Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF LOG9805A" ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 May 1998 23:52:43 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joslyn Grassby Subject: BDG Halfway Human Comments: To: feministsf@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------2C2276878A5EC78800A09FE6" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------2C2276878A5EC78800A09FE6 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit --------------2C2276878A5EC78800A09FE6 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-ID: <354D5EC9.B1DEC0BA@nlc-bnc.ca> Date: Sun, 03 May 1998 23:23:07 -0700 From: Joslyn Grassby X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win16; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: feministsf@listserv.uic.ecu Subject: BDG Halfway Human Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The purpose of this message is to initiate discussion of Carolyn Ives Gilman's book, "Halfway Human", (1998). Jennifer Krauel asked me to make some prefatory remarks: they are below. One caveat, however. Although I have read the book with pleasure and admiration, it was a reading for enjoyment and not the kind of close reading necessary for comment. I am busy rereading it, but because of the pressure of work and other commitments, I am only about a third of the way through this second reading. As a result, the comments below are on that portion and I will post more in a few days. And, please assume that the statements below all have an IMHO affixed. "Halfway Human" is the story of Tedla Galele, a neuter, or "bland" from the planet Gamma Discipulis, or Gammadis. The story opens with it found bleeding from a suicide attempt in an alley on the planet Capella. The book alternates between omnisicient narrator portions on Capella and Tedla's first person narrative of her life on Gammadis and how she escaped that planet. Tedla throughout is referred to as "it", a usage I found very unsettling. To use the term "it" and yet to be referring to a human, very effectively sets up a dissonance that keeps the reader alert and uncomfortable. And it is in many ways an uncomfortable book. Children on Gammadis are sexually undifferentiated until the age of about twelve when they "become human", i.e., either male or female. If they remain neuter, they have somehow failed to become human, and are relegated to a life of of drudgery, whether farm work, cooking, cleaning or serving. They live in mean warrens apart from humans. The conditioning of the children prior to their change leads them, for the most part, to ignore blands or even to despise and bully them (although it is the blands who take care of them). Tedla, early on, seems somewhat different from other chldren in that she genuinely cares for a bland who ensured that she received medical care when Tedla was seriously ill. Yet even Tedla joins another child in pelting this same bland with mud balls and calling it names. A good deal of the children's aggression toward blands seems to be inspired by fear. Fear of their coming change, fear that they might end up a bland, fear of caring for someone who is--not human. The children all "know" that blands are dull, stupid and unable to feel any real emotion. We see the strength of their conditioning in the woeful self-image Tedla has, even after twelve years away from Gammadis. She remains convinced that she is stupid, subhuman and incapable of love (and I found this a bit overdone). There are early hints that "becoming human" on Gammadis may not be a question of physiology and may not be random. When, at the coming-of-age process (hardly a ceremony), Tedla is assigned the tag that will identify her as a bland, one clerk remarks "I thought the rate was going down" and another replies, "Not today it isn't". As we see more of Gammadis society, we realize that the existence of an underclass is an economic necessity. To have a large number of people whose labour is available for only the cost of feeding and housing them badly, is to enable the rest of Gammadis society to live very well indeed. There is some very interesting world-building in the novel. Gammadis is a beautiful world but people live underground and describe their guilty past when they exploited and polluted their planet. There is no record of their being part of a human diaspora that has colonized so many worlds, yet they are clearly human, although they may have taken a somewhat different evolutionary path. Gammadis is to all intents and purposes a slave-owning society. Gilman draws a picture of a society declining in numbers, one with all the nervousness that goes with knowing there are large numbers of blands who might possibly (despite their proclaimed apathy and stupidity) become disaffected with their lot. The consequence, of course, is harsh treatment and immediate violent suppression of anything that even looks like disobedience. Capella, on the other hand, has been terraformed and its business, and major export, is information. Scholars find they have a thin time of it unless they join one of the large information houses who then, of course, have the rights to all their work. Very little information is available for free: the information houses control access effectively even though one would expect in a society dedicated to information, that the media (the nets) would be as skilled as any in digging out facts. Gilman, on Gammadis, sets up a society based on the proposition that to be human is to have gender. And if you are neuter, you are not human, and since you are not human, there is no need to treat you humanely. It is clear that Gammadis society has not really changed from its exploitative past: they merely take much better care of their planet now than of their blands. Capella is probably as exploitative a society but there is still room for the intelligent and principled to make their way. But it is tough and it is risky. Things the novel makes me wonder about: 1. What would a person be like with no gender for the first twelve years of its life and then a rapid maturation process as either a man or a woman? 2. What does it mean to be "halfway human"? Is one not born human? Does one achieve humanity? Or, is humanity thrust upon one? Joslyn Grassby --------------2C2276878A5EC78800A09FE6-- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 May 1998 21:45:38 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: ME Hunter Subject: Halfway Human Joslyn Grassby wrote: >The purpose of this message is to initiate discussion of Carolyn Ives >Gilman's book, "Halfway Human", (1998). Thanks, Joslyn. >Tedla throughout is referred to as "it", a usage I found very unsettling. >To use the term "it" and yet to be referring to a human, very effectively >sets up a dissonance that keeps the reader alert and uncomfortable. And it >is in many ways an uncomfortable book. I found it interesting that, having noted this, you then chose the feminine pronouns to refer to Tedla in your comments. While I think that there are many factors which do equate the role of blands on Gammadis to the traditional position of women here on earth, I think there are also a lot of parallels to interracial slavery, as well. I think it undermines Gilman's work to "make" Tedla female, narrowing it to a single implication. I think her attention to the pronouns, preventing the reader from settling into a single gender-role for Tedla, was one of the most interesting aspects of the book. I don't know about your edition, but the cover of the paperback I have shows a distinctly male face (I'm sitting here trying to see it as a woman and failing), which also annoyed me, based on what's inside. >She remains convinced that she is stupid, subhuman and incapable of love >(and I found this a bit overdone). I thought this was in keeping with Gilman's use of "it" throughout the book. I didn't think she was repeatedly making the same point, but consistently making the single point that Tedla did not consider itself human, ever. Even after it refused to use the "bland" dialect with the other Gammadians, the turning point when it realized it could never go back to being "just" a bland again, it still did not consider itself human. One interesting thing was that despite Tedla's frequent protestations that it was unlovable and wished it weren't physically attractive, it was the abandonment by its loved ones which drove it to suicide repeatedly. I thought it was also interesting that it defined humanity in terms of suicide as a form of "justification." This is a perspective on suicide I've seen in literature before, but which I've never quite been able to believe. It seems strange to me that an under-populated world would encourage its members to suicide. Or do you think that "valuable" members of society would never actually be allowed to do it, while unproductive, fringe members are pushed towards it? >Gammadis is to all intents and purposes a slave-owning society. Gilman >draws a picture of a society declining in numbers, one with all the >nervousness that goes with knowing there are large numbers of blands who >might possibly (despite their proclaimed apathy and stupidity) become >disaffected with their lot. The consequence, of course, is harsh treatment >and immediate violent suppression of anything that even looks like >disobedience. I found the range of attitudes towards blands very well-portrayed. The "humans" were simultaneously certain they could never organize enough to rebel and frightened lest they should. And even Tellegen, probably the most "liberal" figure we encounter, who allowed what others would have seen as gross disobedience on the part of his blands and argued for better treatment of blands in general, at best treated them like cherished pets, never as self-determining persons. >Capella, on the other hand, has been terraformed and its business, and >major export, is information. I wished we had gotten to see more of Capella Two, actually, particularly in terms of the sex roles. They seemed almost entirely equitable, from what we saw, and when Tedla suggested to Alain that they do a study of the "blands" on Capella Two it seemed to be suggesting a study along class lines, with no reference to sexual inequalities. But, as Gilman noted several times, we are much less comfortable turning the microscope on our own mores than we are in studying those we see as aliens. >1. What would a person be like with no gender for the first twelve >years of its life and then a rapid maturation process as either a man or >a woman? Gilman seemd to me to be suggesting that it would make bisexuality the norm and eliminate most of the social sex-linked differences in clothing, manner, profession, etc. which we see in our society. Basically, in creating the blands she seems to have merely moved the sex goalposts: on Gammadis there is no male/female duality, it is replaced by the human/bland schism. One of the things that fascinated me was that it was the *men* who consistently fell in love with/became sexually obsessed with and abusive of Tedla. I still can't decide what Gilman's point here was, but I can't help feeling that there was one. Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I found the characters generally engaging and felt the story moved along at a good pace. I felt that the background on the Capellan characters was rather forced, but Gilman obviously wanted to focus on Gammadis. E. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 May 1998 00:10:17 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jen Subject: Handmaid's Tale Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi all~ Finally, I have something to contribute! I think I've been just lurking here for about two months without a thing to say! I've been enjoying the info, though, on sci-fi feminist books. I have to say I'm pretty new to the subject! The "halfway human" discussion sparked my thoughts on this. I am reading the book, "Handmaid's Tale," by Margaret Atwood for a women writer's course at school. I'm not quite finished with it yet...so please don't mention how it ends!! *smile* Honestly, the book is terrifying me. Handmaid's Tale is a good reason to become, or remain a strong feminist! For those of you who are not familiar with it, Handmaid's Tale is a 1984-style, modern novel, in which the women are uprooted of all their rights, i.e. the right to work or own anything at all. Women are given designators. One is either a "wife," a "Martha" (housekeeper/cook?), a "handmaid" (who bear children for sterile couples), or an "unwoman," which I believe refers to feminists and other women who refused to assimilate into this new culture or failed to assimilate for whatever reason. (I don't know if there are any other designators, but these are the main ones) The "new way" is a sudden change, with military enforcement and new laws, enforced by men. The handmaids are not even allowed to retain their own names. For example, the main character, whose real name I don't know, is simply called "Offred," because the commander's name she "works" for (I believe) is named "Fred." This book hits close to home, going into detail of the "time before" - which is basically what we are living now. In the "time before," women hold jobs, own property, keep their own children, are free to travel, hold rallies, such as the "Take Back the Night March" (of which I am a part of on my campus), etc. Atwood mentions Detroit, Michigan, which is close to me, and other cities in the U.S., localizing the story (for Americans) She also mentions, briefly, other countries, but I believe this "new economy" is supposed to be in the U.S. I could go on, but this is getting lengthy! Does anyone have any thoughts on this book? I'd like to start up a discussion on it. The thing that terrified me, is with so many men still in control, a strong political coup or something along those lines could turn this into reality! I tend to feel that Atwood is trying to make a point about feminism. Which is basically, that as feminists and/or women, we really need to strengthen ourselves and continue efforts to achieve political equality in this country (actually, any country, I think.) Those are my thoughts.... :-) Jen ~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~* Visit Women Initiating Social Equality (W.I.S.E.) at our new website at: http://www.geocities.com/Wellesley/3291 ~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~* "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people, too." ~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~* ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 May 1998 11:01:42 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: John Bertland Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human In-Reply-To: <354D65BB.3CDA7052@nlc-bnc.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Sun, 3 May 1998, Joslyn Grassby wrote: >Things the novel makes me wonder about: > >2. What does it mean to be "halfway human"? Is one not born human? >Does one achieve humanity? Or, is humanity thrust upon one? I did not find the book particularly entertaining at all; rather, I found it to be turgid with a spectacularly unsatisfying ending. As with many other sf novels published these days it probably would have made a very good novella. But there is still much of substance in the book that is intelligent and thoughtful and worthy of discussion. I'm just going to muse on the title a bit in this post, and hopefully I'll have the time and energy to write more later. First off, I find the notion of being half human quite clumsy - it seems like quite an exact measure for something that can't be quantified. But "partially human", "sort of human", "not quite human" and so on would all probably have been worse. That said, my take on the title was that "halfway" didn't refer to Tedla so much as it referred to the non-bland society of Gammadis. These people were only "halfway" human because of their exploitation of the blands. Tellegen makes this point on p.236: I'm talking about the basic morality of our social system. It is simply unconscionable that two-thirds of us should live off the labor of the other third. The exploitation of blands is corrosive to our humanity. Gilman does make clear, however, that the relationship is just as, if not more so, damaging to the humanity of the blands - whether the actual blands of Gammadis or the metaphorical ones she slips in toward the end. Of course "blands" are present in virtually every human society. I wish Gilman had done a better job presenting this idea, but her portrayal of Cappella Two is so sketchy and simplistic that it never quite works as a contrast to Gammadis. We know there are "blands" on Cappella just as we know there are "blands" in our own societies. We never really get to meet or spend any substantial amount of time with the ones on Cappella in the book and pretty much have to take Tedla's word on it. Tedla has some powerful words, though, and toward the end of the book (p.447) we get the other side of the coin of Tellegen's quote above: They live shabby, circumscribed lives--aware of, but never aspiring to, the humanity around them, though they will live off it parasitically if they can...They take whatever chances others give them. They complain, but not so that you can hear them. There are not greydoors here except the ones inside peoples' minds, but those are closed as tight as ever--and locked from both sides. Thus being "halfway" human is not just a matter of selfishly exploiting another it is also a matter of letting yourself be exploited, of letting others tell you that you are not quite human and then not resisting them. One has to work to achieve humanity (a point Tedla makes elsewhere in the book when referring to reproduction and sucide, although I am not as sympathetic on those topics). I particularly like this reading because otherwise I find myself starting to romanticize the blands (which is not hard to do given the centrality of Tedla's character to everything) as merely victims. And once I start to romanticize them I run the danger of romanticizing the "blands" that exist outside the book. Which leads me to one other thought and then I'll wander off (although there are many other themes I'd like to discuss when I have some more time - I haven't mentioned gender at all, sorry!). And that is the character of Tellegen, who very clearly romanticized the blands as naive innocents. I was very bothered by his romantic relationship with Tedla and still have trouble seeing it as anything other than rape (or at least harrassment). He was abusing his position of power, and Tedla at that point in its life was not at all free to make the choice as to whether it was truly in love or not. The whole affair was clouded by Tellegen's relationship as Tedla's guardian. This might have only bothered me, though, and I would like to hear what other's thought about it. With this reading, Tedla's two romantic relationships are with a rapist and a pedophile, and it is no wonder that it has such negative views of sexuality and non-neuter peole. Two other questions- 1) Given the heavy environmental message of the novel, can we call this an ecofeminist sf novel? 