female man_ was dated the day it was published. I think that's cruelly unfair but contains more than a grain of truth. As I see it, the "strident", "making a big deal out of nothing" and "rage" are precisely those things that date it and, more importantly, reduce its impact. Many, perhaps most, younger women read it and are immediately repelled the rage that the book projects. They see, for example, the Jael connection, Davy, even the thumb episode, are revolted and Russ' message is lost. Russ was writing for a different generation, in a time (as she saw it) of struggle so she used the rhetoric of combat which her audience would know and be moved by. In some ways, I'm reminded of World War II propaganda; we laugh at its excesses now but at the time the overwhelming mass of people found it stirring. AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 22:10:00 -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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU "Utopian" has been confusing at least since Thomas More coined the word in Latin (out of "no place" and the "good place"). In common usage, it means the unbelievably good place or the purely philosophical good place (Plato and More explicitly), yet it also incorporates "dystopia" or the bad place, which seems to be how most if not all good places look to folks who didn't design them (sometimes even to the designers after a while). LeGuin's "ambiguous" version was less radical than it seemed, since literary utopias have usually been ambiguous; Delany called Triton (now Trouble on Triton, its original title) a "heterotopia," taken from--but not clearly (to me) synonymous with--Foucault's coining of the word. Although utopias today commonly merge with science fiction (both soft and hard, if anyone's counting), they almost always emphasize political organization (even in Delany's case, where it is impossibly pluralistic) at the expense of science and technology. Whileaway seems an ambiguous utopia (good place) while The Female Man might more precisely be called a multiple heterotopia (with all of its worlds being utopias in the sense of no place). As for optimism and pessimism, it seems to me that few literary utopias are hopeful of realization, and most literary dystopias are hopeful of overthrow. Does that add enough further confusion to the issue? donna simone wrote: >I guess I grow ever more confused about the word Utopian and, I want >to pointedly interject, Dystopian. My understanding is limited, >but is best captured by a few lines from a long ago article by Peter >Fitting "The Turn From Utopia in Recent Feminist Fiction" (that >I am able to lay hands on right this minute). I quote: >"Both utopias and dystopias have a performative function; they are intended >ideally to push the reader to action....in dystopian >novels, in terms of their ability to warn the reader and to push her >or him to act on that knowledge; and, in utopian works, in >terms of their effectiveness in evoking a world in which I would like >to live." ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 22:30:59 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jennifer Krauel Subject: [*FSFFU*] BDG: female man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU So, why did Russ say that Jeannine was the most intelligent? Also I didn't think that Jael was insane. Scary, yes. Exciting, sure (in a Xena kind of way). I agree with AJ that the definition of sanity is somewhat relative and I personally think given Jael's reality, she was quite sane. What on earth would a "sane" woman be like in that society? Besides, it's totally unfair to say neurotic Jeannine is sane, and that Jael is not. Jennifer ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 00:43:17 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joyce Jones Subject: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man, very long To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I was amazed the first time someone suggested that Jael's world could be the utopia, then to find the opinion seconded just floored me. That people would think Russ could have envisioned Jael's world of constant violence, humiliation and oppression to be the utopia rather than Whileway seemed to me almost like saying Eleanor Roosevelt was probably a closet Nazi. No, I do not think Jael's world was or was intended to be a utopia, even to Jael. Yes Jael reveled in her ability to protect herself, to out do and even to kill any man she needed to. It's Jael's proficiency, supreme self confidence and lack of fear that inspires many people, including myself. The idea that a woman could go among men completely hostile to women and know that not only will she survive but she will make them pay for their malevolence is exhilarating. This is the reason some of us think fondly of Jael and consider invoking her spirit in incidences of daily life. Women are still oppressed. Russ's book is not at all outdated, in my opinion. I want to quote a poem by Marge Piercy that shows an instance in which the spirit that lead to Jael's world is with us. The impetus for some of us to become like or at least greatly admire Jael arises from events of today as surely as they did in the 1970's. For two women shot to death in Brookline, Massachusetts How dare a woman choose? Choose to be pregnant choose to be childless choose to be a lesbian choose to have two lovers or none choose to abort choose to live alone choose to walk alone at night choose to come and to go without permission without leave without a man. Consider a woman's blood spilled on a desk, pooled on an office floor, an ordinary morning at work, an ordinary morning of helping other women choose to be or not to be pregnant. A woman young and smiling sitting at a desk trying to put other women at ease now bleeds from five large wounds, bleeding from her organs bleeding out her life. A young man is angry at women women who say no women who say maybe and mean no women who won't women who do and they shouldn't. If they are pregnant they are bad because that proves they did it with someone, they did it and should die. A man gets angry with a woman who decides to leave him who decides to walk off who decides to walk who decides. Women are not real to such men. They should behave as meat. Such men drag them into the woods and stab them climb in their windows and rape them such men shoot them in the kitchens such men strangle them in bed such men lie in wait and ambush them in parking lots such men walk into a clinic and kill the first woman they see. In harm's way: meaning in the way of a man who is tasting his anger like rare steak. A daily ordinary courage doing what has to be done every morning, every afternoon doing it over and over because it is needed put them in harm's way. Two women dying because a man chose that they die. Two women dying because they did their job helping other women survive. Two women dead from the stupidity of an ex altar boy who saw himself as a fetus who pumped his sullen fury automatically into the woman in front of him twice, and intended more. Stand up now and say No More. Stand up now and say We will not be ruled by crazies and killers, by shotguns and bombs and acid. We will not dwell in the caves of fear. We will make each other strong. We will make each other safe. There is no other monument. This is the real fear and anger that inspired Russ to write Jael and Jael's world. There's nothing utopian about that world, just inspiration from a woman who knows how to fight back. Contrast that world with this scene from Whileway: "There's no being out too late in Whileaway, or up to early, or in the wrong part of town, or unescorted. You cannot fall out of the kinship web and become sexual prey for strangers, for there is no prey and there are no strangers--the web is world-wide. In all of Whileaway there is no one who can keep you from going where you please (though you may risk your life, if that sort of thing appeals to you), no one who will follow you and try to embarrass you by whispering obscenities in your ear, no one who will attempt to rape you, no one who will warn you of the dangers of the street, no one who will stand on street corners, hot-eyed and vicious, jingling loose change in his pants pocket, bitterly bitterly sure that you're a cheap floozy, hot and wild, who likes it, who can't say no, who's making a mint off it, who inspires him with nothing but disgust, and who wants to drive him crazy. On Whileaway eleven-year-old children strip and live naked in the wilderness above the forty-seventh parallel, where they meditate, stark naked or covered with leaves, sans pubic hair, subsisting on the roots and berries so kindly planted by their elders. You can walk around the Whileawayan equator twenty times (if the feat takes your fancy and you live that long) with one hand on your sex and in the other an emerald the size of a grapefruit. All you'll get is a tired wrist." I don't see how we can doubt that this is the utopia. The safety described above plus art, learning, work, love, worship, independence, self determination. What more could you want. Well, maybe men, but I guess Russ wasn't so sure how all this could be accomplished for women judging by the domineering urge demonstrated by men. A world run by "bullies"? I don't think so. Yes they did go into the hills and get the woman who not only turned her back on society, the section quoted above shows how that was perfectly allowable; but she said society didn't exist, and that wasn't allowed. The only way to have individual freedom, Russ seemed to say, was to insist that members of a society recognize both the society and everyone's right to live in it under their own guidance. You can take yourself out of society but you don't have the right to deny the existence of the laws of society. Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 08:27:05 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pat Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character Comments: To: geminiwalker To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On Tue, 23 Feb 1999, geminiwalker wrote: > Funny, I didn't see it that way, as Davy *is* a machine. > He does not appear to have any feelings at all, albeit > whatever sexio/physical ones that lead him to the > ejaculate he has. What, then, is the difference between > him and a vibrator (which, frankly, I would prefer)? > Are we raping every time we use a vibrator, because > the vibrator has no choice, and we have all the > control? Does anyone remember how Tasha Yar on NextGen used Data? And he's a Star Fleet officer!> Patricia (Pat) Mathews mathews@unm.