Feminist Science Fiction Fans discussion

A 'What are you reading now?' thread specific to this group was requested. Here it is.
The idea is to post about the SF you're reading which happens to have some bearing on feminist issues. You are however welcome to compare stuff you read some time ago to what someone else is currently reading or to bring up relevant non-fiction. Part of the plan was to provoke discussion about trends in SF.

The point thread isn't to recommend your favorite feminist SF to others. There is another thread for that purpose: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Likewise, please use the relevant threads to discuss books which have been selected as group reads.
We also have a general thread for non-fiction about feminism and SF: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...


I'll open with Seeing Red, a book I'm currently reading. That should establish that this thread isn't only for highbrow lit.
I picked up this free self-pub (it's supposed to sell the sequels) because it features an intriguingly horizontal social system based on networking which looked like an alternative to patriarchy. As it turns out, the alien society depicted in the book seems pretty hierarchical and a small number of men seem to be calling the shots often enough while women somehow end up managing households. Human society is portrayed as more chauvinistic though. Alien women are in contrast allowed to be 'strong' (meaning scheming or violent and liberated from domestic tasks by servants).
I rather enjoyed the worldbuilding. For a while, the human narrator was struggling to deal with non-vanilla relationships in a way I found amusing, lying to both humans and aliens in order to fit in their respective social worlds. But then the wish fulfillment fantasy aspect of the book came to the fore. (view spoiler)[The reckless male lead ends up succeeding at everything and everyone loves him while the character who becomes the female lead partway through the book is extraordinarily competent, supposedly very hot and is only weak in ways that allow the male lead to shine and win her heart. Naturally there are a bunch of obstacles in the way of their relationship which interrupt their more and more sexual scenes... you get the picture.
The most serious problem I have with the book's gender politics so far is the way it turns its female lead into a damsel-in-distress. She secretely longs for human-style conventional relationship (AKA marriage) while conforming to her culture's expectations (that is, having minimal emotional investment in her sexual partners) and the male lead has to save that assassin/hacker from the man she was supposed to have a child with for financial gain. But first, he must dump the woman he was planning to marry on Earth. Else it wouldn't be right to fuck the alien you see (lying and cheating in every other way is OK though). (hide spoiler)]
If you read my spoilerific rant, I think you can see why I wouldn't call the book feminist. But it's at least got a creative and nominally non-patriarchal social system as well as female characters who aren't pushovers (so depending on the definition, it would qualify as feminist SF).
The book may in fact be trying to contrast a 'conservative' (read anachronistically religious, complete with bizarre virginity fetish) role model with the mainstream role model (professional superwoman) and to suggest to any girls which might be reading that not conforming to certain expectations is not only the way to have all the fun but also (view spoiler)[to get the boy in the end (hide spoiler)]. But since it's not clear why someone would be into such an inflantile girl in the first place (her socially-appropriate relationship with the narrator initially comes off as creepy even though the age difference may not be very large), I don't think many readers would be invested into her situation.

Ah, the thread that I established called Feminist Analysis of Science Fiction includes television. So hopefully, it's a legitimate thread.

I would like to bring up a different issue. Chroma: Light Being Human by Denelle Pitts Campbell , also an indie novel, deals with energy beings who have been on Earth for a great many millennia. Her concept is that the energy has different varieties that are expressed through musical notes and colors of light. I don't perceive these differences as signifying gender, yet the author was portraying individual energy beings as being male or female. I think she did this so that she could include a romance element. The romance was portrayed with the female being vulnerable and needy. The male was uncaring and macho. So this is stereotypically sexist. Could there be a feminist version of this concept or is it inherently sexist to portray energy beings as having gender?

Outis wrote: "The most serious problem I have with the book's gender politics so far is the way it turns its female lead into a damsel-in-distress."

That's always a pet peeve of mine! I was reading the Fables series, and they did that to the main heroine and it drove me nuts. It's especially annoying when the female lead is suddenly useless for plot reasons, but none of the characters notice!, and two pages later they're all talking seriously about what a badass she is!

I've only dipped my toe into SF with interspecies, interplantary romance as a main plot and both times I thought it was pretty awful (The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and Earthrise).

Shomeret wrote: "Could there be a feminist version of this concept or is it inherently sexist to portray energy beings as having gender?"