2) Did this remind anyone else of Jane Eyre? (orphanages, falling in love with your master, people in the attic burning things down, etc.) -John Bertland ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 May 1998 11:12:01 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: John Bertland Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human and being an it In-Reply-To: <354D65BB.3CDA7052@nlc-bnc.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Sun, 3 May 1998, Joslyn Grassby also wrote: > Tedla throughout is referred to as "it", a usage I found very >unsettling. To use the term "it" and yet to be referring to a human, >very effectively sets up a dissonance that keeps the reader alert and >uncomfortable. And it is in many ways an uncomfortable book. And a little later: >She remains convinced that she is stupid, subhuman and incapable of love >(and I found this a bit overdone). I found it a bit overdone, too, but did you even realize that you referred to Tedla as a she in your post? For me, any impact this novel might have is thoroughly dissipated if you assign one of our current genders to Tedla. It becomes a book about women rather than one about "blands" although the overlap between the two categories is obvious. Gilman could have come up with a different pronoun altogether, but that is usually clumsy. I was disappointed that she didn't make the etymology of the Gammadian pronoun clearer (I hope I didn't miss it). We are after all reading this as a translation in English by way of Capellan, and who knows what sort of significance the word "it" bears in the various cultures. Although, since Capella is a thinly veiled stand in for the developed world today, we might be able to guess. -John Bertland ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 May 1998 12:01:46 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Edrie J Sobstyl Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human and being an it In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII the discussion of pronouns reminds me somewhat of discussion that emerged following the publication of Jeanette Winterson's _Written on the Body_; the sex of the protagonist in this novel is not specified, and it was taken to be quite striking that some readers were utterly and thoroughly convinced that it *had* to be a woman, while others felt equally strongly that it *had* to be a man. As far as I can recall (and it's been a good long while!), there was no convincing demonstration offered that readers of one particular sex tended to draw one conclusion, while those of the opposite sex drew the opposite conclusion. In Tedla's case, though, it specifies in more than one place in the novel that it prefers to be referred to AS "it" -- I think Gilman likely suspected how difficult and jarring it would be to read, and to think about a character in these terms -- which is of course part of the point of the novel. It's much richer than just a gender issue, however. I find it almost more interesting that it's the blands who become the workforce for their society, and that they have been biologically created specifically for this purpose. A good Marxist critique of biology, of the sort offered by Ruth Hubbard and Elijah Wald, is implicit in the novel. edrie On Tue, 5 May 1998 11:12:01 -0400 John Bertland wrote: > On Sun, 3 May 1998, Joslyn Grassby also wrote: > > > Tedla throughout is referred to as "it", a usage I found very > >unsettling. To use the term "it" and yet to be referring to a human, > >very effectively sets up a dissonance that keeps the reader alert and > >uncomfortable. And it is in many ways an uncomfortable book. > > And a little later: > > >She remains convinced that she is stupid, subhuman and incapable of love > >(and I found this a bit overdone). > > I found it a bit overdone, too, but did you even realize that you > referred to Tedla as a she in your post? For me, any impact this novel > might have is thoroughly dissipated if you assign one of our current > genders to Tedla. It becomes a book about women rather than one about > "blands" although the overlap between the two categories is obvious. > Gilman could have come up with a different pronoun altogether, but that > is usually clumsy. I was disappointed that she didn't make the etymology > of the Gammadian pronoun clearer (I hope I didn't miss it). We are after > all reading this as a translation in English by way of Capellan, and who > knows what sort of significance the word "it" bears in the various > cultures. Although, since Capella is a thinly veiled stand in for the > developed world today, we might be able to guess. > > -John Bertland Edrie Sobstyl School of Arts and Humanities University of Texas at Dallas P.O. Box 830688 Richardson Tx 75083-0688 (972) 883-2365 (972) 883-2989 (fax) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 May 1998 14:21:52 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: ME Hunter Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human and being an it In-Reply-To: (message from Edrie J Sobstyl on Tue, 5 May 1998 12:01:46 -0400) Edrie wrote: >I find it almost more interesting that it's the blands who become the >workforce for their society, and that they have been biologically created >specifically for this purpose. I don't believe this is the case. Gilman makes it fairly clear that the Gammadians made themselves default-neuter in an attempt to curb their population and lessen their impact on their environment. There is no mention of a *plan* to subjugate the blands. Although the author does not go into detail on this point, the implication seemed to be that they all became default-neuter, with sex becoming a privilege earned by merit. The effect of this was to create a sexually differentiated elite and a neuter drudge-force, but I do not believe this to have been the plan. I would have appreciated some comment, perhaps by Ovide,along the lines of "Sometimes we make mistakes in choosing the blands." E. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Apr 1998 12:43:30 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pat Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human and being an it In-Reply-To: <199805051821.OAA28985@asylum.apocalypse.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 5 May 1998, ME Hunter wrote: > I would have appreciated some comment, perhaps by Ovide,along the lines of > "Sometimes we make mistakes in choosing the blands." > The problem is, choosing Tedla - once I understood it - is NOT a mistake from the standpoint of the ruling class. Tedla is pretty and bright. As a gendered person, s/he would be competition. As a bland, they could use er any way they wanted. Horrible, but logical.> Patricia (Pat) Mathews mathews@unm.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 May 1998 11:43:05 -0700 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: BDG Halfway Human and being an it In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 05 May 98 11:12:01 EDT." Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii >For me, any impact this novel >might have is thoroughly dissipated if you assign one of our current >genders to Tedla. What I found most disturbing was how hard it was for me not to do this. I was constantly picturing the blands as one gender or the other, frequently depending on how they were acting or how other people were behaving towards them. It was sort of appalling, really. >I was disappointed that she didn't make the etymology >of the Gammadian pronoun clearer (I hope I didn't miss it). We are after >all reading this as a translation in English by way of Capellan, and who >knows what sort of significance the word "it" bears in the various >cultures. I think the word "it" meant "it", pretty flat out. Val says at one point that she doesn't like the word because it seems to imply non-consciousness (or something like that) and Tedla says that that makes it even closer to the original Gammadian. My impression was that "it" meant "a non-sentient thing with no gender". To give it a much more subtle interpretation may be to overinterpret. On another topic: Although I didn't notice it at the time, I ended up feeling like all of the really motivating characters on Gammadis were male. It's true that societally that didn't seem to be enforced in any way, and the women averaged the same status as the men, but in fact the gendered characters that I remember as most moving the story along were the squire, Galele, the abusive man whose name I can't even remember at Brice's, maybe the administrator at the creche who tells Tedla to reflect on its actions towards Joby. The women (Elector Hornaby (??), Ovide, Annika) seemed to do much less in terms of really moving the action forward. This is an awfully subjective assessment -- did other people have this reaction, or an opposite one, or think it was balanced? jessie ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 May 1998 15:00:25 EDT Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Lurima Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-05-05 11:11:45 EDT, you write: << 2) Did this remind anyone else of Jane Eyre? (orphanages, falling in love with your master, people in the attic burning things down, etc.) >> What it made me think of was the Next Generation episode, "Measure of a Man," in which a trial took place to determine the rights of intelligent artificial life forms. If you have thoughts and feelings like those of a human, dang it, you are human, and I have no right to say you exist only to serve me. I have no right to say that only beings exactly like me are OK. But many people have just the opposite attitude. IN the book, it was a different kind of difference, but it was the same old story of oppression of the Other. barbara ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 May 1998 13:23:37 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pat Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 5 May 1998, Lurima wrote: > What it made me think of was the Next Generation episode, "Measure of a Man," > in which a trial took place to determine the rights of intelligent artificial > life forms. If you have thoughts and feelings like those of a human, dang it, > you are human, and I have no right to say you exist only to serve me. I have > no right to say that only beings exactly like me are OK. But many people have > just the opposite attitude. IN the book, it was a different kind of > difference, but it was the same old story of oppression of the Other. > That was written by local author (New Mexico) Melinda Snodgrass as the script she hoped to convince the Trek people to hire her with. Those things NEVER get aired. Hah! She later left NextGen because Roddenberry wanted to push a vision of the future as having outgrown all conflict. > Patricia (Pat) Mathews mathews@unm.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 May 1998 17:14:54 +1200 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Anita Easton Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human and being an it In-Reply-To: Jessie Stickgold-Sarah's message of "Tue, 5 May 1998 11:43:05 -0700" Jessie Stickgold-Sarah writes: > I think the word "it" meant "it", pretty flat out. Val says at one > point that she doesn't like the word because it seems to imply > non-consciousness (or something like that) and Tedla says that that > makes it even closer to the original Gammadian. My impression was > that "it" meant "a non-sentient thing with no gender". To give it a > much more subtle interpretation may be to overinterpret. I really liked the use of "it". To me "it" means variously non-sentient, non-human, non-animate or sub-adult - all things I would find insulting and dehumanising when applied to adult humans. I would find it really hard to refer to a human being as "it". However it is Tedla's pronoun of choice, and who am I to ignore someone's choice of pronoun? How people name themselves is IMHO really important, and something that should be respected. However, when it reflects the person's lack of self-esteem, or even self-loathing, I would not wish to participate in reinforcing those views. I guess this really struck a chord for me. As someone with multiple personalities I am struggling with rehabilitating alters who have various degrees of self-loathing, and who express this through their (chosen or given) names. It was really hard for me to handle an alter who was called "The Monster in the Castle" ("The Monster" for short), she insisted that it was her name, both given and chosen and that it was what she deserved. I couldn't bring myself to call her a monster, yet I wasn't respecting her choice if I didn't. (In the end we negotiated that I could call her TMTC, and eventually she gave up that view of herself and that name, and took a new one) Anyway, to try to tie together the rambling... I don't know what I would've done had I been Val, she is clearly politicised enough to know the strength of naming - to reject the argument that "it" is simply "accurate". Just as I reject calling a young woman a "girl", or a woman a "lady" and the use of generic "he" Anita (rambling off into the sunset :) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 May 1998 17:16:24 +1200 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Anita Easton Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human In-Reply-To: John Bertland's message of "Tue, 5 May 1998 11:01:42 -0400" John Bertland writes: > I did not find the book particularly entertaining at all; rather, I > found it to be turgid with a spectacularly unsatisfying ending. As > with Did anyone find any merit in the ending at all? It seemed like a total cop out, but I'm hoping I missed something. Anita ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 May 1998 04:12:21 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joyce Jones Subject: BDG Almost Human Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Once again I love the book picked for the month's read, but my, how depressing. I couldn't help but think of Tedla as "she" even though it was adamant, and even proud, of being it. Not to have sexual drive or yearning be a part of every day life is an i nteresting concept. I think the idea was that since the blands had no sexual orientation they also had no sexually pleasurable feelings (kind of like the ideal madonna-wife so prized by mankind). I didn't know what to think of this idea, it certainly made the proscription of sexual interaction between humans and blands understandable since not only did the blands have no free will or choice in the sexual relationship they also got absolutely nothing out of it but another way to serve their masters. Our society's being so reluctant to separate the sexual act from procreation would enforce such a ban, but on Gammadis that separation seemed complete. (I wonder, what would make a woman give birth if she got nothing out of it b! ut the gratitude of her nation. Some very obedient folk of course would do so, but I think the birth rate would be mighty low if there were no babies to reward the moms, no motherhood so to speak.) Anyway, back to my original thought about lack of sexual enjoyment---since both sexes are raised alike until their enforced puberty, where could the sexual feelings go? Babies exhibit sexual enjoyment, little boy babies delight in pulling on that appendage whenever they can, but I guess I can't say I've seen girl babies creating sexual sensations in any way. However, the same nerves are there, so once the children were of an age to know about these nerves, why wouldn't they stimulate them? There seemed to be no sexual interaction among the blands in their naked sleeping arrangement. Is that just one of the ideas that we have to accept to get on with the story? I really wanted to think that Tedla's lack of metamorphosis was a mistake. The idea presented by Patricia Mathews that it was made a bland specifically so it could be used as a sex slave was just nauseating. Well, there is no end to the depravity of human kind, but wow, this was not a thought I had while reading the book. OK this is long enough. But didn't you love the idea of an economy based on the selling of knowledge? Would Bill Gates be king? Joyce Jones ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 May 1998 08:19:21 -0400 Reply-To: ligeia@concentric.net Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Lilith Organization: Sanity Assassins, Inc. Subject: Re: Almost Human MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I have not yet read the book, but I've been reading the posts about the off-putting effect of Tedla's character being designated "it" and the lack of ability to enjoy sex that the blands have and I thought of another character in another work that that provides an interesting opposite to this character. In Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" series the character of Desire was considered to be neither male nor female but the epitome of everything desirable in both; Desire was also referred to as "it" but here the pronoun was not at all reductive to the personality and power of this figure. I know that these are graphic novels so might not really fall under the designation of what we are supposed to be talking about on this list but I thought I'd proffer that as an example of how a character could be referred to in the neutral pronoun and yet that not be meant to be in any way diminishing. Maybe if Tedla had been shown as a strong, vital character instead of the victim of circumstance and bad people as it seems to be (I have to read the book to see if that is how it is throughout, so excuse me if I'm wrong about it, but all my opinions are formed from everyone's description of the plot), then the use of "it" would not seem so alienating. Lilith -- ********** http://www.concentric.net/~Ligeia/ *The Web * http://members.tripod.com/~othiym/ *Universe* http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Vault/2527/ ********** http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Amphitheatre/5057/ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 May 1998 08:10:37 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pat Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human and being an it In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 6 May 1998, Anita Easton wrote: > > I guess this really struck a chord for me. As someone with multiple > personalities I am struggling with rehabilitating alters who have > various degrees of self-loathing, and who express this through their > (chosen or given) names. It was really hard for me to handle an alter > who was called "The Monster in the Castle" ("The Monster" for short), > she insisted that it was her name, both given and chosen and that it > was what she deserved. I couldn't bring myself to call her a monster, > yet I wasn't respecting her choice if I didn't. > > (In the end we negotiated that I could call her TMTC, and eventually > she gave up that view of herself and that name, and took a new one) I can really understand wanting to call yourself that. Grrrr! I'm big and nasty and scary and mean; DON'T MESS WITH ME~~! On the subject: try to find a short story by Richard Matheson(?) called "Born of Man & Woman." When it was first published `30 years ago it was taken as a monster tale. When my oldest daughter read it, she demanded to know "what's wrong with the little boy?" and "Why are they abusing him?" Patricia (Pat) Mathews mathews@unm.