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 09:40:00 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Janice E. Dawley" Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: > I don't think that [Whileaway] is Russ' ideal world either - however > seductive it might be to think that [it] would be a Utopia for a > "radical, socialist, lesbian feminist". True, I can't say what Russ's ideal world would be. But *I* like Whileaway. Unfortunately, I did not reread the entire book prior to this discussion, so I can't respond to your comments with relevant details. Except to say that I never got the impression that Whileaway was "bland". A contrary image that immediately springs to my mind is the narrator entering a clearing to find three young women sitting around a small abstract metallic object laughing helplessly about what it represents. Puzzling. Amusing. Not bland. And then there's Dunyasha Bernadetteson! > Someone commented to me offlist that _The female man_ was dated the > day it was published. I think that's cruelly unfair but contains more > than a grain of truth. As I see it, the "strident", "making a big > deal out of nothing" and "rage" are precisely those things that date > it and, more importantly, reduce its impact. Many, perhaps most, > younger women read it and are immediately repelled the rage that the > book projects. They see, for example, the Jael connection, Davy, even > the thumb episode, are revolted and Russ' message is lost. > > [...] In some ways, I'm reminded of World War II propaganda; we > laugh at its excesses now but at the time the overwhelming mass of > people found it stirring. I don't understand this argument. You seem to be saying that feminist anger is a phenomenon of the 60s/70s that has now lost its usefulness. That today's women (which women?) cannot relate to it in the way that yesterday's women (which women?) could. Well... feminism may have had an upswelling of card-carrying members in the 60s/70s, but I feel safe in saying that *The Female Man* has *always* had a strictly limited audience. That *most* women and almost all men wouldn't "get it" or approve of it. But so what? There are those of us, of all ages, who have read it and wept, been inspired, laughed uncontrollably, and otherwise been moved to hear someone say what we have been thinking, if murkily, all this time. Perhaps if Russ were more of a milquetoast more people *would* be reading her books. I don't think she is willing to make that tradeoff, and thank Peep for that! -- Janice E. Dawley ............. Burlington, VT http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/ Listening to: Mercury Rev -- Deserter's Songs "Reality is nothing but a collective hunch." - Lily Tomlin ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 19:46:00 0100 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Petra Mayerhofer Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On 24 Feb 99 Pat wrote: > On Tue, 23 Feb 1999, geminiwalker wrote: > > Are we raping every time we use a vibrator, because > > the vibrator has no choice, and we have all the > > control? > > > Does anyone remember how Tasha Yar on NextGen used > Data? And he's a Star Fleet officer!> Uh? That was consensual sex. What makes you see it differently? Or, do you mean 'use' in the sense that no greater feelings were involved, sex by itself? When I read _The Female Man_ the first time 2-3 years ago, the sex scene with Dave put me off. I saw it as abuse of a person in Jael's power, of a slave. I stated that once on this list and several persons told me, that they saw it differently. O.k., so I was very curious for especially this scene on this reading of the book. And ... nothing. This time I perceived Dave as a limb of the house and the sex scene as analogeous to the use of a vibrator. The scene simply left me detached. Well, this afternoon, when the mails on these scenes came in I suddenly remembered a cabaret show I saw last year. In that show the performer produced one of these woman-sized blow-up dolls and made fun of the different opportunities it offers (she pointed out the different orifices, etc.). The audience roared. From my own reaction I'd say that everybody saw it as ridiculous that anybody would want to have sex with that doll and the witticisms of the show was based on that. Now, I don't think that a similar performance could be staged with a vibrator, whatever out-sized and over-decorated specimen would be used. My point? To view the sex scene with Dave simply as the equivalent to the use of a vibrator is a too simple picture. I only looked at it from the viewpoint whether Dave is abused or not. But what does it say about Jael that she likes sex with an object, which is not only any vibrator-like object, but - besides the actual personality and consciousness - looks exactly like a person. When somebody uses a doll for sex I view it as ridiculous and pathetic. When somebody uses a vibrator or other tools, I do not (o.k. some tools shock me). When Jael uses Dave it is also pathetic in a way. Or not? Any comments? Petra *** Petra Mayerhofer **** mayerhofer@usf.uni-kassel.de *** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 21:14:27 MET Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Anthea Hartley Stanton Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On 24 Feb 99, at 9:40, Janice E. Dawley wrote: > A contrary image [of Whileaway] that immediately springs > to my mind is the narrator entering a clearing to find > three young women sitting around a small abstract > metallic object laughing helplessly about what it > represents. Puzzling. Amusing. Not bland. And then > there's Dunyasha Bernadetteson! I've got to admit that the image strikes me as being painfully banal, too much so to be bland. But I was thinking about a society where social and economic risk-taking, striving against odds and almost everything else that makes my life exciting is absent. I imagine the whole society as a sanitised version of something that Rousseau's noble savage might have lived in, rather like, in fact, one of Baro's bucolic paradises without the sophisticated underpinning. It horrifies me to think of any woman basking in the sun, chewing the cud and laughing helplessly over "a small abstract metallic object". Surely that and the much quoted "genitals and emerald" speech have got to be parody - examples of Russ' sly sense of fun. > I don't understand this argument. You seem to be > saying that feminist anger is a phenomenon of the > 60s/70s that has now lost its usefulness. That > today's women (which women?) cannot relate to it > in the way that yesterday's women (which women?) could. That wasn't quite what I meant in my comment although I don't believe that "rage" helped then or would help now (....cowers waiting for thunderbolts to strike). I was referring to the rage that the book projects and which I believe turns off younger women. In answer to "which [younger] women?" I've implicitly defined these in my reply to Pat when I mentioned last year's (in)famous _Time_ series of articles. But I could expand and say that they include the type of women Natasha Walter discusses in _The new feminist_. As to "which [older] women?" I have to say "the target audience at which Russ aimed the work and which she believed would be moved by it". This isn't copping out - I don't know what Russ' target market was, although it certainly wasn't anyone I know who was ative during that time. > Well... feminism may have had an upswelling of > card-carrying members in the 60s/70s, but I > feel safe in saying that *The Female > Man* has *always* had a strictly limited audience. I think that, then and today, it's a book which *by and large* would appeal only to the converted. That said, I'm sure there are exceptions. > That *most* women and almost all men wouldn't "get it" or > approve of it. But so what? [snip] Of course that's your choice. But this is the sort of thing that leads to an author being marginalised. It'll be interesting in 2010 to see how much the century effect (or is "millenium effect" more appropriate?) has had on the reputations of the radical feminist authors of the 60s/70s. AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) _____________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 15:01:17 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pat Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On Wed, 24 Feb 1999, Petra Mayerhofer wrote: (re Tasha Yar & Data)> > > > Uh? That was consensual sex. What makes you see it differently? Or, > do you mean 'use' in the sense that no greater feelings were > involved, sex by itself? I think she picked Data because he was a machine and presumably would be totally under her command. She saw him as "safe', not because he was a good guy, but because he was programmed to be safe. That's use in my book. He also seemed a lot more innocent in those days than he is now. Patricia (Pat) Mathews mathews@unm.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 17:28:20 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Janice E. Dawley" Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: > It horrifies me to think of any woman basking in the sun, chewing > the cud and laughing helplessly over "a small abstract metallic > object". Eh? Why on earth would that be horrifying? And where did this "cud" come from? > Surely that and the much quoted "genitals and emerald" speech have > got to be parody - examples of Russ' sly sense of fun. Yes, I do believe she was trying to be funny. > [rage of book turns off younger women] > In answer to "which [younger] women?" I've implicitly defined these > in my reply to Pat when I mentioned last year's (in)famous _Time_ > series of articles. But I could expand and say that they include the > type of women Natasha Walter discusses in _The new feminist_. I haven't read either of these, I am afraid. I find myself doubting the worth of the *Time* articles. I only read *Time* to gauge what the media *thinks* is going on, never to find out what's really going on. > I think that, then and today, it's a book which *by and large* would > appeal only to the converted. That said, I'm sure there are > exceptions. > > > That *most* women and almost all men wouldn't "get it" or > > approve of it. But so what? [snip] > > Of course that's your choice. But this is the sort of thing that > leads to an author being marginalised. What "sort of thing" are you talking about? The attitude of folks like me who don't particularly care whether our favorite authors are embraced by the masses? Or the attitude of writers like Russ who aren't afraid to say just what they mean? And why is it that other writers' "rage" does not result in their marginalization (fr.ex. the various men whose rage against and contempt for women is very evident in their work)? Perhaps because feminism itself is still too much for many people to handle. And anger is still an unacceptable emotion for women to express. -- Janice E. Dawley ............. Burlington, VT http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/ Listening to: Mercury Rev -- Deserter's Songs "Reality is nothing but a collective hunch." - Lily Tomlin ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 17:59:33 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jocelyn & Sheryl Denton-LeSage Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] The Female Man/Utopias To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU >Hey you may be right-they all are dystopias. Clearly women cannot have a >utopia (at least in the "Female Man" worlds) - though I thought maybe >janets world was meant to be one, though I didnt and still dont think it >is one. I dont however find Jael's world frightening or Jael being insane. >Am I "Jeannine?" She was the one person Jael said was the most intelligent >and she seemed to like Jael's world. > >Bertina I just finished a paper on feminist utopias. Women certainly CAN have a utopia, although we don't always immediately recognize it as such. If it has to be only composed of women, there's Herland by Gilman. If it can have men in it also, then try The Dazzle of Day by Gloss (a recent BDG nomination). Octavia Butler's Bloodchild has even been called a utopia, although it takes some stretching to think of it that way. Here's a question for everyone: when doing my research for the above paper, I ran across a comment by a (male, for what it's worth) academic, who was responding to an article by Joanna Russ. He had noticed that all-woman utopias are out there in the hundreds, and have been written for at least 300 years. But he couldn't think of ANY all-male scenarios (and I can only think of one--it was a short story I read back in the 70's about a group who called themselves, well, The Men). Why, group, do you suppose this is true? And if you were going to create an all-male world (utopian or otherwise), what would it look like? Sheryl ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 