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 May 1998 10:07:09 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Edrie Sobstyl Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human and being an it In-Reply-To: <199805051821.OAA28985@asylum.apocalypse.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 5 May 1998, ME Hunter wrote: > Edrie wrote: > > >I find it almost more interesting that it's the blands who become the > >workforce for their society, and that they have been biologically created > >specifically for this purpose. > > I don't believe this is the case. Gilman makes it fairly clear that the > Gammadians made themselves default-neuter in an attempt to curb their > population and lessen their impact on their environment. There is no mention > of a *plan* to subjugate the blands. > Although the author does not go into detail on this point, the implication > seemed to be that they all became default-neuter, with sex becoming a > privilege earned by merit. The effect of this was to create a sexually > differentiated elite and a neuter drudge-force, but I do not believe this to > have been the plan. I did overstate the "specifically created" claim, but I think it's clear that sex is earned by intelligence, and this is in part why Tedla has such a rough time -- it is bright and capable. (I think there's even a very very tacit suggestion that Tedla *would* have been sexed if the demand for more and more blands hadn't put it in the "wrong group" so to speak. While it's true that the original intent may have been mere population control, it is also made clear that the execution of that plan went astray of its intent very early on. We are given an inkling of this early in the book, when the overseers of the maturing youngsters express their surprise that so many blands are still being created - this suggests that the need to control population has passed, so why are there still so many blands? Humans who don't want to take on particular tasks, like childrearing, ask "why would I want to do that? It would make me no better than a bland." Later in the book, these implications are stated outright. When the population control experiment is revealed to Galele, it is made clear that there was never an explicit plan to subjugate the blands, but that the conditions that would make it easy to do so *were* deliberately bred (although by rather indirect means), and their subjugation was pursued "for their own good" to the point where society became utterly reliant on bland labour and could no longer function "properly" without them. >From p. 407 in my edition: "Humans are selected. The neuters are the natural state. Of course they constitute the least intelligent third. We would be idiots to make it otherwise." and later on the same page: "Faintly, Magister Galele said, 'And what a handy labor force you've gained in the process'. 'That was never the object', the matriculator snapped. 'You don't know our history. There was a time when our population threatened the very existence of life. We had to find a solution. Genetic alteration was the most humane thing we could have done. We have killed no one. There have been no famines or epidemics. As for the neuters, we have provided for their every need. We have integrated them into our communities, given them useful work ...' 'Until you couldn't do without them', Galele said. 'Your population is falling now, isn't it? Every year you need more blands, and that means fewer humans. Your numbers are almost too small to sustain the way you live now. Isn't it time for the experiment to end?' 'You don't know what you're talking about', the matriculator said. 'We can't end it.' Here the conversation between Galele and the matriculator ends, on a very unconvincing note -- just "we can't" and nothing more. edrie ***************************** Edrie Sobstyl School of Arts and Humanities JO 31 University of Texas at Dallas P.O. Box 830688 Richardson Tx 75083-0688 USA (972) 883-2365 esobstyl@utdallas.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 May 1998 10:41:18 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Edrie Sobstyl Subject: Re: Almost Human Comments: To: Lilith In-Reply-To: <35505548.6D9103F9@concentric.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 6 May 1998, Lilith wrote: > Maybe if Tedla had been > shown as a strong, vital character instead of the victim of circumstance > and bad people as it seems to be (I have to read the book to see if that > is how it is throughout, so excuse me if I'm wrong about it, but all my > opinions are formed from everyone's description of the plot), then the > use of "it" would not seem so alienating. I hope our discussions of Tedla's "itness" don't compell you to avoid the book, Lilith! It is more a consciousness-raising device than an alienating one, imho, although it is clearly alienating *for Tedla*. Tedla *is* shown as a strong and vital character, *and* as the victim of circumstance and bad people -- it's the tension between the two that forms the backbone of the plot. edrie ************************** Edrie Sobstyl School of Arts and Humanities University of Texas at Dallas P.O. Box 830688 Richardson Tx 75083-0688 (972) 883-2365 (972) 883-2989 (fax) esobstyl@utdallas.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 May 1998 17:25:32 EDT Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Lurima Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human and being an it Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-05-05 14:44:00 EDT, you write: << What I found most disturbing was how hard it was for me not to do this. I was constantly picturing the blands as one gender or the other, frequently depending on how they were acting or how other people were behaving towards them. It was sort of appalling, really. >> Why? We live on a world of two-sex species, including our own. We're accustomed to interpreting behaviors in this way, so it would take quite a wrench to think otherwise. Maybe more so for those of us who haven't been reading gender-benders for years, as some members of the list have. I found that Tedla seemed more like a he than a she, but other readers saw it the other way. I find that interesting. Maybe one reason is that I've seen many more boys than girls throwing rocks at the Other, like Tedla and its compatriot did. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 May 1998 17:35:27 EDT Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Lurima Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-05-05 15:22:18 EDT, you write: << That was written by local author (New Mexico) Melinda Snodgrass as the script she hoped to convince the Trek people to hire her with. Those things NEVER get aired. Hah! She later left NextGen because Roddenberry wanted to push a vision of the future as having outgrown all conflict. > >> "Measure of a Man" was a well-thought-out episode that often shows up on lists of favorite ST episodes. I agree with Melinda that Rodenberry was unrealistic to think we can outgrow conflict in a few centuries, because we haven't changed in the last many centuries. But I AM tired of the snarling, surly, darkly motivated, 1990s kinds of beings that current ST characters are becoming. I like my heroes to be heroes! You know, admirable! Full of integrity and courage and values! barbara ========================================================================= ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 May 1998 23:08:56 -0400 Reply-To: ligeia@concentric.net Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Lilith Organization: Sanity Assassins, Inc. Subject: Re: Almost Human Comments: cc: Edrie Sobstyl MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Edrie Sobstyl wrote: > On Wed, 6 May 1998, Lilith wrote: > > > Maybe if Tedla had been > > shown as a strong, vital character instead of the victim of circumstance > > and bad people as it seems to be (I have to read the book to see if that > > is how it is throughout, so excuse me if I'm wrong about it, but all my > > opinions are formed from everyone's description of the plot), then the > > use of "it" would not seem so alienating. > > I hope our discussions of Tedla's "itness" don't compell you to > avoid the book, Lilith! No, not at all -- it sounds like a very interesting book, and it's gone onto my list of books to look for as soon as I finish all the _other_ books I have started. (LOL -- so many books, so little time to read them!) I was just responding to the negative response to the designation of blands as "its." It seems as if "it" _may_ be meant in a derogatory way since the blands are considered less than fully human, while the character of Desire that I mentioned in my post is more than human -- and actually, not human at all, but a personification of a basic element of...consciousness? As a side note, there are many languages where there isn't actually a separate third-person singular pronoun for men and women, such as Finnish and Japanese. (Right? Any Finnish or Japanese people or speakers out there want to correct me if I'm wrong? I had a Finnish phrasebook _somewhere_.) Though of course there are other ways in the languages to indicate male and female; it is just that the third-person pronoun isn't it. In an essay by LeGuin she mentions her frustration (I think it was the revised preface to _Left Hand of Darkness_) with English and it's male/female/neuter thing, and how the default pronoun to refer to a person of unknown sex (like "the average person" or "the viewer") as "he", and how she suggested, instead of making up an awkward new word like "per" or "heshe" we should just use "they" and "their" for singular as well as plural designations. Well, I went on too long as usual... Lilith -- ********** http://www.concentric.net/~Ligeia/ *The Web * http://members.tripod.com/~othiym/ *Universe* http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Vault/2527/ ********** http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Amphitheatre/5057/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 10:51:36 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Stacey Holbrook Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 5 May 1998, John Bertland wrote: (snip) > First off, I find the notion of being half human quite clumsy - it seems > like quite an exact measure for something that can't be quantified. But > "partially human", "sort of human", "not quite human" and so on would > all probably have been worse. I think the term "halfway human" served several purposes in the novel. One was to illustrate how Tedla was caught halfway between the "bland" world and the "human" one. The blands were so thoroughly disenfranchised that they were not even considered human even by themselves. Tedla was not a typical bland and was steadily trained until it couldn't fit into either world on Gammadis. "Halfway human" also illustrates Tedla's process of maturing and self-realization. It isn't until Tedla meets the Gammadan delegates twelve years after leaving it's world that it realizes that it has become too human to ever accept being a bland. Tedla never rejects the use of the word "it" but does eventually reject being a bland or non-human. (snip) > Of course "blands" are present in virtually every human society. I > wish Gilman had done a better job presenting this idea, but her > portrayal of Cappella Two is so sketchy and simplistic that it never > quite works as a contrast to Gammadis. We know there are "blands" on > Cappella just as we know there are "blands" in our own societies. We > never really get to meet or spend any substantial amount of time with > the ones on Cappella in the book and pretty much have to take Tedla's > word on it. I wanted to see more of Cappella II also. Val's family seemed to be living on the edge but I never sensed any real danger that they might fall through the cracks of their society. Only Galele's story gives any idea of how far down a person can go in Cappellan society and even that was fairly sketchy. The whole idea that "there are blands in every society" seemed to be tacked on at the end. (snip) > And that is the character of Tellegen, who very clearly romanticized the > blands as naive innocents. I was very bothered by his romantic > relationship with Tedla and still have trouble seeing it as anything > other than rape (or at least harrassment). He was abusing his position > of power, and Tedla at that point in its life was not at all free to > make the choice as to whether it was truly in love or not. The whole > affair was clouded by Tellegen's relationship as Tedla's guardian. This > might have only bothered me, though, and I would like to hear what > other's thought about it. With this reading, Tedla's two romantic > relationships are with a rapist and a pedophile, and it is no wonder > that it has such negative views of sexuality and non-neuter peole. I was also bothered by Tedla's relationships with the two men. I think it's relationship with Tellegen was to illustrate how exploited blands were and to show how Tedla was slowly but steadily being separated from bland society and yet still didn't have a place in human society. Tedla was caught between two worlds. I was more troubled by the revelation that Galele was a pedophile. Why was this necessary? There could have been any number of reasons why a man would be willing to leave his world behind but why this particular reason? It really seemed unfair to the character of Galele and wasn't really necessary for moving the story along. Am I the only one bothered by this? (snip) > 2) Did this remind anyone else of Jane Eyre? (orphanages, falling in > love with your master, people in the attic burning things down, etc.) Now that you mention it there is a sort of resemblance! Thanks for pointing it out. > -John Bertland > Stacey (ausar@netdoor.com) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 10:58:53 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Stacey Holbrook Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 6 May 1998, Anita Easton wrote: > John Bertland writes: > > I did not find the book particularly entertaining at all; rather, I > > found it to be turgid with a spectacularly unsatisfying ending. As > > with > > Did anyone find any merit in the ending at all? It seemed like a total > cop out, but I'm hoping I missed something. I also thought the ending was a bit of a cop out. I was hoping for a really tragic and depressing ending full of dark despair and pathos. A downbeat ending would have been more appropriate. > Anita > Stacey (ausar@netdoor.com) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 12:09:18 -0500 Reply-To: margaret@onr.com Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Margaret Ball Subject: Re: Almost Human Comments: To: ligeia@concentric.net MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > As a side note, there are many languages where there isn't actually a separate > third-person singular pronoun for men and women, such as Finnish and Japanese. > (Right? Any Finnish or Japanese people or speakers out there want to correct > me if I'm wrong? Can't say for Finnish and Japanese, but I do know that this is true of Swahili. Can't remember offhand how many classes of nouns there are, but both men and women are in the M/WA class and get the same form of pronoun. (Of course, the society is hardly nonsexist in other ways...) -Margaret Ball ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 14:05:01 EDT Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Vlee01 Subject: Re: Almost Human Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 5/7/98, 1:59:30 PM, margaret@onr.com writes: <<> As a side note, there are many languages where there isn't actually a separate > third-person singular pronoun for men and women, such as Finnish and Japanese.>> Actually in Japanese there are third person singular [masculine ('kareshi') and feminine ('kanojo')] pronouns. They are interchangeably used with the third person pronoun phrase 'ano/kono hito' (lit. 'that person/this person') which is gender-neutral. Vivian. (newbie delurking) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 15:10:21 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Marina Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > On Tue, 5 May 1998, John Bertland wrote: > > (snip) > > First off, I find the notion of being half human quite clumsy - it seems > > like quite an exact measure for something that can't be quantified. But > > "partially human", "sort of human", "not quite human" and so on would > > all probably have been worse. > I think it's pretty close to the Nazi term of "inferior human", used to describe "non-arian races": "Untermensch", if I spell it right. Marina "Femininity is code for femaleness plus whatever society happens to be selling at the time." Naomi Wolf ========================================================================= ========================================================================= Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF LOG9805B" ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 May 1998 13:06:08 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: John Bertland Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human and the evil of sex In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 7 May 1998, Stacey Holbrook wrote: > I was more troubled by the revelation that Galele was a pedophile. Why was > this necessary? There could have been any number of reasons why a man > would be willing to leave his world behind but why this particular reason? > It really seemed unfair to the character of Galele and wasn't really > necessary for moving the story along. Am I the only one bothered by this? Galele's pedophilia is consistant with Gilman's portryal throughout the book of sex as something if not evil than at least negative and of Tedla's non-sexual neuter status as a condition giving him truer insights into emotions, especially love. She makes the point several times that Tedla sees sex as something that gets in the way between people. For instance, on p.255 it says, "For you humans, the sexual part is so powerful it drowns out everything else. You can't imagine love could take over you whole being, even without it." As for the societies where people do have sex, we can choose between Gammadis where sex is portrayed alternatively as banal hedonism or as rape, or we can choose Capella Two where everyone overanalyzes what emotions they do have and true feeling is abandoned in favor of the worship of knowledge. The only time sex is portrayed as something positive is toward the end when Val tells her husband that she is glad that they can have children and that she'd be willing to do it again - that is, the only time sex can do something good is if it is for procreation. Val does argue occasionally with Tedla on this point, especially near the end when Tedla clumsily tries to seduce her into not abandoning it, but this is a faint glimmer of hope against the rest of the novel, and even there Tedla just switches to appealing to Val's "maternal instinct." This sexual conservativism and implicit physical loathing is just one more reason why I didn't like the book. At the moment I can think of two works of some relevance that are much better. The same idea is presented by the asexual character Akili in Greg Egan's _Distress_, but Egan implies that the real obstacle to true love is the illusion of intimacy and that sex is just one factor of many in that. I definitely prefer Theodore Sturgeon's _Venus Plus X_ where the elimination of gender does not mean the elimination of sexual activity - gender is the obstacle and not sex. -John Bertland ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 May 1998 13:21:35 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: John Bertland Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 7 May 1998, Stacey Holbrook wrote: > I also thought the ending was a bit of a cop out. I was hoping for a > really tragic and depressing ending full of dark despair and pathos. A > downbeat ending would have been more appropriate. Well, I'm not sure the ending had to be a tragic one, but I still thought it was a bit of a cop out. It seems to be constrained by three things: 1) the need to show just how awful and evil the infocompanies on Capella Two are, 2) the need to strike one final blow at cultural relativism, for which Gilman has an obvious distaste, and 3) the worst of all, the need to leave it open for a sequel. If you send Tedla back under lock and key it will just be used as an example to break the spirit of the other blands. If you send it back on its own terms, then you have a book. -John Bertland ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 May 1998 22:44:46 EDT Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Lurima Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-05-07 11:59:16 EDT, you write: << I also thought the ending was a bit of a cop out. I was hoping for a really tragic and depressing ending full of dark despair and pathos. A downbeat ending would have been more appropriate. >> Is this true? The ending is not depressing and dark? Then perhaps I will finish reading it after all! ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 May 1998 00:33:30 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Ruth Jost Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii John and Stacey have referred to Tedla's statement that there are blands in all societies ... Was Tedla referring specifically to "neuters", or was it speaking more broadly and suggesting that the oppressed "other" could be found in all forms of social organisation?? When I read that passage I thought the latter, but on reflection perhaps Tedla had both in mind. I too was intrigued - but chilled - at Gilman's concept of an information society where even academics have to buy research/information. But I was even more chilled when I considered that this is not so alien to my own situation - I am a consultant, businesses pay for my knowledge, it is all I have to sell. I don't think that the way I earn my income today differs significantly from the way Val earns hers, so maybe western society is already closer to Gilman's vision than we would care to admit??? Ruth PS Thanks so much to Donna Simone who kindly got a copy of the novel to me down here in the southern hemisphere in time for me to read and comment!! _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 May 1998 14:07:34 -0700 Reply-To: ltimmel@halcyon.com Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "L. Timmel Duchamp" Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human and the evil of sex MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit John Bertland wrote: > Galele's pedophilia is consistant with Gilman's portryal throughout the > book of sex as something if not evil than at least negative and of > Tedla's non-sexual neuter status as a condition giving him truer > insights into emotions, especially love. She makes the point several > times that Tedla sees sex as something that gets in the way between > people. I don't read the portrayal of sex vis-a-vis Tedla in this way at all. While on the one hand Gilman is showing us in great detail how the economically exploited person lacking real free will & social equality is necessarily unable to either refuse or consent to sexual relations, on the other hand she's making the point that sexuality is NOT a matter of sexual organs. Among the Gammadians, being neutered is not the same as being genderless-- for neuter *is* a gender. (As one learns in first-year Latin.) Nor is it-- despite the frequent use in the novel of the word-- necessarily to be "asexual" except in the strict, anatomical sense of the adjective. Tedla claims to be asexual, claims to be "misread" by sexed "humans," but in fact is implicated in using the *constructedness* of sexuality-- demosntrating that being "sexed" is not solely a matter of having sexual organs. Yes, much of the sex is forced on Tedla. But sex is written on its experience, and its movements & its personal modes of interaction. We see that when Tedla comes on to Val. In other words, Gilman shows us that sexuality & sexed-ness is as constructed as gender is. The latter is more obvious to us (since we're used to the idea)-- such that it's easy to see how the construction of otherness that is usually located in women in our societies is located in the "blands" among Gammadians (thus allowing Gammadian women to be like men in their subjectivity & social & ideological positionings). I think it's a mistake to take Tedla's insistence on being "asexual" at its word. Yes, it has been sexualized-- but then sexuality is never-- among humans-- simply "natural" & "essential;" rather it's always inflected with the social imaginary. Timmi Duchamp http://www.halcyon.com/ltimmel/ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 May 1998 10:20:15 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jennifer Krauel Subject: Re: Almost Human In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Edrie Sobstyl wrote: I hope our discussions of Tedla's "itness" don't compell you to avoid the book, Lilith! It is more a consciousness-raising device than an alienating one, imho, although it is clearly alienating *for Tedla*. Tedla *is* shown as a strong and vital character, *and* as the victim of circumstance and bad people -- it's the tension between the two that forms the backbone of the plot. edrie ------ You know, I haven't got much more than halfway through Halfway Human, and I'm having trouble picking it up again. Not because of the discussions of "itness", or even that aspect of the story. It's interesting to watch myself squirm back and forth between he/she since I have no human reference for "it". My problem with the book is that it's just so depressing and disturbing, and quite frankly, it doesn't seem well enough written to make that worthwhile. At least in the first half. The format of Tedla telling its story seems like exposition to me; there's not enough of a plot evolving to make me turn the page for more abuse. I'm surrounded every day in real life by class and gender and race oppression, and subtle (and not so subtle) forms of brainwashing to accept that oppression and use it on myself and others. Really, if I wanted to have that as a central element in what I'm reading, I'd much rather spend time with Toni Morrison. I'll probably keep reading, since hopefully I'm past the worst of the abuse and the plot seems to be picking up a little with Val reading the accounts of the first visit to Tedla's planet. It's just tough going. I voted for the comedy books for the next round. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 May 1998 23:13:38 -0500 Reply-To: Stacey Holbrook Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Stacey Holbrook Subject: BDG: Halfway Human (long) In-Reply-To: <000201bd7c38$0e82ae20$727218ce@jennifer.actioneer.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I had a fight with my computer last night and lost. I had saved some posts to answer later but my inbox burped and everything disappeared. I'm gonna try and sum up a few thoughts in one post. Someone pointed out that the portrayal of human sexuality in *Halfway Human* was very negative. Tedla is repeatedly raped and abused and even the people who claim to love Tedla don't have any real understanding of Tedla's real self or the serious problems they cause for it. Gammadan society is shown as sexually liberal but the only relationships shown are one's where the individuals are taking advantage of each other (Ovide helps Annika's career and gets a young sexual partner-- an older experienced teacher sponsoring a younger student seems to be a common arrangement on Gammadis). Someone else pointed out that most of Tedla's sexual partners were male. It was very disturbing to me to see that male sexuality was continually portrayed as ugly and shameful. The revelation of Galele's pedophilia was just a little too much for me. I still don't understand why this was necessary unless it was to show, yet again, that male sexuality is disgusting. About the only positive portrayal of human sexuality is a very brief scene where Val tells her husband that she might want to have another child. So IOW, the only "correct" sex is in a monogamous marriage and only for procreation. One of the most interesting things about *Halfway Human* was how everyone perceived Tedla differently according to their prejudices and misconceptions. The humans at Brice's saw Tedla as a piece of meat to be used and treated as a commodity without regard to Tedla's feelings or needs. Tellegen sees Tedla in a romantic and idealistic way-- without realizing that Tedla was not a complete innocent but had been terribly abused. Galele sees Tedla as someone who can further his research and eventually sees Tedla as an unobtainable love object-- without realizing that Tedla would have been amenable to a sexual relationship. None of these people ever really saw the real Tedla. None of them saw that Tedla was emotionally crippled by it's treatment in Gammadan society. I liked Tedla's character and that is the best part of this book-- if Tedla hadn't been so well written I don't think I would have liked this book at all. Stacey (ausar@netdoor.com) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 11:09:42 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jennifer Krauel Subject: BDG: Is 1/2way human about gender? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I finished it, despite my whining about too much anthropology and too little plot. Things eventually started happening and I got into the story. I still think she could have written this without quite that much torture or abuse. After finishing it I have some questions not answered in the story: 1. Why wasn't Tedla made "human"? I think someone asked this question before. Mistake? Or too great a need for blands? As someone else mentioned, did they need more pretty ones? Of course, Gilman needed a more intelligent bland to drive the story. At first, I thought that Tedla was left neuter by error. After finishing the book, I wonder if increasing demand for blands was causing them to allow higher intelligence levels, which would inevitably result in a Tedla (e.g. agent of change). 2. Was Tedla really more intelligent than other blands? I'm not sure about this. Could it be that it was just exposed to the right events and people to develop as it did? Some parts of the book made it seem like Tedla was incapable of handling abstract concepts, although that's clearly not the case based on its later success at the Capellan university. Popular belief held that blands lose intelligence after nine months, but Gilman implied that was just a result of brainwashing, and Tedla managed to stave off or overcome that brainwashing. 3. Is biological gender a requirement for being human? Clearly the author doesn't think so, and it seemed repugnant to me to say Tedla wasn't human. But gender is really tied up in our concept of person, and it's hard to imagine one without gender, even ambiguous gender. The trick is to separate gender from intelligence, something the Gammadians seemed unable to do. 4. Was this story about gender? At first it seemed that way. But near the end, Tedla points out to Val (as was discussed here already) the Capellan "grayspace", filled with blands of both genders. And it's true, none of the bad things that happened to blands really had anything to do with their lack of gender. Was the story really about class, then? Or about any "other" that can be dehumanized and brainwashed and enslaved. 5. For the group: if you tended to think of Tedla as gendered, which one and more importantly, why? I tended to think of Tedla, and most of the blands, as male. I'm having trouble figuring out why. I don't think it was the cover art, which I agree looks male. The only bland I thought of as female was the crazy coven leader. I hate to think what kind of internalized messages led me to those assumptions. It will be interesting to compare this take on alternate "gender" with Scott's Shadow Man. Instead of framing the story around gender (or class) repression, Shadow Man seemed to me to be more about repression based on sexual preference. Jennifer jkrauel@actioneer.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 May 1998 00:47:19 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pat Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human In-Reply-To: <19980509073330.28977.rocketmail@send1c.yahoomail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Sat, 9 May 1998, Ruth Jost wrote: > > I too was intrigued - but chilled - at Gilman's concept of an > information society where even academics have to buy > research/information. But I was even more chilled when I considered > that this is not so alien to my own situation - I am a consultant, > businesses pay for my knowledge, it is all I have to sell. I don't > think that the way I earn my income today differs significantly from > the way Val earns hers, so maybe western society is already closer to > Gilman's vision than we would care to admit??? > That culture struck me as being pure academia.> Patricia (Pat) Mathews mathews@unm.