18:39:23 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Heather MacLean Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] [*FSFFU*Utopias: all-male/all-female To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU At 05:59 PM 2/24/99 -0600, Sheryl wondered: >all-woman >utopias are out there in the hundreds, and have been written for at least >300 years. But he couldn't think of ANY all-male scenarios (and I can only >think of one--it was a short story I read back in the 70's about a group who >called themselves, well, The Men). Why, group, do you suppose this is true? *giggles* Here's a completely fluff, anti-male, and stereotypical answer: a) Cuz women tend to be self-sufficient when it comes down to brass tacks and b) a male utopia involves having plenty of women lying around to be laid or laying together for their viewing pleasure... and c) heck, if women weren't around, how else would he prove his dominance? Heather (kinda teasing) =) http://www.zipcon.net/~hlm ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 16:43:38 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jennifer Krauel Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] The Female Man/Utopias To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU At 05:59 PM 02/24/99 -0600, you wrote: >... But he couldn't think of ANY all-male scenarios (and I can only >think of one--it was a short story I read back in the 70's about a group who >called themselves, well, The Men). Why, group, do you suppose this is true? >And if you were going to create an all-male world (utopian or otherwise), >what would it look like? > >Sheryl Hoo whee, I can't pass up this fat pitch (for those of you into sports metaphors)... No need for all-male utopian stories when we live in a male utopia today? OK, it's a cheap shot, but someone had to take it. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 19:54:12 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: donna simone Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU < It horrifies me to think of any woman basking in the sun, chewing the cud and laughing helplessly over "a small abstract metallic object". ...> I have more than occasionally spent time doing this very thing over many years. I wont bother to list the myriad intoxicants that have been involved. It was never banal.. Rage is not always a "free choice" emotion. I am puzzled. Do you see the scope of her conjectured audience as only "active feminists". I have always thought Female Man was a droll, but pointed "up yours" to the SFF community primarily, with the appeal to "feminists" being equal to it if not secondary. .> Marginalised????? _Female Man_ has been in print continuosly since 1975. How many other works of literature or SFF can make the same claim? I have found the words of 18th/19th C. women powerful and moving well through the majority of my life in this century: M. Wollstonecraft, M. W. Montagu, S.B. Anthony, I. B. Wells, J. Ruffin, S. Truth, J Butler, A. Paul, Grimke' sisters......etc, etc. I believe Joanna Russ will exert her enraged and compassionate influence, as both fiction and a non fiction writer, long into the next century. donna donnaneely@earthlink.net ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 20:00:10 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bertina Miller Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man, very long To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Joyce you hit on the very reason many dont find Whileaway very attractive. I find all the worlds equally disturbing, and since one is supposed to be our own world in the 70s, that at least tells you I am disturbed by my own flawed world. As far as I can recall the character didnt break any of the laws, she just left society. I can leave this society if I want and I am not condemned to die for that. Bertina bmiller@medmail.mcg.edu On Wed, 24 Feb 1999, Joyce Jones wrote: > didn't exist, and that wasn't allowed. The only way to have individual > freedom, Russ seemed to say, was to insist that members of a society > recognize both the society and everyone's right to live in it under their > own guidance. You can take yourself out of society but you don't have the > right to deny the existence of the laws of society. > > Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 17:06:14 -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: [*FSFFU*] The Female Man/Utopias To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I'm sure there's a serious answer somewhere, but I'm reminded of how my students once argued (unaware of Sturgeon's Venus Plus X) that a man would be unlikely to write The Left Hand of Darkness because of not seeing present gender inequity as other than natural. No doubt some women have written all-female utopias because they could not envision a utopian situation co-existing with men, who would (by nature?) be overbearing. Men certainly have written all-male fictions, about sports and war and whale-hunting, among other things. Do those represent kinds of masculine utopia? Jennifer Krauel wrote: At 05:59 PM 02/24/99 -0600, you wrote: >... But he couldn't think of ANY all-male scenarios (and I can only >think of one--it was a short story I read back in the 70's about a group who >called themselves, well, The Men). Why, group, do you suppose this is true? >And if you were going to create an all-male world (utopian or otherwise), >what would it look like? > >Sheryl Hoo whee, I can't pass up this fat pitch (for those of you into sports metaphors)... No need for all-male utopian stories when we live in a male utopia today? OK, it's a cheap shot, but someone had to take it. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 17:20:57 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bonnie Gray Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Russ presents a huge variety of viewpoints in her four worlds, and through her four J's. I'm not sure if ANY are meant to be total utopias or dystopias. As Janice puts it, is really is almost a "smorgasboard". Although, at least for me and obviously many women on this list, some are much more utopian and dytopian than others. But none are completely polar (except maybe Anna and Jeannine... but that may be because I'm a "young 29" as well). Back to lurking... keep the new BDG nominations coming, I am composing quite a reading list for myself! Bonnie On Tue, 23 Feb 1999, Janice E. Dawley wrote: > ... > > Part of the genius of Russ's book is that it is stuffed with so > many alternative viewpoints and framings of reality that people can pull > so many meanings out of it. I imagine Russ spreading it before her > readers like a smorgasbord, waiting to see who will pick what. > > >The problem, I think, is that Russ writes in the (dated) vocabulary > >and rhetoric of the 60s/70s which appears ridiculously extremist to > >many younger women. > > I have a feeling that it appeared ridiculously extremist to many women > in the 60s/70s also. But now the book, by virtue of age, can be > dismissed as "dated" AS WELL AS "strident", "making a big deal out of > nothing", "filled with rage", etc. Personally, I see nothing in *The > Female Man* that dates it enough to lessen its impact, and I am > definitely a "younger woman" (age 29) -- Joanna Russ is just about my > mother's age. > > -- > Janice E. Dawley ............. Burlington, VT > http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/ > Listening to: Mercury Rev -- Deserter's Songs > "Reality is nothing but a collective hunch." - Lily Tomlin ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 20:50:53 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Big Yellow Woman Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] The Female Man/Utopias To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU But he couldn't think of ANY all-male scenarios (and I can only > think of one--it was a short story I read back in the 70's about a group who > called themselves, well, The Men). Why, group, do you suppose this is true? In a word? Homophobia. Susan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 22:02:14 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bertina Miller Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Data was used? If you recall, the crew was under the influence of an alien virus. I thought both were used by the virus! Bertina bmiller@medmail.mcg.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 22:14:32 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bertina Miller Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG: female man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I think Jael said Jeannine was the most intelligent because she had the most opportunity to grow from her experiences. Also she probably could easily fall into Jael's world than the other Js could. Remember when Janet cried over Jael's killing? Why would she cry? If she was a bully as someone on the list said, why should she cry? Obviously Whileawayans are all bluff and no show. Bertina bmiller@medmail.mcg.edu On Tue, 23 Feb 1999, Jennifer Krauel wrote: > So, why did Russ say that Jeannine was the most intelligent? > > Also I didn't think that Jael was insane. Scary, yes. Exciting, sure (in > a Xena kind of way). I agree with AJ that the definition of sanity is > somewhat relative and I personally think given Jael's reality, she was > quite sane. What on earth would a "sane" woman be like in that society? > Besides, it's totally unfair to say neurotic Jeannine is sane, and that > Jael is not. > > Jennifer ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 22:25:56 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bertina Miller Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] The Female Man/Utopias To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Obviously (in my mind) it probably would be alot like the male side of Jael's world. Maybe I am just a Jael fan like I am a Xena fan!:) Bertina bmiller@medmail.mcg.edu On Wed, 24 Feb 1999, Jocelyn & Sheryl Denton-LeSage wrote: > >Hey you may be right-they all are dystopias. Clearly women cannot have a > >utopia (at least in the "Female Man" worlds) - though I thought maybe > >janets world was meant to be one, though I didnt and still dont think it > >is one. I dont however find Jael's world frightening or Jael being insane. > >Am I "Jeannine?" She was the one person Jael said was the most intelligent > >and she seemed to like Jael's world. > > > >Bertina > > > I just finished a paper on feminist utopias. Women certainly CAN have a > utopia, although we don't always immediately recognize it as such. If it > has to be only composed of women, there's Herland by Gilman. If it can have > men in it also, then try The Dazzle of Day by Gloss (a recent BDG > nomination). Octavia Butler's Bloodchild has even been called a utopia, > although it takes some stretching to think of it that way. > Here's a question for everyone: when doing my research for the above paper, > I ran across a comment by a (male, for what it's worth) academic, who was > responding to an article by Joanna Russ. He had noticed that all-woman > utopias are out there in the hundreds, and have been written for at least > 300 years. But he couldn't think of ANY all-male scenarios (and I can only > think of one--it was a short story I read back in the 70's about a group who > called themselves, well, The Men). Why, group, do you suppose this is true? > And if you were going to create an all-male world (utopian or otherwise), > what would it look like? > > Sheryl ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 22:27:01 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bertina Miller Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] The Female Man/Utopias To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Actually I agree 100 percent! Bertina bmiller@medmail.mcg.edu On Wed, 24 Feb 1999, Jennifer Krauel wrote: > At 05:59 PM 02/24/99 -0600, you wrote: > >... But he couldn't think of ANY all-male scenarios (and I can only > >think of one--it was a short story I read back in the 70's about a group who > >called themselves, well, The Men). Why, group, do you suppose this is true? > >And if you were going to create an all-male world (utopian or otherwise), > >what would it look like? > > > >Sheryl > > > > Hoo whee, I can't pass up this fat pitch (for those of you into sports > metaphors)... > > No need for all-male utopian stories when we live in a male utopia today? > > OK, it's a cheap shot, but someone had to take it. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 22:48:05 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Phoebe Wray Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU The place is called Whileaway, after all... while away the time... the connotation being to waste time, vacation, dream, do trivial things... I don't agree that The Female Man is "dated" or has outlived its usefulness to make us examine our society, past present future. Hilarious, of course, and sometimes grubby, but addressing in each of the dystopias the separation of genders and What That Does to the women and society in general. Strikes me as a kind of cosmic 2x4 upside the head. best, phoebe ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 22:50:59 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bertina Miller Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] The Female Man/Utopias To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Are they utopias or contemporary analogies? On Wed, 24 Feb 1999, Dave Samuelson wrote: > I'm sure there's a serious answer somewhere, but I'm reminded of how > my students once argued (unaware of Sturgeon's Venus Plus X) that a > man would be unlikely to write The Left Hand of Darkness because of > not seeing present gender inequity as other than natural. No doubt some > women have written all-female utopias because they could not envision > a utopian situation co-existing with men, who would (by nature?) be > overbearing. Men certainly have written all-male fictions, about sports > and war and whale-hunting, among other things. Do those represent kinds > of masculine utopia? > > Jennifer Krauel wrote: > > > At 05:59 PM 02/24/99 -0600, you wrote: > > >... But he couldn't think of ANY all-male scenarios (and I can only > > >think of one--it was a short story I read back in the 70's about a group > > >who called themselves, well, The Men). Why, group, do you suppose this is > > >true? And if you were going to create an all-male world (utopian or > > >otherwise), what would it look like? > > > > > >Sheryl > > > > > > > Hoo whee, I can't pass up this fat pitch (for those of you into sports > > metaphors)... > > > > No need for all-male utopian stories when we live in a male utopia today? > > > > OK, it's a cheap shot, but someone had to take it. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 06:52:58 MET Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Anthea Hartley Stanton Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man, very long To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On 24 Feb 99, at 20:00, Bertina Miller wrote: > As far as I can recall the character didnt break > any of the laws, she just left society. I can leave > this society if I want and I am not condemned to > die for that. One of the things that has troubled me about women's Utopias, or perhaps Utopias invented by women authors, is the authoritarian nature of the society. They are all too often ruled by an generally self-perpetuating oligarchy, as in _The gate to women's country_, which enforces its will usually in the most brutal way. Dissenters - especially those who, like feminists today, wish to change the very nature of society - are always frowned on and, as often as not, killed, mutilated or expelled for their troubles. Instead of "Big Brother", we have "Big Mummy who always knows best so you little girls must do as you're told or get your heads chopped off". The societies invariably have compensations - usually short working hours, safety, environment - but almost never political freedom. Russ (and Tepper in _TGTWC_) treat women in the same stereotyped way that men do - as simple creatures without the inclination or ability to think for themselves and who need constant guidance from their betters. But I personally prefer our own imperfect world to a world ruled by "Big Mother" because "For what is a [woman] profited, if [she] shall gain the whole world, and lose [her] own soul? or what shall a [woman] give in exchange for [her] soul?" Russ simply wasn't the type of writer (or, very likely, person) to make derogatory assumptions about women so I feel that Whileaway *has* to be parody. AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 06:56:33 MET Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Anthea Hartley Stanton Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG: female man To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On 24 Feb 99, at 22:14, Bertina Miller wrote: > Remember when Janet > cried over Jael's killing? Why would she cry? If she was a bully as > someone on the list said, why should she cry? Obviously Whileawayans are > all bluff and no show. Reminds me of many incidents I've read about in the history of genocides and war - a Conquistador crying over the death of one Indian child after he and his comrades have slaughtered hundreds of women and children, an SS death camp guard weeping over a baby hidden amongst clothing after he has helped herd naked mothers and children into the gas chamber or the Serbian soldier who slaughtered an entire family but arbitrarily spares the elderly grandmother with whom he tearfully commiserates. In each case I've mentioned the killer went onto bigger and better ways of killing. Rudolf Hoess (the death camp guard) was a sentimental man, easily moved by animal suffering and who, his relatives claimed, would often miss his stride to avoid treading on an insect. I think that Russ used the incident to show the essential hypocrisy of human nature. AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 07:03:46 MET Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Anthea Hartley Stanton Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On 24 Feb 99, at 22:48, Phoebe Wray wrote: > The place is called Whileaway, after all... while away the time... > the connotation being to waste time, vacation, dream, do trivial > things... Exactly - the sort of place that a *really* sexist man would think constitutes a women's Utopia. A place where she didn't have to think, where she could sit in the sun and knit, play bridge or gossip with the other "girls" because - as every real man knows - women find it too exhausting to think. Which, as I've said repeatedly, is why I think that each of the "Utopias" was a parody and examples of Russ' humour. It occurs to me that not only did she poke fun at her oppressors but sometimes she simultaneously poked fun at the excesses of her "supporters". One has to be carefully of taking Russ' statements at face value, although of course, she often "concealed [things] in the open" to make the parody more acute. I don't believe one can easily overestimate Russ' subtlety because, in spite of the "rage", her works are much more complex than they appear after a single reading. Rather like peeling an onion - one weeps as one peels off layer after layer. AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 07:07:14 MET Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Anthea Hartley Stanton Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On 24 Feb 99, at 19:54, donna simone wrote: > Rage is not always a "free choice" emotion. It has to be controllable if society is to function. So much of the rage of the 70s appears to me, and appeared to women at the time, as uncontrolled and therefore counter-productive. I don't know for sure - I wasn't there. > I am puzzled. Do you see the scope of her conjectured audience as only > "active feminists". I have always thought Female Man was a droll, but > pointed "up yours" to the SFF community primarily, with the appeal to > "feminists" being equal to it if not secondary. Agin I don't know. As I think the consensus on this list shows, Russ' work has usually been "enjoyed by the few, rejected by the many" and _The female man_ is, perhaps, the quintessential Russ novel. If _The female man_ had been aimed at the generality of SFF readers, I would have expected Russ to have modified her style to draw her readers in and then present her thesis subtly with the real shocks towards the end. The book, though, is a shocker from the beginning. But that's just a guess on my part - perhaps in the 70s Russ' style was exactly what did attract the generality. I have a feeling that Russ explores this point in _How to suppress..._ but I'm on my way to Vienna for a few days so will have to defer the discussion. AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net). ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 07:24:18 +0000 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Edward James Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] The Female Man/Utopias To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On Wed, 24 Feb 1999, Jocelyn & Sheryl Denton-LeSage wrote: > But he couldn't think of ANY all-male scenarios (and I can only > think of one--it was a short story I read back in the 70's about a group who > called themselves, well, The Men). Why, group, do you suppose this is true? > And if you were going to create an all-male world (utopian or otherwise), > what would it look like? Yes, I raised this question with my "Utopias" class last week. No answer, though. The most famous all-male novel, I suppose, is Philip Wylie's THE DISAPPEARANCE (around 1950?) But it is years since I read it; it was misogynistic, but I cannot remember the details. But that's the only one _I_ can think of. Edward James ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 07:27:58 +0000 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Edward James Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man, very long To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On Thu, 25 Feb 1999, Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: > Russ simply wasn't the type of writer (or, very likely, person) to make > derogatory assumptions about women so I feel that Whileaway *has* to be > parody. Sorry, I don't follow this. What derogatory assumptions are you talking about? The only thing _I_ have against Whileaway is that I am not allowed in it; otherwise it seems to combine many of the best features of utopia, while avoiding almost all the worst. I can't think of a more attractive literary utopia, in fact. OK, so there's duelling... But apart from that... Edward James ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 07:40:34 +0000 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Edward James Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On Thu, 25 Feb 1999, Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: > Exactly - the sort of place that a *really* sexist man would think constitutes > a women's Utopia. A place where she didn't have to think, where she could sit > in the sun and knit, play bridge or gossip with the other "girls" because - as > every real man knows - women find it too exhausting to think. Ah, I see why you object to it, then. I don't read it like that at all: I see it as a utopia which has solved, by science fictional means, the ultimate problem of utopias: how to get rid of work and create plenty of leisure. Yes, of course there are elements of parody: as I said in a mailing weeks ago (in response to someone who found Russ humourless), THE FEMALE MAN is one of the funniest of all sf books. And the induction helmet is surely a joke at the expense of sf writers who find a simple gizmo which will solve everything. But the point being made is a serious one: leisure -- allowing time for the development of individual creativity -- is a major goal for utopianists. And I do not see the women of Whileaway lounging around doing nothing: or, rather, they are only doing so when they want to (which everyone does, every now and then: look at me, lounging around replying to e-mail when I should be preparing a class). Most of the time they are using their "leisure" in active and creative ways. Now, this may seem appalling to those wedded to the Protestant Work Ethic. In real life, I probably am too (why else did I reach my office before 7 a.m. this morning?) But it is the utopias which express that Protestant Work Ethic which look the most obnoxious to me; not the ones that have expelled it. Edward James ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 23:54:41 -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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Given that the majority of sf readers were and are still male (let alone adolescent, in one sense or another), common responses at the time were boredom and outrage, boredom for those who didn't understand her design or her subtlety, outrage from those who took it as simply a "rant." That the book has stayed in print may be due less to sf readers than to feminists, though I think it's a "classic" and at the same time a revolutionary way (sui generis) of writing an sf novel. Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: > On 24 Feb 99, at 19:54, donna simone wrote: > > > Rage is not always a "free choice" emotion. > > It has to be controllable if society is to function. So much of the rage of > the 70s appears to me, and appeared to women at the time, as uncontrolled and > therefore counter-productive. I don't know for sure - I wasn't there. > > > I am puzzled. Do you see the scope of her conjectured audience as only > > "active feminists". I have always thought Female Man was a droll, but > > pointed "up yours" to the SFF community primarily, with the appeal to > > "feminists" being equal to it if not secondary. > > Agin I don't know. As I think the consensus on this list shows, Russ' work has > usually been "enjoyed by the few, rejected by the many" and _The female man_ > is, perhaps, the quintessential Russ novel. If _The female man_ had been aimed > at the generality of SFF readers, I would have expected Russ to have modified > her style to draw her readers in and then present her thesis subtly with the > real shocks towards the end. The book, though, is a shocker from the > beginning. But that's just a guess on my part - perhaps in the 70s Russ' style > was exactly what did attract the generality. > > I have a feeling that Russ explores this point in _How to suppress..._ but I'm > on my way to Vienna for a few days so will have to defer the discussion. > > AJ > Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net). > > ____________________________________________________________________ > Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 00:02:39 -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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man, very long To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Again the accusation against women's utopias can be directed at utopias in general. My favorite anecdote in this regard deals with Etienne Cabet (*Voyage en Icarie*), a French utopist whose disciples designed a community in the US to embody his principles. Naturally, they had to be flexible, because they were dealing with real people, not cardboard cutouts who did what the writer said. When he came to "settle" in "his" Icaria, he was so intolerant that they kicked him out. To be regardes as "successful," a utopian community must survive for 5 years (like the flip side of a cancer cure); utopian fictions we regard today as literarily successful tend to be more flexible or "ambiguous." Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: >>On 24 Feb 99, at 20:00, Bertina Miller wrote: >> >> As far as I can recall the character didnt break >> any of the laws, she just left society. I can leave >> this society if I want and I am not condemned to >> die for that. > >One of the things that has troubled me about women's Utopias, or perhaps >Utopias invented by women authors, is the authoritarian nature of the society. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 05:32:10 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: donna simone Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Samuleson: I beg to differ. It was nominated for a Nebula (the SFWA award) in 1975 and was on the Locus poll (10th) for best novel in 1976. Many men in both venues would have had to nominated the book for this to be true in 1975. Men who were SFF writers and readers no less. donna, donnaneely@earthlink.net ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 05:52:10 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: donna simone Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Hartley >It has to be controllable if society is to function. So much of the rage of the 70s appears to me, and appeared to women at the time, as uncontrolled and therefore counter-productive. I don't know for sure - I wasn't there.> I was. Here are a few things I learnt from those enraged and "uncontrolled and ...counterproductive" women: - How to create, fund, staff and maintain (for well over 10 years) one the US's first Rape Crisis Centers. - How to work within a University to advocate for, instigate creation of and see through final development of a Major program in Women's Studies. - How to design, fund, staff and complete a county wide Court Watch project that resulted in significant changes to how cases on violence against women were investigated and prosecuted. _ How to design, fund, staff and maintain the Child Assault Prevention Project to teach school age children how to resist assault. - How to design, fund, conduct and maintain a Women's Self Defense school. - How to organize, staff and maintain (without outside funding) a Women's Music Production company. - How to organize, staff and maintain (without outside funds) a Women's Cooperative Automotive Services garage. - How to pool resources and implement Income Sharing within households of many women with wide variations in income/resources. - How to organize and provide volunteer only round the clock home support to women experiencing traumatic crisis over sexual assault and early sexual abuse memoirs, long before it was acknowledged to exist. Especially for those without access to healthcare or those fearful of incarceration in mental institutions. etc. etc. etc. I believe one can see my point. donna donnaneely@earthlink.net ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 08:15:33 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Robin Reid Subject: [*FSFFU*] Jael's world/Whileaway To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU IN regard to which is the utopia......I don't have my copy here but can bring it in next week if peple want me to check the reference. But I remember very clearly (and I've read it at least 20 times maybe more) that Jael tells Janet in one scene where they're all together that Janet's world,Whileaway, is the "future" of Jael's world--that the "plague" the Whileawayans say killed off all the men is a Big Lie. If this is true (I might loathe Jael in some ways, but do not believe she lies in that way), and if people think that Whileaway is the utopia, then I think Russ is saying something very profound about how "we" get to "utopias." ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 08:10:58 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pat Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] The Female Man/Utopias To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On Wed, 24 Feb 1999, Jocelyn & Sheryl Denton-LeSage wrote: > I ran across a comment by a (male, for what it's worth) academic, who was > responding to an article by Joanna Russ. He had noticed that all-woman > utopias are out there in the hundreds, and have been written for at least > 300 years. But he couldn't think of ANY all-male scenarios ETHAN OF ATHOS by Lois McMaster Bujold. > (and I can only > think of one--it was a short story I read back in the 70's about a group who > called themselves, well, The Men). Why, group, do you suppose this is true? > And if you were going to create an all-male world (utopian or otherwise), > what would it look like? Oxford before the mid-20th Century. Congress & Parliament throughout the period called "Western Civilization".> The original monastery of Athos that Bujold's world was named for. Patricia (Pat) Mathews mathews@unm.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 08:19:03 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pat Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] The Female Man/Utopias To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On Thu, 25 Feb 1999, Edward James wrote: > Yes, I raised this question with my "Utopias" class last week. No answer, > though. The most famous all-male novel, I suppose, is Philip Wylie's THE > DISAPPEARANCE (around 1950?) But it is years since I read it; it was > misogynistic, but I cannot remember the details. But that's the only one > _I_ can think of. Read RING OF SWORDS and then look up any novels or plays the Hwarhath find "decent." Topping the list: MOBY DICK.> Patricia (Pat) Mathews mathews@unm.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 10:16:23 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: teragram Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU AJ wrote: >That wasn't quite what I meant in my comment although I don't believe that >"rage" helped then or would help now (....cowers waiting for thunderbolts to >strike). > >It has to be controllable if society is to function. So much of the rage of >the 70s appears to me, and appeared to women at the time, as uncontrolled and >therefore counter-productive. I think that rage is a valid and healthy response to oppression, and it would seem that this rage was behind many of the highly productive changes that have been made since the 70's. 'Good manners are not enough', rage CAN get things done. Really, it can. Rage can also be counterproductive, of that there is no doubt - but I don't see that being the case here. Russ didn't buy a gun and start shooting - she wrote a book, one that many people find amusing and intriguing and relevant. Sounds pretty controlled to me. meg ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 08:47:12 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joyce Jones Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man, very long To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Bertina wrote: >Joyce you hit on the very reason many dont find Whileaway very attractive. >I find all the worlds equally disturbing, and since one is supposed to be >our own world in the 70s, that at least tells you I am disturbed by my own >flawed world. As far as I can recall the character didnt break any of the >laws, she just left society. I can leave this society if I want and I am >not condemned to die for that. The woman who went up into the mountains didn't just leave, which was her right, but she wrote a note saying "You do not exist." I agree with Anthea that in feminist utopias safety is important. I happen to think personal safety is desirable. Russ states that the inhabitants of Whileaway can choose to risk their lives, but they need not fear that members of society will stalk and terrorize them. I believe she's saying that this freedom from being stalked and victimized entails everyone's agreeing that such freedom is a basic human right. The woman said, "You do not exist." Meaning the society and it's laws did not exist. Safety couldn't be maintained if some members would be allowed to say that such safety did not matter, did not exist. Actually, it could be maintained if they said so, but not if they acted against that safety. I suppose Russ was saying that denying the societal protection of safety was was the first step on the way to eliminating that protection. I believe she says that's what men do, and she didn't want the women of Whileaway turning into the same type of oppressive bullies that men are. Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 09:39:54 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bonnie Gray Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I also don't recall it being completely one-sided. Wasn't Data quite willing, even if his motivations were curiosity? I saw it as Data's-not-a-virgin-anymore. Whether or not a virgin is "used" or introduced to something new and wonderful depends entirely on the person they're with. I like to think that Tasha was on Data's side. Of course, it has been several years since I saw the episode, and I don't remember the situation surrounding it very well. Bonnie On Sat, 20 Feb 1999, Pat wrote: > I think she picked Data because he was a machine and presumably > would be totally under her command. She saw him as "safe', not because > he was a good guy, but because he was programmed to be safe. That's use > in my book. > He also seemed a lot more innocent in those days than he is > now. > > Patricia (Pat) Mathews > mathews@unm.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 09:52:23 -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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I do not mean to pick on Russ or the book; I'm a fan of both. The original question concerned popular response, as I recall, and other postings note that Russ fans tend to be vehement, but wonder about the book's staying power. IMHO the climate among readers (male and female) is actually more receptive today than 24 years ago, regardless of how "dated" some posters find it. The book clearly had its fans in 1974, but also its detractors and ignorers. Writers nominate and choose winners of the Nebulas and SFWA had probably no more than 400-500 members at that time (fewer voters). They more than other readers would have respected Russ's artistic accomplishment. It did not take a large number of Russ partisans (and there certainly were men who approved) to produce a nomination and no tally is kept of negative votes. Finishing 10th then in the Locus poll would not take a lot more votes and the same strictures apply. Locus readers are also disproportionately (and professionally) involved in sf and negative votes do not count. No bland space opera, The Female Man stirred up a hornet's nest (still does) among those who read sf and care about it. As my first posting on the topic notes, Jeff Riggenbach in The National Review (not my usual reading matter-I was sent a photocopy) named it and Delany's Dhalgren novels of the decade. The Delany (his only "best-seller," albeit over time) has probably outsold the Russ, but do buyers actually read it? To be fair, he says he gets far more fan mail on it than any other book, some from kids who are usually not big readers, especially of sf. donna simone wrote: Samuleson: I beg to differ. It was nominated for a Nebula (the SFWA award) in 1975 and was on the Locus poll (10th) for best novel in 1976. Many men in both venues would have had to nominated the book for this to be true in 1975. Men who were SFF writers and readers no less. donna, donnaneely@earthlink.net ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 18:44:37 -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: [*FSFFU*] [*FSFFU*Utopias: all-male/all-female To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU All-male scenarios: in Philip Wylie's c. 1950 fantasy _The Disappearance_, in which men and women of contemporary USA find themselves in literally different worlds, the male world (as I recall) goes to hell in a handbasket very fast - dominance and competition come to the fore - whereas the women (mind you it's years since I read the book and I didn't much like it at the time) form maternalistic tribal groups. Another (male-authored) all-male dystopia features in one of Cordwainer Smith's stories (?The Crime and Glory of Commander Suzdal) The only benign all-male society in sff I can think of is Lois McMaster Bujold's Athos in _Ethan of Athos_, in which men have had, in a sense, to become mothers, the nurturant parents of their cloned offspring. Lesley lesleyah@primex.co.uk ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 12:56:28 -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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I think there is a media-generated (and sexist) perception of seventies feminism as this wacky, man-axing regime, with tremendous powers no less, that, like the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, produced nothing useful and then self-destructed. (Btw, Carter was a major financial/military supporter of the revived KR after 1979, and Reagan, damn his eyes, continued the policy) This is alluring to us younger women who still see sexism and blame the movement for not eradicating it. But let's look, say, at the New Left in the 1960s. Let me quote famous leftist Stokely Carmichel: "The only position for a woman in the movement in prone." This was a left-wing guy. These days, no left wing man would dare say something like that, and if he did pop out with it, he'd be torn to pieces. What do we really see on seventies feminism? 1. Media cariacatures on television 2. Articles in things like Time, which are largely worthless for factual content 3. Anti-feminists like Camille Paglia, who is a liar and a poor scholar even considered in academic terms. 4. Movement self-criticisms from the early eighties. And upon these, let me disgress. The movement, as it were, always criticizes itself in absolutist, self- abnegating terms. I recall, for example, an anarchist who did an elaborate rhetorical loop-the-loop in a local publication about his latent racism, sexism, classism and homophobia, because he ventured some little tiny criticisms of lesbian S/M practices. Now his criticisms had been rather dumb, but they were also rather small, and more in the vein of "I think this might be true, is it?" than anything else. But instead of just saying that he'd been silly, no, he had to go the whole Cultural Revolution nine yards and declare he'd been a rotten person. The left is like that, alas. >>> donna simone 02/25 4:52 AM >>> Hartley >It has to be controllable if society is to function. So much of the rage of >the 70s appears to me, and appeared to women at the time, as uncontrolled and >therefore counter-productive. I don't know for sure - I wasn't there.> I was. Here are a few things I learnt from those enraged and "uncontrolled and ...counterproductive" women: ...... ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 13:07:30 -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: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I really don't think Whileaway is a parody. I also don't think Russ is saying that it is really literally perfect, the best and only way for women to live, etc. She's just making up one example of a place where most of women's men- generated problems would be resolved and some new ones created. It's not a prescription or a parody. Has anyone here read Doris Lessing's The Four Gated City? In that novel, one of the characters writes a novel about a city...the city and its society are a metaphor, a philosophical puzzle. But everyone from communists to right wingers thinks its some kind of receipe and asks him how to go about building it. Whileaway obviously isn't perfect. When Janet goes after that old woman, I think we're not meant to say, "yeah, get her...she didn't knucke under." We're meant to be appalled. And I think the non-historicalness of Whileaway (rather than blandness, exactly) is intentional. Not only does it add to the allegorical, parable like nature of the story, but it also causes us to think about how utopias work. And doesn't Russ say several times that there are flaws in the Whileawayan character which come from the social structure? Too, it seems like we're looking for some kind of perfect feminist utopia--it can't be too this, it can't be too that. And if it's a place we wouldn't want to live, then it's not just a different opinion--it's wrong. Frankly, I don't see any space ships and women with guns marching us all off to Whileawy by force. So why all this panic? >>> Anthea Hartley Stanton 02/25 7:03 AM >>> On 24 Feb 99, at 22:48, Phoebe Wray wrote: > The place is called Whileaway, after all... while away the time... > the connotation being to waste time, vacation, dream, do trivial > things... Exactly - the sort of place that a *really* sexist man would think constitutes a women's Utopia. A place where she didn't have to think, where she could sit in the sun and knit, play bridge or gossip with the other "girls" because - as every real man knows - women find it too exhausting to think. Which, as I've said repeatedly, is why I think that each of the "Utopias" was a parody and examples of Russ' humour. It occurs to me that not only did she poke fun at her oppressors but sometimes she simultaneously poked fun at the excesses of her "supporters". One has to be carefully of taking Russ' statements at face value, although of course, she often "concealed [things] in the open" to make the parody more acute. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 15:32:47 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Patricia Monk Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On Thu, 25 Feb 1999, Bonnie Gray wrote: > I also don't recall it being completely one-sided. Wasn't > Data quite willing, even if his motivations were curiosity? > I saw it as Data's-not-a-virgin-anymore. Whether or not > a virgin is "used" or introduced to something new and wonderful > depends entirely on the person they're with. I like to think > that Tasha was on Data's side. Of course, it has been > several years since I saw the episode, and I don't > remember the situation surrounding it very well. > Bonnie I seem to remember that in a subsequent episode (the one in which a StarFleet researcher attempts to claim him as "property", Data has a little hologram of Tasha among his possessions, and appears to remember her with some "affection" (or whatever). ************************************************************** Dr Patricia Monk patmonk@is.dal.ca Department of English Dalhousie University HALIFAX Nova Scotia B3H 2S3 ignorance is curable * stupidity is forever ************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 21:43:43 +0100 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Giacomo Conserva Subject: [*FSFFU*] Joanna Russ To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Is Joanna Russ violent? Well, one should not forget what patriarcate was and is. The imprinting of the name of the father is not done quite gently. And, on the other side, it would be wrong to surmise that this aspect concerns women only. I, for one, (male), was stunned and moved when I finally got to read Female man (it was '85, and I found it at last in a bookstore in Lausanne, in a very peculiar moment of my life).