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 May 1998 09:32:55 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Caroline Couture Subject: Re: BDG: Is 1/2way human about gender? In-Reply-To: <000601bd7d07$f933b340$657218ce@jennifer.actioneer.com> from "Jennifer Krauel" at May 11, 98 11:09:42 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi folks! I joined the list not too long ago. It was mentioned to me as something that might be interesting. It really did become interesting when I discovered that I was reading Gilman's book also. This looks like a good time to jump in. :) I don't have a copy of the book with me so forgive me if I spell names incorrectly. I also wish I had one for page references but that's just because I'm too anal about that sort of stuff. :) > Jennifer said: > 1. Why wasn't Tedla made "human"? I think someone asked this question > before. Mistake? Or too great a need for blands? As someone else > mentioned, did they need more pretty ones? Of course, Gilman needed a more > intelligent bland to drive the story. At first, I thought that Tedla was > left neuter by error. After finishing the book, I wonder if increasing > demand for blands was causing them to allow higher intelligence levels, > which would inevitably result in a Tedla (e.g. agent of change). > Based on the story this seems to be the main answer. Recall Gaele's (sp?) conversation with the Gammadian towards the end of the book. He confronts them about the society's increasing need for blands as workers and how this has become the primary reason for their creation and not the need to avoid abuse of planetary resources. Also when Tedla goes through the testing before becoming human a worker comments on the number of blands and that they hadn't expected so many to be "created." (But those workers also don't really seem to be aware of the "plan.") As an aside could the culture survive knowing that blands were created/chosen and not accidental? Would non-blands feel gulity and would blands feel resentful? I'd say yes. For the culture to survive the secret cannot be revealed. This may be why they Gammadians want Tedla back; they know, I think, that she knows the true nature of the blands. > 2. Was Tedla really more intelligent than other blands? I'm not sure about > this. Could it be that it was just exposed to the right events and people > to develop as it did? Some parts of the book made it seem like Tedla was > incapable of handling abstract concepts, although that's clearly not the > case based on its later success at the Capellan university. Popular belief > held that blands lose intelligence after nine months, but Gilman implied > that was just a result of brainwashing, and Tedla managed to stave off or > overcome that brainwashing. > Well I think you have to decide what kind of intelligence you mean. The blands were educated "just like humans" until the point they become gendered. Also the education "before" they become bland isn't in the kind of manual tasks that blands do. Tedla, and the other blands, are thrown into the bland world, which makes them scared and ashamed, and then they are told to do tasks that they have no experience in doing. No wonder they seem "stupid" to the humans. Many of the blands show intelligence and the ability to think abstractly *and* manipulate the environment around them. Tedla comments that the blands are good at avoiding work and yet keeping the supervisors happy and in the dark. They have also managed to create a "bland culture" outside of the Gammadian one and they certainly have developed a religion/myth structure with witchcraft. Of course this doesn't fit with the Gammadian view of the blands so they don't see the culture they have developed, and the strategies they have for managing the humans. Even Tedla doesn't see it at first. (One reason why they may have overreacted to the bland "revolution" may be that this awareness was starting to come to the fore.) > 4. Was this story about gender? At first it seemed that way. But near the > end, Tedla points out to Val (as was discussed here already) the Capellan > "grayspace", filled with blands of both genders. And it's true, none of the > bad things that happened to blands really had anything to do with their lack > of gender. Was the story really about class, then? Or about any "other" > that can be dehumanized and brainwashed and enslaved. > I'd say the story was about the "other" and that Gilman used the blands as a way to detach it from gender. Because of the distinction between blands and "humans" I started to think of it more like a racial difference than anything else. (Essentially the "difference" is created and superficial and once it happens it influences *everything* from that point on.) > 5. For the group: if you tended to think of Tedla as gendered, which one > and more importantly, why? I tended to think of Tedla, and most of the > blands, as male. I'm having trouble figuring out why. I don't think it was > the cover art, which I agree looks male. The only bland I thought of as > female was the crazy coven leader. I hate to think what kind of > internalized messages led me to those assumptions. > Hmmm. I thought of Tedla as female. Why? Perhaps because it seems more acted upon than acting. Unfortunately this seems to be a more "female" experience to me. Take care, Caroline ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 May 1998 20:59:16 EDT Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: CIGILMAN Subject: Wiscon Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Hi everyone, I will be at Wiscon, in case you want to throw things at me for ending my book wrong. :-) If there is a gathering, I would love to attend. Let me know. BTW, I have really been enjoying the discussion of Halfway Human, though of course it's been very difficult for me to keep my mouth shut. Carolyn Ives Gilman cigilman@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 08:50:20 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Stahl, Sheryl" Subject: Re: Wiscon MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain So chime in on the discussion! Sheryl > BTW, I have really been enjoying the discussion of Halfway Human, > though of > course it's been very difficult for me to keep my mouth shut. > > Carolyn Ives Gilman > cigilman@aol.com > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 17:16:35 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Stacey Holbrook Subject: BDG: Halfway Human (Join in CIG) (was: Wiscon) In-Reply-To: <3055ec3a.3558f065@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 12 May 1998, CIGILMAN wrote: > I will be at Wiscon, in case you want to throw things at me for ending my book > wrong. :-) If there is a gathering, I would love to attend. Let me know. Sorry, I'm just a fan of the downbeat ending. > BTW, I have really been enjoying the discussion of Halfway Human, though of > course it's been very difficult for me to keep my mouth shut. I, for one, would be delighted to hear any comments you would like to make. It must be terrible to be on the hotseat and not be able to talk back. > Carolyn Ives Gilman > cigilman@aol.com > Stacey (ausar@netdoor.com) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 19:54:38 +0000 Reply-To: terriergraphics@cybertours.com Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Terri Wakefield Organization: Terrier Graphic Design Subject: Re: Wiscon Comments: cc: CIGILMAN@AOL.COM MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit CIGILMAN wrote: > > Hi everyone, > > I will be at Wiscon, in case you want to throw things at me for ending my book > wrong. :-) If there is a gathering, I would love to attend. Let me know. I liked the ending! I wanted very much for Tedla to be safe. I really got into her < umm, I mean its > life and how she < it > managed to endure no matter how much it was exploited. I thought of Tedla as a * her* because its suppression seemed similar to how married women with children were treated in the past. The blands were made to feel as if they were stupid even though they were the ones holding things together. They also took sole care of the children. Sort of sounds familiar to me. > BTW, I have really been enjoying the discussion of Halfway Human, though of > course it's been very difficult for me to keep my mouth shut. I wish you would speak up. It would be great to hear what you have to say! Terri ========================================================================= ========================================================================= Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF LOG9805C" ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 13:46:20 +0000 Reply-To: releon@syr.edu Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Rudy Leon Organization: Syracuse University Subject: [FFSFU] BDG authors onlist MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT n Thu, 14 May 1998, Stacey Holbrook wrote:> > > BTW, I have really been enjoying the discussion of Halfway Human, > > though of course it's been very difficult for me to keep my mouth > > shut. > > I, for one, would be delighted to hear any comments you would like > to make. It must be terrible to be on the hotseat and not be able to > talk back. > > > Carolyn Ives Gilman > > cigilman@aol.com How do folks feel about this? _This_ being the presence, and silence, of authors onlist whose books are under discussion, or rather the question of should we be reading those books in this forum? I'm pretty conflicted. While I have found many new authors,a and read many books by them since joining this list, I am really uncomfortable with doing a book discussion of any of them with the authors on list and quiet, and also with the authors onlist and vocal. Because of this, I haven't voted for or participated in any of the discussions where authors are on this list; however, we have an *awful lot* of great authors on this list,a nd it would be great to hear from them. On the other hand (I guess I'm playing octopus today) Nicola and Vonda have been really quiet since we read their books. maybe we;ve silenced them. I guess this is just an attempt to open up discussion of this question, since we haven't really discussed it as a list before, and I am concerned that we might be silencing folks. I am particularly interested in how the authors feel under discussion, actual or potential, but I realize that may be a little too much of a hot seat to demand they jump into. Defeats the point... throwing the floor open... Rudy O Rudy Leon who is a SHE (how did that change what you were thinking?) Syracuse University PhD Candidate Dept. of Religion releon@syr.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 14:35:20 EDT Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: CIGILMAN Subject: : Halfway Human redux Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit All right, you persuaded me to speak up. First, thank you all for an intelligent and eye-opening discussion. I learned a lot. And if I perpetrated a fraud on anyone by lurking, sorry--but it sure did liven up the discussion. Didn't you notice that some of the most insightful things were said by people who hated the book? How boring if everyone had been polite and cautious. I was struck, while listening, with how differently readers and authors look at books. Readers are a whole lot smarter, because they have the benefit of hindsight. Writing (at least for me) is not a very rational process. I don't decide to do things for intellectual reasons, but for dramatic reasons, or simply because it "feels right." The successes, when they come, seem like serendipity, and the real miracle of the thing is that serendipity ever manages to happen more than once. It's always possible to come up with a clever rationale ex post facto, but authors who do this are a little like politicians trying to take credit for some purely random event. Oh definitely, I intended to do that all along. Sure. There were a lot of surprises for me in people's reactions to the book. Here are just a few among many. 1. Tedla and gender: I have been keeping very unscientific track of people's comments on asexuality. Some people have argued to me that personality itself is impossible without gender, and therefore everyone will necessarily assign Tedla a gender in their minds. A lot of people do, and I've found it splits almost exactly 50-50 as to whether the gender they assign is male or female. Because I've had a lot more responses from women than men, I can't tell whether men are as likely to see Tedla as female. However, up to now there has always been a sizable contingent who didn't see Tedla as either male or female, but were able to imagine a person without gender. I was astonished that no one in this group said that they were able to achieve this feat. Does that mean there wasn't anyone? [Incidentally, when I was trying to sell the book, two agents (both men, though I'm not sure that's relevant) told me that the idea of an asexual being was so revolting that "readers would not accept it." One of them assumed I was trying to write pornography, and had failed. He gave me some helpful tips which, I'm glad to say, I no longer remember.] 2. The blands. A lot of people (not just this group) have talked about the blands living lives of appalling degradation. They see the blands' exploitation as being quite alien to their experience, and different by orders of magnitude from anything that exists in our world, outside of Asian sweatshops. This puzzles me, because I and people I know have experienced a lot of the same working conditions, and responded in some of the same ways the blands do (no witchcraft so far, but I wouldn't rule it out). People at my workplace have started stopping me in the halls to report "blandlike experiences" they have had. I have also, I admit, treated people as if they were blands and I was human. Gammadis did not seem nearly so alien to me as it did to many readers--I find it easy to imagine fitting right in. Am I alone? 3. Tedla, Tellegen, and abuse. The question of whether the relationship between Tedla and Tellegen was abusive has stumped me. I honestly don't know what I think. It doesn't help that societies around the world are scarcely unanimous about the morality of relationships between powerful adults and powerless teenagers. In some parts of Africa, they are perfectly acceptable, while in America they are illegal. The power differential is very troubling, but does that make it abusive? To take an example that would NEVER actually happen, what if the President of the United States had sex with an intern? Would that automatically be abusive, because of the power difference? 4. Galele and pedophilia. I understand people's complaints about this turn of the plot. I kind of wish it hadn't happened too, but it did. I've been thinking about why. (See disclaimer above about ex post facto rationales.) What I really wanted to do at this stage of the book was test Tedla's humanity by facing it with a situation that would arouse its own intolerance. The test couldn't be an easy one that the rest of us would have no trouble passing. Some person close to it had to be revealed as a member of a class of people Tedla had every right to feel hatred toward, and which the rest of society feels justified to revile and dehumanize. The question was, could Tedla resist the urge to see Galele as a member of a despised group, and instead see him as an individual who might have done terrible things, but who had resoundingly passed the humanity test as far as Tedla was concerned? Well, Tedla eventually rose to the occasion (too late), but I'm finding many readers don't want to. It's not that I expected --or wanted -- anyone to condone pedophilia, or forgive all pedophiles (I think the rest of the book makes that clear!). I only wanted them to find understanding for Galele the flawed individual. Maybe this was too morally murky, but like I said, an easier test wouldn't have been any test at all. So the event was there as a challenge to Tedla, and ended up being an unintentional challenge to readers, too. For my money, the point where Tedla becomes fully human is not when it refuses to speak Gammadian, but when it transcends its own past and forgives Galele for something unforgivable. Carolyn ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 20:24:54 GMT Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Vonda N. McIntyre" Subject: Re: [FFSFU] BDG authors onlist Comments: To: releon@SYR.EDU In-Reply-To: <199805171745.NAA25169@syr.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I'm not silenced -- I just mostly lurk under any circumstances. I didn't want to jump into the discussion of Dreamsnake. I thought my doing so might turn the discussion to a lecture on what was the real truth of the book. Do I know what that is, twenty years after writing it? There were a couple of lines of discussion that I found quite puzzling, but if I'd started arguing about any of them, I wouldn't have learned much about ways of reading the book that I hadn't expected were possible. Best, Vonda On Sun, 17 May 1998 13:46:20 +0000, Rudy Leon wrote: >..... On the other hand (I guess I'm playing octopus today) >Nicola and Vonda have been really quiet since we read their books. >maybe we;ve silenced them. > -- http://www.sff.net/people/Vonda http://www.sfwa.org/awards/1997neb.htm ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 03:57:21 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joyce Jones Subject: BDG Halfway Human, sexless Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Carolyn wrote that she was surprised no one on the list seemed to be able to imagine Tedla as sexless. I thought that while Tedla always wanted to be human, it seemed quite proud to be neither male nor female after what it had seen of sexed beings. But still, I can't really feel what it would be like not to be a sex. The need to identify with one's group is a strong human trait. What more basic group to claim than one's sex. While no one would describe me as the most feminine person they know, I identify myself completely as female. In fact, since I am a labor and delivery nurse, sex is a larger than usual part of my life. The first question anyone asks at the birth of a baby of course is, "Is it a boy or a girl?" The other night we had a baby that had either very large labia or a scrotum and no penis. The doctor said it was definitely a boy, the nurse wouldn't write that on the delivery record because she couldn't say that it was true. Genetic studies are being done! , but for 2 weeks or so the parents can't answer that first question with complete certainty. It shouldn't make a diference. A baby is a baby. But now with the popularity of ultrasound parents want to assign their little fetus to the correct group as soon as possible. Even without the possibility of becoming a bland, imagine what it would be to escape that sexual assignment for 12 whole years. I wonder what we chauvenistic people would use to discriminate against each other then. Joyce Jones ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 18:00:19 EDT Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: CIGILMAN Subject: Re: BDG authors onlist Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I know this is not the reason the list was created--but honest, intelligent feedback is worth its weight in gold to a writer. It is also very difficult to come by. Personally, I treasure every reaction I can get, even the crotchety ones. Especially the crotchety ones, in fact, because I know they're not pulling punches. As to author silence: I doubt very much that anyone is sulking or afraid. Vonda is right, the instant the author speaks up the discussion tends to cut off, as if the author somehow knew the truth, or it turns into an interview. There are enough of those in Locus. However, I can understand why people feel inhibited knowing the author is listening; I certainly do. Maybe there should be some ground rules that make it clear you're allowed to dislike a book as long as you say why. (I'm going to have a hard time discussing Mists of Avalon if I'm not allowed to be critical!) Any author who can't take it doesn't have to listen, or can argue back. I doubt there are many authors out there who can't take it. Hearing criticism is part of the bargain you take on when you publish. Besides, around here the tone is generally so high, and the criticism so intelligent, that I bet the authors will be as grateful as I was. Carolyn ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 19:00:11 EDT Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: NicolaZ Subject: Fwd: [FFSFU] BDG authors onlist Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary="part0_895532411_boundary" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --part0_895532411_boundary Content-ID: <0_895532411@inet_out.mail.aol.com.1> Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Ooops. Meant to send this to the list--only just realized I sent it to Rudy. Nicola --part0_895532411_boundary Content-ID: <0_895532411@inet_out.mail.aol.com.2> Content-type: message/rfc822 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Content-disposition: inline From: NicolaZ Return-path: To: releon@syr.edu Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] [FFSFU] BDG authors onlist Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 20:28:24 EDT Organization: AOL (http://www.aol.com) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I don't feel silenced by the discussion of AMMONITE. I had a great time reading the comments. Most of them--positive and not--gave me pause for thought. I deliberately didn't chime in during the discussion because I believed (rightly or wrongly) that it might make some of you feel a wee bit self-conscious. Getting feedback from readers is such a precious commodity to a writer that I would have done almost anything to keep the flow going. I tried to make it clear before the discussion began that, at the end, I'd happily answer any question that was put to me directly...but then I was unsure about whether or not anyone had done that, and the discussion wound down during an incredibly busy period for me so the moment just...passed. My apologies to anyone who really wanted me to answer something. I'd be happy to answer you now if you can remember your question . I'd suggest that if authors of the next few books to be discussed are present on the list, that some kind of more formal question-response procedure is instituted. For example, the discussion goes ahead as planned, then in the last week, people address questions directly to the author. This way, you all get to chew things over for a while before the author explains what they *really* meant. The list can comment on the writer's response, too, of course, but at least at this point the writer knows s/he can play without squashing anyone else's opinion. Again, it was a great gift you gave me, reading, thinking and talking about my work. Thanks. Nicola --part0_895532411_boundary-- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 11:12:20 +1200 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jenny Subject: BDG Halfway Human MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I haven't been able to finish HH yet, and I don't know whether I will. I keep on reading other books in between which have a much better flow. I find the great wadges of description of past events almost undigestible. There are all these long pieces of Tedla's story, and then Val suddenly starts responding, and you realise it was all in the past. It lurches really badly from static past narrative to present action. When I do get into it, I can read a reasonable amount and it carries me along. But when I get to the end of one of those long regurgitations, I just stop dead. The discussion has been a stimulant, because people were getting so much from it, so I'd force myself to read past the next interlude and into the next long narrative. I also haven't found Val's behaviour believable in such a knowledge-commodity society. In one conversation, she makes a few comments which show she is low on the hierarchy, and then thinks to herself that the person she's talking to will now dismiss her for it. Well, wake up, Val! There are skills basic to competing in this kind of society, the kind of bullshitting which is honed in today's academic and corporate world, all about competitive status and protecting your patch. She just doesn't seem to have any of that worked out. As a story-telling device, she has to be low on the hierarchy to give her attempt to protect Tedla some dramatic tension, but as a character she hasn't been believable so far. The wadges of Tedla's story are so big, I haven't been able to remember Val's responses and actions from one mention to the next. That swapping from one aspect of the story to the other just hasn't worked for me. It worked well in Slow River, and lots of other books, but not this one. It just feels really heavy going in HH. Hopefully, I'll finish it, but I have to agree with one of the other posts which described it as turgid. I'm a non-fiction editor and don't usually feel an urge to edit fiction, but this book has a solid kernel of good story and ideas in a bad structure, which cries out for a severe rewrite and edit. Jenny R ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 22:01:27 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Stacey Holbrook Subject: Re: [FFSFU] BDG authors onlist Comments: To: Rudy Leon In-Reply-To: <199805171745.NAA25169@syr.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Sun, 17 May 1998, Rudy Leon wrote: (snip) > How do folks feel about this? _This_ being the presence, > and silence, of authors onlist whose books are under discussion, or > rather the question of should we be reading those books in this > forum? I'm pretty conflicted. I feel a little uncomfortable being critical because I don't want to cause any hurt feelings. But I think things have worked very well so far with the authors holding back their own comments until the discussion has had a chance to wind down. I think the authors should get the chance to answer if they choose to. I have really enjoyed the discussion of all three books. I have had the chance to see these books from totally different perspectives. I am looking forward to the next books. > Rudy Leon Stacey (ausar@netdoor.com) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 08:32:57 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joel VanLaven Subject: BDG Halfway Human (Tedla as male) In-Reply-To: <199805182310.LAA208320895533029@mail.iconz.co.nz> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I figure I'll give a shot at explaining why I used "he" for Tedla (subconsciously) since there seems to have been more of lean toward she on this list. (and I was able to think of it as neuter btw. I just used the male pronoun and though of it sort of like a gelding, male with bits removed): I'm male and I was identifying with Tedla (that was the intent right?) So I projected my own gender onto it. As a hetero-sexual male women are associated with sex for me but men are not? Male is the default non-sexed gender in our society (related to above?). Men sexually abusing little boys is on the news more often. It can't have children (I don't see the fathering as nearly as big a deal). In my personal experience women are not used and abused. Anything like that I see/would see as an aberration to be commented on and changed if at all possible. It is probable that I have missed subtle sexism in the interactions between other people, but my feminism is not really based on experience of the kind of sexism displayed towards blands on Gamadis. I intellectually understadn that such sexism exists/has existed, but I have been well insulated from it. -- Joel VanLaven ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 09:36:23 -0400 Reply-To: Joel VanLaven Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joel VanLaven Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human (Tedla a mistake?) In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Some discussion has gone into whether Tedla was mistakenly (malicously?) made into a bland. I was struck by some thoughts on the subject: 1) Suppose that this selective breeding was really working. The average Gammadian might easily be as exceptional as Tedla. (how long has it gone on ?) In particular, if you subscribe to the idea that geneticly determined intelligence in humans is limited but that with this breeding we could weed out "dummies" the books would work very well. 2) Why are the humans on Gammadis so stupid? I was not impressed with their intelligence. Was this indoctrination THAT powerful? We are talking about the smartest (bred for smarts) people around. How could they be so stupid? 3) Is it possible that they are bred for more than intelligence? How about feelings towards blands? Might Tedla have been made into a bland for loving that bland that helped it as a child? Perhaps they have been breeding abnoxious, imperious jerks on purpose. Whatever it is, maybe Tedla was considered threatening to the order of it all (though it seemed to be perfectly normal) 4) Since the book seems completely dominated by economics was the point simply that Tedla was in the middle and the society was so far gone that they needed more than 50% blands? -- Joel VanLaven ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 11:04:13 -0700 Reply-To: ltimmel@halcyon.com Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "L. Timmel Duchamp" Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human (Tedla a mistake?) Comments: To: Joel VanLaven MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Joel VanLaven wrote: > > Some discussion has gone into whether Tedla was mistakenly (malicously?) > made into a bland. It seems to me that speculating on *why* is a red-herring. I have been assuming that a large part of the point of the conceit of assigning status according to the possession (or not) of sex organs is the arbitrariness of such judgments-- as has been the real-life case for centuries in most (probably all) human societies. The folks who run maquiladoro (export-processing) factories in the Third World, for instance, assume across the board that workers with vaginas (as opposed to those with penises) are better at "detail" work. There's a wonderful (& entertainingly written) article by Leslie Salzinger in the Fall, 1997 issue of _Feminist Studies_ exploring attempts to manage workers according to the management's particular notion of essentialist gender characteristics. (Actually, it would be excellent for people to read this article while reading _Halfway Human_-- the two resonate with one another in very interesting ways.) In any case, I think that trying to find a rational reason for Tedla's being tracked into the blands makes about as much sense as trying to understand intelligence & socialization as resulting from essentialist sex differences. It's all arbitrary, & rationalizing it simply reflects a need to say that it is, in some sense, justified. Timmi Duchamp ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 16:49:12 -0400 Reply-To: asaro@sff.net Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Catherine Asaro Subject: Re: [FFSFU] BDG authors onlist MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I would like to reiterate what the other authors on the list said about the value of hearing comments of any stripe, positive or negative. They are worth their weight in gold, not only for the book in question, but also for future books. I've been silent mostly because I'm swamped; many days it's a choice between email and writing. Also, I don't want to annoy people by talking about my own books. Best regards Catherine ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 12:51:38 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joel VanLaven Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human (Tedla a mistake?) Comments: To: "L. Timmel Duchamp" In-Reply-To: <3561C99D.2B52@halcyon.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 19 May 1998, L. Timmel Duchamp wrote: > Joel VanLaven wrote: > > > > Some discussion has gone into whether Tedla was mistakenly (malicously?) > > made into a bland. [snipped some great stuff about essenitalism and arbitrariness] > In any case, I think that trying to find a rational reason for Tedla's > being tracked into the blands makes about as much sense as trying to > understand intelligence & socialization as resulting from essentialist > sex differences. It's all arbitrary, & rationalizing it simply reflects > a need to say that it is, in some sense, justified. I suppose that this is possible. Sometimes it isn't arbitrary though. Sometimes a black person doesn't get a job just through the arbitrariness of the world. Sometimes it is a mistake. Sometimes it is racism. Sometimes it because of some other thing about the system and that person. I understood from the book that Tedla's blandness was supposed to have been chosen by the tests. There are a number of possible ways to make this fit in with the rest of the book. Many (all ?) of them involve arbitrariness in one form or another. The question is what other things might have been involved and what form of arbitrariness was involved. I am not really particularly interested in Tedla so much as what Tedla can tell us about the patterns, trends, and the system on Gammadis. -- Joel VanLaven ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 15:08:16 PDT Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Daniel Krashin Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human (Tedla a mistake?) Content-Type: text/plain ----------------------------- > >Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 11:04:13 -0700 >From: "L. Timmel Duchamp" >Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human (Tedla a mistake?) > >Joel VanLaven wrote: >> >> Some discussion has gone into whether Tedla was mistakenly (malicously?) >> made into a bland. > >It seems to me that speculating on *why* is a red-herring. I have been >assuming that a large part of the point of the conceit of assigning >status according to the possession (or not) of sex organs is the >arbitrariness of such judgments-- as has been the real-life case for >centuries in most (probably all) human societies. The folks who run >maquiladoro (export-processing) factories in the Third World, for >instance, assume across the board that workers with vaginas (as opposed >to those with penises) are better at "detail" work. There's a wonderful >(& entertainingly written) article by Leslie Salzinger in the Fall, 1997 >issue of _Feminist Studies_ exploring attempts to manage workers >according to the management's particular notion of essentialist gender >characteristics. (Actually, it would be excellent for people to read >this article while reading _Halfway Human_-- the two resonate with one >another in very interesting ways.) > >In any case, I think that trying to find a rational reason for Tedla's >being tracked into the blands makes about as much sense as trying to >understand intelligence & socialization as resulting from essentialist >sex differences. It's all arbitrary, & rationalizing it simply reflects >a need to say that it is, in some sense, justified. > >Timmi Duchamp Oddly enough, there are many decades of psychological experiments supporting the idea that women, on average, are better for monotonous detail work than men. I don't suppose those maquiladora operators give a damn about whether this difference is the result of early conditioning, biology, or anything else. I guess I don't understand Timmi Duchamp's point too well -- is it that because the system of men, women, and blands is evil, therefore it is pointless to ask whether it makes sense or works in logical ways? I have to disagree. I think it is better for imagined worlds, whether utopian or dystopian, to function in a reasonably realistic way. Otherwise, you get propaganda or cheap escapist pulp fiction. When you look at what some "evil" societies -- say the slaveowning South of the USA, South Africa under apartheid, ancient Sparta -- each was administered by fairly able and intelligent men doing what they thought necessary to preserve their system. The fact that those systems were based on falsehood and injustice is a different issue entirely. So I think it is absolutely appropriate for Joel to ask why the Gammadians would act in a seemingly ineffective manner. Dan "I rooted for Darth Vader" Krashin P.S. I'm not sure if anyone has discussed this yet, but it seemed rather implausible to me that the government could keep the origin of the blands a secret for so long -- I mean, just imagine the number of people who must be in on it! I think the story would have been just as good if everyone had known that the blands were an artifical, arbitrary group, but society dictated that the blands deserved their fate. Or did I miss something? ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 18:45:59 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: donna simone Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human (Tedla a mistake?) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Okay before I whip out my pithy retort or sarcastic feint praise, I will hold my breath and count to xxx and hope that my plane for Wiscon arrives soon. Now let me go find my course book on universally offered feminist studies _before_ I pass out........ I am soooo tired, donna Re: Dan Krashin (timmi duchamp clipped below) >Oddly enough, there are many decades of psychological experiments >supporting the idea that women, on average, are better for monotonous >detail work than men> >I guess I don't understand Timmi Duchamp's point too well -- is it that >because the system of men, women, and blands is evil, therefore it is >pointless to ask whether it makes sense or works in logical >ways? I have to disagree......When you look at what some "evil" societies -- say >the slaveowning South of the USA, South Africa under apartheid, ancient Sparta -- >each was administered by fairly able and intelligent men doing what they >thought necessary to preserve their system. The fact that those systems >were based on falsehood and injustice is a different issue entirely.> RE: Timmi Duchamp >>....I think that trying to find a rational reason for Tedla's >>being tracked into the blands makes about as much sense as trying to >>understand intelligence & socialization as resulting from essentialist >>sex differences. It's all arbitrary, & rationalizing it simply >reflects a need to say that it is, in some sense, justified.>> ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 19:31:39 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Ruth Jost Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human (Tedla as male) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii ---Joel VanLaven wrote: > > I figure I'll give a shot at explaining why I used "he" for Tedla > (subconsciously) since there seems to have been more of lean toward she > on this list. I caught myself thinking about Tedla as a "he" almost immediately on meeting the character, and I had to make a conscious (and difficult) effort to think of Tedla as "it" throughout my reading. I think this was because I easily accepted that Tedla was "not a woman", and in my frame of reference, to be "not a woman" means to be "a man" (hee hee I see men as the Other!). My ole brain simply had trouble processing the idea that one could be neither woman nor man, and had to be constantly directed to do so. But I certainly see Tedla's experiences as being more woman-like than man-like. When I got to the torture scene I let my brain take over with the "he thinking", simply because that let me feel that I was a step further away from the full horror of it than I would have been if I had allowed myself to think of Tedla as "she". (Even at a "step removed" I found it a horrific passage and very difficult to read.) Regards Ruth Equal Pay Watch Australia: news, info and resources on pay equity. http://www.users.bigpond.com/rj_gj/index.html _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 21 May 1998 11:28:59 +0000 Reply-To: releon@syr.edu Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Rudy Leon Organization: Syracuse University Subject: Re: [FFSFU] BDG authors onlist In-Reply-To: <3561F047.1755@sff.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Thanks everyone for commenting. I'm really glad I brought it up, and now that I know that honest feedback is valued, and authors aren't uncomfortable in the spotlight (that's why they write, I guess...) *I* am much more comfortable. Have a great Memorial day weekend, and enjoy WisCon, to all who are going. Rudy Leon who is a SHE (how did that change what you were thinking?) Syracuse University PhD Candidate Dept. of Religion releon@syr.edu ========================================================================= ========================================================================= Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF LOG9805D" ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 22:51:21 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joslyn Grassby Subject: [Fwd: BDG: Halfway Human] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------AB37A930D7257A548147A8C3" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------AB37A930D7257A548147A8C3 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Joslyn Grassby wrote: > Some time back, when I posted a message to start discussion of Gilman's > book, I promised to post further when I had completed rereading this > very interesting book. Below, with the usual imho disclaimer, are some > further thoughts. > > 1. Oooops. Used the pronoun "she" for Tedla, possibly in the spirit of > Galele's remark that the blands seemed to serve some of the same social > functions or inhabit a social niche similar to that occupied by women in > some societies. In reading the book, I found it difficult to think in > terms of "it" and it always seemed that the kinds of things that > happened to Tedla and its (I'm trying to be careful with pronouns) > behaviour seemed more akin to the kinds of things that happen to women > and its behaviour seemed to mirror the seductive behaviour women may > exhibit to get something they want when they are otherwise powerless. > > 2. Tedla and Galele. When I reflected back on earlier events in the > book after having read the section near the end when Tedla behaves in a > seductive fashion toward Val, I thought more highly of Galele, the > pederast. It seems reasonable to assume that Tedla had, possibly in an > earlier, simpler and less practised fashion, behaved in a similarly > seductive fashion toward him. He, whether because his treatment or > conditioning was still working or out of love for Tedla, resisted any > overtures that it may have made and behaved instead as a teacher. I am > more inclined to think it was the latter since after Tedla left, his > conditioning seemed no longer to function (which was represented as a > rare occurrence). > > 3. Blands and slavery. In the descriptions of blands' place in > Gammadian society and their relations with humans there, I was > irresistibly reminded of slavery in the United States and the relations > between blacks and whites in the years that followed the American Civil > War. Then I started asking myself what I based this on, and realized > that my only knowledge of slavery in the US is based on fiction, whether > books or films. But, there was nothing in "Halfway Human" that happened > to blands that I had not already seen portrayed. It still seems to me > that Gilman has taken the American experience, at least as I have seen > it in American books and films, and used gender instead of race. > > 4. Tedla and self-image. I found myself getting rather impatient with > Tedla's total lack of self-knowledge. It makes a number of intelligent, > sometimes witty (vide, the biggest bibliography) remarks on scholarship > and on the role of gender but seems unable to grasp the idea that it is > intelligent and doing well in its studies, despite considerable evidence > that this is the case. Tedla seems to be a sharp observer of everything > but itself and to have so woefully low a self-image that it is unable > to reflect on its own character and abilities. > > 5. Pronouns in general. Just as an interesting aside, in one language > with which I am familiar, Thai, the third person pronoun for what in > English would be "he", "she" or "they" is the same word, "khaw", which > can also be possessive, "khong khaw" (anyone who knows Thai will have to > excuse the transliteration). Similarly, there is a general term of > address, "khun", which does not distinguish on the basis of gender. On > the other hand, the pronouns for "I" are different for men and women as > are polite particles at the end of sentences. What Thai IS very > particular about is the relative social class and age grading of the > person speaking and the person "khaw" is speaking to. > > 6. Halfway Human. The title puzzled me: to whom does it refer and what > does it mean? It's too easy and so obvious as to add nothing to the > story to think that it applies only to Tedla. In a moment of satori, > however, I decided that it applied to every character in the book, in a > different way for each. The Gammadians, the ruthless information > brokers, are indeed half human and becoming less so. Tedla, Val, Val's > family are halfway human but moving in the opposite direction--towards > humanity. To the Vinds, too, perhaps because they have passed through > humanity on their way to what, I don't know. > > Joslyn Grassby --------------AB37A930D7257A548147A8C3 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-ID: <356649E8.2010B91C@nlc-bnc.ca> Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 21:00:41 -0700 From: Joslyn Grassby X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win16; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: listserv@listserv.uic.edu Subject: BDG: Halfway Human Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Some time back, when I posted a message to start discussion of Gilman's book, I promised to post further when I had completed rereading this very interesting book. Below, with the usual imho disclaimer, are some further thoughts. 1. Oooops. Used the pronoun "she" for Tedla, possibly in the spirit of Galele's remark that the blands seemed to serve some of the same social functions or inhabit a social niche similar to that occupied by women in some societies. In reading the book, I found it difficult to think in terms of "it" and it always seemed that the kinds of things that happened to Tedla and its (I'm trying to be careful with pronouns) behaviour seemed more akin to the kinds of things that happen to women and its behaviour seemed to mirror the seductive behaviour women may exhibit to get something they want when they are otherwise powerless. 2. Tedla and Galele. When I reflected back on earlier events in the book after having read the section near the end when Tedla behaves in a seductive fashion toward Val, I thought more highly of Galele, the pederast. It seems reasonable to assume that Tedla had, possibly in an earlier, simpler and less practised fashion, behaved in a similarly seductive fashion toward him. He, whether because his treatment or conditioning was still working or out of love for Tedla, resisted any overtures that it may have made and behaved instead as a teacher. I am more inclined to think it was the latter since after Tedla left, his conditioning seemed no longer to function (which was represented as a rare occurrence). 3. Blands and slavery. In the descriptions of blands' place in Gammadian society and their relations with humans there, I was irresistibly reminded of slavery in the United States and the relations between blacks and whites in the years that followed the American Civil War. Then I started asking myself what I based this on, and realized that my only knowledge of slavery in the US is based on fiction, whether books or films. But, there was nothing in "Halfway Human" that happened to blands that I had not already seen portrayed. It still seems to me that Gilman has taken the American experience, at least as I have seen it in American books and films, and used gender instead of race. 4. Tedla and self-image. I found myself getting rather impatient with Tedla's total lack of self-knowledge. It makes a number of intelligent, sometimes witty (vide, the biggest bibliography) remarks on scholarship and on the role of gender but seems unable to grasp the idea that it is intelligent and doing well in its studies, despite considerable evidence that this is the case. Tedla seems to be a sharp observer of everything but itself and to have so woefully low a self-image that it is unable to reflect on its own character and abilities. 5. Pronouns in general. Just as an interesting aside, in one language with which I am familiar, Thai, the third person pronoun for what in English would be "he", "she" or "they" is the same word, "khaw", which can also be possessive, "khong khaw" (anyone who knows Thai will have to excuse the transliteration). Similarly, there is a general term of address, "khun", which does not distinguish on the basis of gender. On the other hand, the pronouns for "I" are different for men and women as are polite particles at the end of sentences. What Thai IS very particular about is the relative social class and age grading of the person speaking and the person "khaw" is speaking to. 6. Halfway Human. The title puzzled me: to whom does it refer and what does it mean? It's too easy and so obvious as to add nothing to the story to think that it applies only to Tedla. In a moment of satori, however, I decided that it applied to every character in the book, in a different way for each. The Gammadians, the ruthless information brokers, are indeed half human and becoming less so. Tedla, Val, Val's family are halfway human but moving in the opposite direction--towards humanity. To the Vinds, too, perhaps because they have passed through humanity on their way to what, I don't know. Joslyn Grassby --------------AB37A930D7257A548147A8C3-- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 25 May 1998 22:32:51 -0400 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: BDG Halfway Human In-Reply-To: <199805182310.LAA208320895533029@mail.iconz.co.nz> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I finished *Halfway Human* about a week ago and have been thinking about it since then. I found it to be an enjoyable, intriguing story. Following are my comments. The book called other works to mind for me. *The Left Hand of Darkness* & "The Matter of Seggri" by Le Guin, Susan Matthews' *Prisoner of Conscience* (if you thought Tedla's mistreatment was bad, compare it to some of the torture in PoC), M.J. Engh's *Arslan*, Octavia Butler's *Kindred* and Suzy McKee Charnas' Holdfast series. A common theme in these works (except LHoD) is the oppression of one group by another and whether or not it's possible for people from the two groups to form relationships free from this oppression. The depth of the subject is immense and I always enjoy thoughtful approaches to it. Tedla's relationship to Tellegen is very interesting in this way -- Tellegen is wracked with guilt because he is violating his own morals and Tedla is confused yet very grateful to be treated kindly. It's clear that Tellegen still has the upper hand and does not hesitate to exert his power when he thinks he knows what is best for Tedla, but it's hard for me to call his sexual relations with Tedla rape. Tedla could have said no and it fully understood that option, but it chose not to. It said that it enjoyed physical intimacy with Tellegen even though it had no sexual feelings. Obviously it wanted to continue to please Tellegen for fear of being posted elsewhere, but I don't think this means that their relationship can be boiled down to simple one-way exploitation. Many real life relationships could be vastly oversimplified in the same way. Some have said that they don't understand Tedla's insistence on being a bland & not human, even though it is no longer on Gammadis. Perhaps there would be more complete healing for Tedla if it had entered a free bland community (as Alldera in Charnas' *Motherlines* becomes a part of the Riding Women). But instead Tedla is among sexed humans, beings who are still profoundly different from it, beings whose sexual appetites are in large part identical to its Gammadian oppressors'. How could it not still feel like an outsider? Maybe it doesn't WANT to be human? Re: Joslyn Grassby's irritation with Tedla's low self-esteem: isn't it amazing how so many women in our society, though very intelligent, are convinced that their bodies just aren't good enough, despite the assurances of their friends and full awareness of the existence of eating disorders? Why do so many women starve themselves in pursuit of an impossible ideal? It simply has nothing to do with objective reality. If the conditioning to think that you are fat, dumb, ugly, etc. is strong enough no amount of opposite conditioning will ever erase its effects. I think Tedla did quite well to stand up to Nasatir at all. Jessie Stickgold-Sarah wrote: >in fact the gendered characters that >I remember as most moving the story along were the squire, Galele, the abusive >man whose name I can't even remember at Brice's, maybe the administrator at >the creche who tells Tedla to reflect on its actions towards Joby. The women >(Elector Hornaby (??), Ovide, Annika) seemed to do much less in terms of >really moving the action forward. This is an awfully subjective assessment -- >did other people have this reaction, or an opposite one, or think it was >balanced? It didn't seem that way to me. I thought Ovide did perform an important function, choosing