- In this book something happens, perhaps too much happens; thru all the horror tenderness and some kind of love come through; (and, also, memories and dreams of happiness- here or elsewhere- in this or other times); there's some meaning here, one should not despise such a journey. Giacomo Conserva, Italy gconserva@mail.dex-net.com Talking Heads: "I can't get used to this lifestyle" ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 16:21:30 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jocelyn & Sheryl Denton-LeSage Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] The Female Man/Utopias To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU > Read RING OF SWORDS and then look up any novels or plays the >Hwarhath find "decent." Topping the list: MOBY DICK.> > >Patricia (Pat) Mathews OK, lots of people have chuckled that several different male institutions count as male utopias. But Moby Dick, Oxford, and Parliament would all fail utterly without the labor and support of women. Women at home made these "all-male" havens possible. Even Thoreau took his laundry to his auntie every week. I'm talking about a completely male-only society, with no recourse to the labor (whether by "labor" we mean giving birth or cleaning toilets) of women. I agree with the person who suggested homophobia as the probable reason for the lack of such books, but come on, writers! Give us one! Surely we have some non-homophobes to take up the gauntlet? Sheryl ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 23:08:31 +0000 Reply-To: chuard@earthlink.net Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Comments: Authenticated sender is From: geminiwalker Organization: Gemini Walker Ink Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU > My point? To view the sex scene with Dave simply as the equivalent > to the use of a vibrator is a too simple picture. I only looked at > it from the viewpoint whether Dave is abused or not. But what does > it say about Jael that she likes sex with an object, which is not > only any vibrator-like object, but - besides the actual > personality and consciousness - looks exactly like a person. When > somebody uses a doll for sex I view it as ridiculous and pathetic. > When somebody uses a vibrator or other tools, I do not (o.k. some > tools shock me). When Jael uses Dave it is also pathetic in a > way. Or not? Any comments? > > Petra Pathetic, I don't know, but silly and foolish perhaps, in that he had to a/ resemble a man so closely and b/ that the encounter itself had to be portrayed in such romantic verbiage (i.e., the beauty of his blond curly pubic hair and his muscular whatever). As in, who cares if it is mechanical anyway? What is all the kissing about? Nonsense! And yeah, okay, she "made sure he had an orgasm," but I have been with too many men who insisted I have an orgasm in order to *make them feel like a man*, it had nothing to do with my pleasure at all. ...geminiwalker chuard@earthlink.net To learn more about me, go to: http://home.earthlink.net/~chuard updated 2/22/99 ICQ #27240345 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 19:01:59 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bertina Miller Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU That was what was funny about the whole thing--the Captain said "Data you cant have the virus" but he fell over anyway. I guess that was one instance when his enthusiasm at trying to be human went overboard.;) Bertina a long life trek fan, bmiller@medmail.mcg.edu On Mon, 22 Feb 1999, Pat wrote: > On Wed, 24 Feb 1999, Bertina Miller wrote: > > > > > Data was used? If you recall, the crew was under the influence of an alien > > virus. I thought both were used by the virus! > > > Can Data get human viruses?> > > Patricia (Pat) Mathews > mathews@unm.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 19:06:10 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bertina Miller Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Jael's world/Whileaway To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Your right Robin-I think that was why I was turned off at first at the ending of the story when I first read it 10? years ago. But I hope it was that Russ was trying to have us think about the need for utopias rather than a need to turn us off to utopias. Like I said before it is an explication on the need for alternative feminist landscapes and that surely is not superficial! Bertina bmiller@medmail.mcg.edu On Thu, 25 Feb 1999, Robin Reid wrote: > IN regard to which is the utopia......I don't have my copy here but can > bring it in next week if peple want me to check the reference. But I > remember very clearly (and I've read it at least 20 times maybe more) that > Jael tells Janet in one scene where they're all together that Janet's > world,Whileaway, is the "future" of Jael's world--that the "plague" the > Whileawayans say killed off all the men is a Big Lie. If this is true (I > might loathe Jael in some ways, but do not believe she lies in that way), > and if people think that Whileaway is the utopia, then I think Russ is > saying something very profound about how "we" get to "utopias." ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 19:21:07 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bertina Miller Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man, very long To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU But Joyce the decision to kill her off is exactly when the culture became much like our own. Men have for centuries decided when women must die-bride burning and killing off girl children to name just a couple. The salem witch trials were considered at the time a way to ensure the safety and the purity of the settlers. That doesnt make it right. It certainly doesnt make it utopian or even ideal for my estimation of a landscape I would necessarily want to be a part of. Bertina bmiller@medmail.mcg.edu On Thu, 25 Feb 1999, Joyce Jones wrote: > Bertina wrote: > > >Joyce you hit on the very reason many dont find Whileaway very attractive. > >I find all the worlds equally disturbing, and since one is supposed to be > >our own world in the 70s, that at least tells you I am disturbed by my own > >flawed world. As far as I can recall the character didnt break any of the > >laws, she just left society. I can leave this society if I want and I am > >not condemned to die for that. > > The woman who went up into the mountains didn't just leave, which was her > right, but she wrote a note saying "You do not exist." I agree with Anthea > that in feminist utopias safety is important. I happen to think personal > safety is desirable. Russ states that the inhabitants of Whileaway can > choose to risk their lives, but they need not fear that members of society > will stalk and terrorize them. I believe she's saying that this freedom > from being stalked and victimized entails everyone's agreeing that such > freedom is a basic human right. The woman said, "You do not exist." > Meaning the society and it's laws did not exist. Safety couldn't be > maintained if some members would be allowed to say that such safety did not > matter, did not exist. Actually, it could be maintained if they said so, > but not if they acted against that safety. I suppose Russ was saying that > denying the societal protection of safety was was the first step on the way > to eliminating that protection. I believe she says that's what men do, and > she didn't want the women of Whileaway turning into the same type of > oppressive bullies that men are. > > Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 20:14:28 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Phoebe Wray Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Jael's world/Whileaway To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 2/25/99 2:16:08 PM, Robin Reid wrote: <> Yes, it's very near the end of the book. I agree with your somewhat veiled statement about how "we" achieve Utopia. I was clumsily alluding to this in my previous post about each of the "worlds" having a central statement about the separation/war between genders and the inability on both sides to come to some detente. In none of them can men and women coexist happily for both. I don't view this as Russ's personal ultimatum or conclusion, but as her cautionary principle in the book. In the midst of the manic/antic humor is a serious adminition to Find A Way, I think. How better than with a satiric pov? I don't have the same problem with Davy that others on the list seemed to have, nor do I view him as just an elaborate decorated vibrator. My interest was with Jael. That this is HER choice of sex partner. A human-like male creation. Someone beautiful -- stressed repeatedly. Someone always available; always "ready"; always willing. The scene we are given is said to be slightly different than other times she has had sex with Davy. Why is that? In other words, Jael plays at variations. To me, Davy's connection with Jael reveals a vulnerability not otherwise apparent. I'm so glad we read this book. I had not read it before. As someone else on this list mentioned, I confess to being naive and under-read on feminist theory. In 1975 I was working on the environment, not women's issues, even though I was aware that they often overlap. It goes on the I re-read these shelf. Some books I've been carrying for longer than some on this list are alive. And an off-FM topic, but sff -- today in one of my classes we watched Fahrenheit 451. And the students are all busily thinking what BOOK would they BE??? So am I think. A happy mental exercise every time I see the film. best phoebe ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 19:57:37 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Keith Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man, very long To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On Thu, 25 Feb 1999, Joyce Jones wrote: > The woman who went up into the mountains didn't just leave, which was her > right, but she wrote a note saying "You do not exist." I agree with Anthea > that in feminist utopias safety is important. I happen to think personal > safety is desirable. >> chomp! << > I suppose Russ was saying that > denying the societal protection of safety was was the first step on the way > to eliminating that protection. I believe she says that's what men do, and > she didn't want the women of Whileaway turning into the same type of > oppressive bullies that men are. > > Joyce *And* Russ made Janet's job, the occupation of that most patient of civilzed persons, the equivalent of a trash collector, and something Janet admits she does because she's too "stupid" for most other jobs. This looks to me like a regretful admission that violence may be necessary everywhere, but not necessarily honored. Kathleen ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1999 09:30:30 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bonnie Gray Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character Comments: To: geminiwalker To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I remember discussing Davy a couple of weeks ago, and said at the time that I would say no more on the subject. However, as this seems to be one part of the book that has stuck with many people, maybe because it conjures up such a variety of emotions, I will reiterate: I think the Davy scenes, especially that blatant "sex" one, are meant as satire. Disturbing satire, but satire nonetheless. Someone on the list (sorry, I don't remember who) also pointed out that the scene follows ones discussing the objectification of women (Anna?), and that perhaps Russ was using the literary trick of exposing the double standard. I agree with this, especially as Davy is objectified to the point that he/it really IS almost an object. Also, Davy is in his own mindless way, happy, unlike the objectified women in the story who are not objects at all. Perhaps Russ is saying that men who objectify women really see us all as the female versions of what Davy is in actuality. Finally, I want to thank everyone for the discussions of this book, and I am looking forward to the next book! On Thu, 25 Feb 1999, geminiwalker wrote: > > My point? To view the sex scene with Dave simply as the equivalent > > to the use of a vibrator is a too simple picture. I only looked at > > it from the viewpoint whether Dave is abused or not. But what does > > it say about Jael that she likes sex with an object, which is not > > only any vibrator-like object, but - besides the actual > > personality and consciousness - looks exactly like a person. When > > somebody uses a doll for sex I view it as ridiculous and pathetic. > > When somebody uses a vibrator or other tools, I do not (o.k. some > > tools shock me). When Jael uses Dave it is also pathetic in a > > way. Or not? Any comments? > > > > Petra > > Pathetic, I don't know, but silly and foolish perhaps, > in that he had to a/ resemble a man so closely and > b/ that the encounter itself had to be portrayed in > such romantic verbiage (i.e., the beauty of his blond > curly pubic hair and his muscular whatever). As > in, who cares if it is mechanical anyway? What is > all the kissing about? Nonsense! > > And yeah, okay, she "made sure he had an orgasm," > but I have been with too many men who insisted > I have an orgasm in order to *make them feel like > a man*, it had nothing to do with my pleasure at all. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1999 17:42:13 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Tanya M. Bouwman-Wozencraft" Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU In a message dated 2/25/99 9:15:01 AM Eastern Standard Time, mathews@UNM.EDU writes: > Can Data get human viruses?> > > Patricia (Pat) Mathews > mathews@unm.edu I don't know if Data can get "human" viruses, but in the episode under discussion Data did get the virus that the rest of the crew was getting. Captain Picard found this to be a shock and even told Data that he couldn't get the virus. However, Data proved him wrong by contracting the virus anyway. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1999 18:42:54 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bertina Miller Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Anne wasnt a woman she was a man who had a sex change by the men on her planet. That is the difference between her and Davy who in my mind is a robot and therefore in a sense is an object like a vibrator. How can you hurt an objects feelings? I know Asimov for a long time wrote on the humanization of robots but please, even Data on Star Trek realized the difference. The only time he was objectified was in the last ST movie where he started getting skin grafts by the borg queen. I think the need on the male side of Jael's planet is scary-the fact that men choose which type of person you will be-1) a man 2) a half man/woman 3) a man made into a woman by surgery. That is far damaging than Jael having sex with a robot no matter what her notions of the robot. Bertina bmiller@medmail.mcg.edu On Fri, 26 Feb 1999, Bonnie Gray wrote: > Someone on the list (sorry, I don't remember who) also pointed > out that the scene follows ones discussing the objectification > of women (Anna?), and that perhaps Russ was using the literary > trick of exposing the double standard. I agree with this, > especially as Davy is objectified to the point that he/it really > IS almost an object. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1999 18:46:29 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bertina Miller Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU I thought he was just mimicking everyone else's behavior-like an experiment rather than actually having the virus. Bertina bmiller@medmail.mcg.edu On Fri, 26 Feb 1999, Tanya M. Bouwman-Wozencraft wrote: > In a message dated 2/25/99 9:15:01 AM Eastern Standard Time, mathews@UNM.EDU > writes: > > > Can Data get human viruses?> > > > > Patricia (Pat) Mathews > > mathews@unm.edu > > I don't know if Data can get "human" viruses, but in the episode under > discussion Data did get the virus that the rest of the crew was getting. > Captain Picard found this to be a shock and even told Data that he couldn't > get the virus. However, Data proved him wrong by contracting the virus > anyway. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 27 Feb 1999 15:03:20 +0000 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Aline Ferreira Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Does it make any sense to you to look at the four "J" characters in The Female Man as to some extent clones, that is, the same person, or four different versions of the same person leading their distinct lives and then meeting, almost like the clones of Joanna May, in Fay Weldon's novel? What do people think? I am very interested in human cloning and would be grateful for ideas and further suggestions. Thanks in advance! Aline ********************************************* Maria Aline Salgueiro Seabra Ferreira University of Aveiro Departamento de Linguas e Culturas 3810 Aveiro Portugal Home Phone.+351.34.26854 Home Fax: +351.34.26854 Email: aline @mail.ua.pt ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 27 Feb 1999 09:49:29 -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: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On Sat, 27 Feb 1999, Aline Ferreira wrote: > Does it make any sense to you to look at the four "J" characters in The > Female Man as to some extent clones, that is, the same person, or four > different versions of the same person leading their distinct lives and then > meeting, almost like the clones of Joanna May, in Fay Weldon's novel? What > do people think? I am very interested in human cloning and would be > grateful for ideas and further suggestions. Thanks in advance! > Aline I don't think that they can literally be clones because they exist on 4 different timelines, four different alternate realities--there was never a single "mother" for them to have been cloned from--but they could still be genetically identical (given the traditional way science fiction protocols for such things have always worked), the exact same person in each alternate reality as influenced by 4 different environments, a prime example of the gender-based nature vs. nurture debate that was in its infancy at the time Russ wrote the book. Mike Levy ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 27 Feb 1999 18:24:59 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pat Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On Sat, 27 Feb 1999, Aline Ferreira wrote: > Does it make any sense to you to look at the four "J" characters in The > Female Man as to some extent clones, that is, the same person, or four > different versions of the same person leading their distinct lives and then > meeting, almost like the clones of Joanna May, in Fay Weldon's novel? What > do people think? I am very interested in human cloning and would be > grateful for ideas and further suggestions. Thanks in advance! > Aline Actually, they're not clones. They're the same person on four different timelines.> Patricia (Pat) Mathews mathews@unm.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 28 Feb 1999 10:03:20 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: teragram Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU >On Sat, 27 Feb 1999, Aline Ferreira wrote: > >> Does it make any sense to you to look at the four "J" characters in The >> Female Man as to some extent clones, that is, the same person, or four >> different versions of the same person leading their distinct lives and then >> meeting, almost like the clones of Joanna May, in Fay Weldon's novel? > >Patricia (Pat) Mathews wrote: > Actually, they're not clones. They're the same person on four >different timelines.> I tend to think of the "J's" more as internal aspects of one person; the 'what-ifs-I-had' spinning off inside the skull, and adding their voices and perspectives to daily life, and then taking one back to explore the society that could have spawned them. Not actual literally different timelines, but the internal exploration of how the 'I' would react to everyday life in the USA had 'I' been raised in a culture devoid of men, what that culture would be like, how 'I' would live there, who would 'I' be then? And how would the 'I' I am now react to that culture? One of the clearest example of the internal aspect of the "J's" is the cocktail party scene. There are at least two of the "J's" present, but from the other guests' reactions it's seems clear there is only one person, and the division and dialogue between Joanna and Janet is an internal one. When Janet squeaks a reply because Joanne is strangling her or we are to "picture me on the back of the couch, clinging to her hair like a homuncula, battering her on the top of her head until she doesn't dare open her mouth", it seems obvious that this is not to be taken literally - no matter how well lubricated or self involved the other guests were, they'd probably notice something was awry. Instead, they go on with business as usual, completely oblivious. To be honest, it sounds to me very much like the sort of internal dialogue I've heard in my head in similar situations, in a bit higher contrast and with better wording. When what I really really really want (on one level) is to hit the other person hard, either verbally or physically, and have someone asides of me rue this here partcular day. On another level I know very well it is NOT DONE, and really the poor sod has no idea of the insult he has just offered me, and may have been even trying to be kind and quite probably hasn't earned all of the reaction I am wanting to unleash. Oooo, but it would be such FUN! Much as I might regret my bad manners later.... and these conflicting desires war it out and reach a compromise, or one or another of them wins and I restrict myself to showing my teeth in a 'smile' or threaten to slash tires, as the case may be. It's similar to the little limp pink and blue books - we all know what they say, in one edition or another, but they're not actual books, nor are they mean to be taken as such. Anyone else have this reaction? meg ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 28 Feb 1999 10:29:02 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Keith Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Female Man: Jael character To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU On Sat, 27 Feb 1999, Pat wrote: > On Sat, 27 Feb 1999, Aline Ferreira wrote: > > > Does it make any sense to you to look at the four "J" characters in The > > Female Man as to some extent clones >>snip<< > > Actually, they're not clones. They're the same person on four > different timelines.> The four different J's reminded me of the way repositioning an object works in computer drafting programs works, at least according to a friend of mine who was interviewing recent graduates for a programming job. He asked one how to rotate a drawing through a certain number of degrees. The interviewee described the code he would write to draw an object from the specified view, but this was not the answer my friend was looking for. That was to write code to relate the object to the background, then rotate that background, taking the view of the object with it. For those on the list that actually write computer aided drafting programs, this may be wildly inaccurate, but it's stuck with me a metaphor for the four different times and the four different J's. (The fifth J being, of course, the reality that authors and programmers write simulations of ;-)) I think Russ did a darn good job of rotating the background... Kathleen (who can go to work on her syntax now that she's gotten that over-extended metaphor off her chest)