Tedla for Tellegen and introducing Galele to both of them. And the woman at Brice's is the one who asks Tedla what it really thinks of her and has it punished when she doesn't like the answer. Anita Easton wrote: >Did anyone find any merit in the ending at all? It seemed like a total >cop out, but I'm hoping I missed something. It did seem like it came out of the blue, but when you think about it, Gossup didn't have all that much to lose by diverting Tedla to C4D. No one on Capella Two would hear about it from Gammadis for 50 years (or however long it was exactly -- a long time) & as long as Tedla and Val keep quiet on C4D there's no menace from that quarter. There's some risk to him, perhaps it isn't completely convincing, but I didn't mind it too much since it made no difference at all to the main story line. Joyce Jones wrote: >I really wanted to think that Tedla's lack of metamorphosis was a mistake. >The idea presented by Patricia Mathews that it was made a bland >specifically so it could be used as a sex slave was just nauseating. Well, >there is no end to the depravity of human kind, but wow, this was not a >thought I had while reading the book. Though it isn't explained, I think it plausible that there might be a quota system at work here. "We need x number of blands this year and they need such and such talents or attributes." It seems that as the population of blands increases, the humans find more and more use for them (vis. Tedla's comment that it came to understand how a staff of many blands can be kept busy caring for a few humans). And perhaps other considerations, like "we can't have any ugly humans" or "no humans who can't play well with others or are below such and such IQ" (like Bigger, who seemed to be developing sex by itself without the hormone treatments and was surgically altered to be a bland). Stacey Holbrooke wrote: >The whole idea that "there are blands in every society" seemed to >be tacked on at the end. I don't think so. I thought it was clear from the beginning that the society of Capella Two is heartless in a way very similar to Gammadis -- people looking for excuses to devalue others and shut others out. Timmi Duchamp wrote: >In other words, Gilman shows us that sexuality & sexed-ness is as >constructed as gender is. Yes. Tedla even says at one point that it learned a whole other language of interaction once it started spending more time with humans -- the "flirting" and sexual innuendo that is injected when appropriate. Tedla even goes so far as to say that most sexuality is expressed here rather than in bed. (p. 345) Tedla's perceived gender: at first I thought of Tedla as an effeminate male, but as I read on I began to identify with it more and more, so eventually I was able to think of it simply as "the outsider", as that is often how I feel when I observe highly gendered behaviors in our society. What do I mean by highly gendered? I guess behaviors that I think of as "macho" or "feminine" like being physically aggressive or very willing to accept physical constraint (high heels, clothes that need to be adjusted all the time -- don't let anyone see up that skirt!). Tedla's expected role didn't seem to fit either of these extremes. At 11:12 AM 5/19/98 +1200, Jenny Rankine wrote: >I find the great wadges of description of past events almost undigestible. >There are all these long pieces of Tedla's story, and then Val suddenly >starts responding, and you realise it was all in the past. It lurches >really badly from static past narrative to present action. I found the past narrative far from static. What exactly do you mean? The only difference of narrative style that I can tell is that Tedla's is in the 1st person and the present time narrative is in the 3rd person. >Hopefully, I'll finish it, but I have to agree with one of the other posts >which described it as turgid. I'm a non-fiction editor and don't usually >feel an urge to edit fiction, but this book has a solid kernel of good >story and ideas in a bad structure, which cries out for a severe rewrite >and edit. I can easily imagine that the book could have been structured differently and better; however I don't understand the criticism that the book is turgid. Turgid, to me, means that there is a lot of extraneous material that could have been left out, unnecessary verbiage, cliche phrases... but I didn't think there was anything extraneous. Tedla's narrative is all there because it is describing its life, what it means to be a bland and how its own views of blands and humans have been changed by its unusual experiences. Everything seemed to fit. (Now, *The Mists of Avalon* is a turgid book, but that's a whole other book discussion!) Well, I think this is enough for one message. My compliments to Carolyn Ives Gilman for her thought-provoking novel! ----- Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/jedhome.htm Listening to: XTC's English Settlement; Bran Van 3000's Glee "...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: Tue, 26 May 1998 13:39:21 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Stahl, Sheryl" Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > ---------- > From: Janice E. Dawley[SMTP:jdawley@TOGETHER.NET] > > Some have said that they don't understand Tedla's insistence on being > a > bland & not human, even though it is no longer on Gammadis. Perhaps > there > would be more complete healing for Tedla if it had entered a free > bland > community (as Alldera in Charnas' *Motherlines* becomes a part of the > Riding Women). But instead Tedla is among sexed humans, beings who are > still profoundly different from it, beings whose sexual appetites are > in > large part identical to its Gammadian oppressors'. How could it not > still > feel like an outsider? Maybe it doesn't WANT to be human? I had been mulling over this point also - It seems to me that part of the issue is that Tedlas definition of human changed - on its world male or female = human; bland = not human. I think Tedla discovered that these equations were false - 'human' has to do with attitude, behavior, sense of self, etc. - Since Tedla learned that it (I keep having to backspace over 'she') was more than 'just a bland' and was infact human - there was no reason to change. If the point is that anyone would want to be like the norm - then all women would want to change into men since that is the 'norm' in our society. Not all (or even most) lesbians and gays would want to be changed just for the sake of being 'normal' sheryl > Re: Joslyn Grassby's irritation with Tedla's low self-esteem: isn't it > amazing how so many women in our society, though very intelligent, are > convinced that their bodies just aren't good enough, despite the > assurances > of their friends and full awareness of the existence of eating > disorders? > Why do so many women starve themselves in pursuit of an impossible > ideal? > It simply has nothing to do with objective reality. If the > conditioning to > think that you are fat, dumb, ugly, etc. is strong enough no amount of > opposite conditioning will ever erase its effects. I think Tedla did > quite > well to stand up to Nasatir at all. > > Jessie Stickgold-Sarah wrote: > >in fact the gendered characters that > >I remember as most moving the story along were the squire, Galele, > the > abusive > >man whose name I can't even remember at Brice's, maybe the > administrator at > >the creche who tells Tedla to reflect on its actions towards Joby. > The women > >(Elector Hornaby (??), Ovide, Annika) seemed to do much less in terms > of > >really moving the action forward. This is an awfully subjective > assessment -- > >did other people have this reaction, or an opposite one, or think it > was > >balanced? > > It didn't seem that way to me. I thought Ovide did perform an > important > function, choosing Tedla for Tellegen and introducing Galele to both > of > them. And the woman at Brice's is the one who asks Tedla what it > really > thinks of her and has it punished when she doesn't like the answer. > > Anita Easton wrote: > >Did anyone find any merit in the ending at all? It seemed like a > total > >cop out, but I'm hoping I missed something. > > It did seem like it came out of the blue, but when you think about it, > Gossup didn't have all that much to lose by diverting Tedla to C4D. No > one > on Capella Two would hear about it from Gammadis for 50 years (or > however > long it was exactly -- a long time) & as long as Tedla and Val keep > quiet > on C4D there's no menace from that quarter. There's some risk to him, > perhaps it isn't completely convincing, but I didn't mind it too much > since > it made no difference at all to the main story line. > > Joyce Jones wrote: > >I really wanted to think that Tedla's lack of metamorphosis was a > mistake. > >The idea presented by Patricia Mathews that it was made a bland > >specifically so it could be used as a sex slave was just nauseating. > Well, > >there is no end to the depravity of human kind, but wow, this was not > a > >thought I had while reading the book. > > Though it isn't explained, I think it plausible that there might be a > quota > system at work here. "We need x number of blands this year and they > need > such and such talents or attributes." It seems that as the population > of > blands increases, the humans find more and more use for them (vis. > Tedla's > comment that it came to understand how a staff of many blands can be > kept > busy caring for a few humans). And perhaps other considerations, like > "we > can't have any ugly humans" or "no humans who can't play well with > others > or are below such and such IQ" (like Bigger, who seemed to be > developing > sex by itself without the hormone treatments and was surgically > altered to > be a bland). > > Stacey Holbrooke wrote: > >The whole idea that "there are blands in every society" seemed to > >be tacked on at the end. > > I don't think so. I thought it was clear from the beginning that the > society of Capella Two is heartless in a way very similar to Gammadis > -- > people looking for excuses to devalue others and shut others out. > > Timmi Duchamp wrote: > >In other words, Gilman shows us that sexuality & sexed-ness is as > >constructed as gender is. > > Yes. Tedla even says at one point that it learned a whole other > language of > interaction once it started spending more time with humans -- the > "flirting" and sexual innuendo that is injected when appropriate. > Tedla > even goes so far as to say that most sexuality is expressed here > rather > than in bed. (p. 345) > > Tedla's perceived gender: at first I thought of Tedla as an effeminate > male, but as I read on I began to identify with it more and more, so > eventually I was able to think of it simply as "the outsider", as that > is > often how I feel when I observe highly gendered behaviors in our > society. > What do I mean by highly gendered? I guess behaviors that I think of > as > "macho" or "feminine" like being physically aggressive or very willing > to > accept physical constraint (high heels, clothes that need to be > adjusted > all the time -- don't let anyone see up that skirt!). Tedla's expected > role > didn't seem to fit either of these extremes. > > At 11:12 AM 5/19/98 +1200, Jenny Rankine wrote: > >I find the great wadges of description of past events almost > undigestible. > >There are all these long pieces of Tedla's story, and then Val > suddenly > >starts responding, and you realise it was all in the past. It lurches > >really badly from static past narrative to present action. > > I found the past narrative far from static. What exactly do you mean? > The > only difference of narrative style that I can tell is that Tedla's is > in > the 1st person and the present time narrative is in the 3rd person. > > >Hopefully, I'll finish it, but I have to agree with one of the other > posts > >which described it as turgid. I'm a non-fiction editor and don't > usually > >feel an urge to edit fiction, but this book has a solid kernel of > good > >story and ideas in a bad structure, which cries out for a severe > rewrite > >and edit. > > I can easily imagine that the book could have been structured > differently > and better; however I don't understand the criticism that the book is > turgid. Turgid, to me, means that there is a lot of extraneous > material > that could have been left out, unnecessary verbiage, cliche phrases... > but > I didn't think there was anything extraneous. Tedla's narrative is all > there because it is describing its life, what it means to be a bland > and > how its own views of blands and humans have been changed by its > unusual > experiences. Everything seemed to fit. (Now, *The Mists of Avalon* is > a > turgid book, but that's a whole other book discussion!) > > Well, I think this is enough for one message. My compliments to > Carolyn > Ives Gilman for her thought-provoking novel! > > > ----- > Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT > http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/jedhome.htm > Listening to: XTC's English Settlement; Bran Van 3000's Glee > "...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: Tue, 26 May 1998 13:52:38 -0700 Reply-To: ltimmel@halcyon.com Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "L. Timmel Duchamp" Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Re the structure of the novel & some readers' discomfort with it (& with the book, generally)-- it's my sense that this may be a consequence of the way in which the book's structure sets up a moral test for the non-Gammadian characters, rather than simply presenting the sexed Gammadians as monsters in isolation from the Capellans. Right from the very first chapter, I thought that it was Val on the moral hotseat-- & later, that that position was extended to Val's mentor & all the others involved in determining Tedla's fate, & also to all the humans on the first expedition to Tedla's world. The tension in the story comes from *that*-- from our consciousness that the auditors (or readers) learning that story were on trial, & not from Tedla's experience of abuse (which is mitigated by the fact that it is telling the story of its past in the present). & of course because we-- like Val-- are auditors of Tedla's story, the book's structure places us readers in that position, too (& in the position of being identified with Val & her mentor & later with Galele, too). & I think that may be what is bothering those who find the story interminable, unbearable, or turgid (as I did not). My own sharpest discomfort was caused by the possibility that Val would betray Tedla-- & my understanding of the reasons her doing so would be considered normatively correct & simply sensible by other Capellans, while I took the sections of Tedla's narrative as an escape from that tension. Certainly I found it painful & anxiety-producing to consider the extent to which non-collaboration with evil is often punished in the real world (& might well be punished in the world of the book). Timmi Duchamp http://www.halcyon.com/ltimmel/ ========================================================================= ========================================================================= Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF LOG9806B" ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 20:46:22 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Neil Rest Subject: Re: BDG Halfway Human, sexless Comments: cc: Joyce Jones In-Reply-To: <19980518085658.12222.qmail@www01.netaddress.usa.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 03:57 AM 5/18/98 -0500, Joyce Jones wrote: (I was offline for a while, and am catching up; this might have been timlier otherwise.) >The other night we had a baby that had either very large labia or a >scrotum and no penis. The doctor said it was definitely a boy, the nurse >wouldn't write that on the delivery record because she couldn't say that >it was true. Genetic studies are being done! The writer Raphael Carter is intersexual, and maintains an "Androgyny RAQ (Rarely Asked Questions)" at http://www.chaparraltree.com/raq/. Neil Rest NeilRest@tezcat.com ========================================================================= ========================================================================= Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF LOG9806D" ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1998 22:37:45 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Michael Marc Levy Subject: Halfway Human by Carolyn Ives Gilman In-Reply-To: <19980622161213792.AAA173@jennifer.actioneer.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Well, I finally had time to read Halfway Human this week, finishing the entire 472 pages in about 4 days. What a fine novel. I didn't read many of the postings on the book when the discussion was going on because I knew I'd be reading it soon and didn't want anything to be given away. I do remember, however, that there was some disappointment or disagreement over the ending, but I don't remember the specifics. Was it the fact that Magister Galele turned out to be a pedophile? Although this made me sad, it was, I think, entirely believable. On the surface, pedophiles don't usually seem all that different from anyone else. Many hold responsible jobs and are highly intelligent. For obvious reasons, many are also drawn to teaching. Also, sickening as it may be to have to think about this, the key to being a successful pedophile is that the person is often quite good with kids. This book should be a prime contender for the P.K. Dick Award this year and I've recommended it to Jeff Vandermeer who is one of the judges. Carolyn, if you're reading this, I look forward to talking to you about Halfway Human at Diversicon Mike Michael M. Levy levym@uwstout.edu Department of English levymm@uwec.edu University of Wisconsin-Stout off. ph: 715-834-6533 Menomonie, WI 54751 hm. ph: 715-834-6533 =========================================================================