I think you could portray gendered energy beings without being sexist. Every energy being has to have a personality - and I suppose some of these are going to align with what we humans this of as 'feminine' or 'masculine'. I can imagine energy beings that wouldn't mind being gendered on that basis if it makes it easier for us humans to understand them. But their attractions and relationships probably wouldn't be 'hetero' or 'homo', because without a sexed body that stuff wouldn't matter to them.

I read Diaspora with my book group and a number of the characters lived entirely in virtual world, so they were basically genderless / sexless beings. Most of us had mentally asumed them to be one or the other - but we didn't always agree on which they were! It really didn't make any difference to the characters or to their relationships.

[edit: I just realized there are several versions of some parts of Diaspora. And in another of the versions, some of the non-physical characters] have heteronormative relational genders (if you date my mum, you appear to me as a man whereas my mum might appear as a man to others, making you a woman in their eyes) which is pretty neat.

Shomeret wrote: "Ah, the thread that I established called Feminist Analysis of Science Fiction includes television. So hopefully, it's a legitimate thread.

I would like to bring up a different issue. ..."
There are threads about Trump and the Hugos in this group. Just about anything is legitimate.
However you just broke the rules of this thread by bringing up a book you're not currently reading. The rules would allow you to bring it up in relation to a book someone else is reading but that was obviously not your intent. As this is your first violation, we shall be lenient and pretend nothing is awry.

So, is gendering sexless beings sexist? I agree that it would depend on the intent.
If said energy beings are for instance re-enacting humanity, that's not sexist any more than putting on a Shakespeare play is sexist (here's such a re-enactment of sexism, written in a non-sexist way by Diaspora's author: http://www.gregegan.net/PLANCK/Comple...).
On the other hand if the writer is writing gender as an essential characteristic of these beings and produces sexist fiction based on that premise, "but these are sexless beings" is not a defense anymore than involving only aliens in a racist story would be a defense against charges of racism. I've got no example for this hypothetical case.
Your description of Chroma makes it sound more unimaginative than actually sexist but I might have a different opinion if I had read it. Left Hand of Darnkness would pretty sexist if you were to take the main narrator's opinion at face value...
Diaspora is one of the books which demonstrates how you can have gendered romance among sexless beings without essentializing gender. And sexism aside, I think a little creativity would make for less awful non-human romance.

Outis wrote: "Actually, most of the characters in Diaspora aren't genderless. But the way the non-physical characters are gendered is of course somewhat fluid.
In fact they change the way gender works at some po..."

Chroma's romance aspect is unimaginative. Unfortunately, that is the only aspect of the book that is relevant to this group.

It occurs to me that if energy beings were performing gender so that humans could understand them better, they might want to be fluid in their expression of gender depending on the human cultural matrix in which they find themselves. Since human perceptions and customs regarding gender vary culturally.

Re my faux pas--My original purpose when I proposed this thread was to expand participation in this group. Outis, I hope your purpose isn't to limit participation.

Shomeret wrote: "It occurs to me that if energy beings were performing gender so that humans could understand them better, they might want to be fluid in their expression of gender depending on the human cultural matrix in which they find themselves. Since human perceptions and customs regarding gender vary culturally. ."

That's a really good point! If I was a sexless being, I would probably just perform whichever gender had the highest status in the culture I was in.

Shomeret wrote: "Re my faux pas--My original purpose when I proposed this thread was to expand participation in this group. Outis, I hope your purpose isn't to limit participation."
Other than kidding, my purpose was to highlight the disconnect between the thread rules and the way you were using the thread.
Such disconnects might just as well be addressed by modifying the rules, for instance by amending "you're reading" with "or read recently".
The point of such rules is not only to structure participation a bit but to make participation easier on some of us: if I'm supposed to talk about what I'm reading right now, no effort needs to go into picking a book to talk about. For some of us this is a thing: http://xkcd.com/1801/
Also, not picking and choosing the books means the books discussed would be more representative of what we actually read (which seems relevant to identifying trends).

Not enough which is why I just joined and just ordered a copy of next months book, The Power.

Lena, welcome! I hope you enjoy discussing the book!

I've just finished The Demolished Man and can say it is one of the least feminist SF books I've ever read. The female characters include a super-sexy socialite who hosts orgies and really wants to bone the hero; a super-sexy young woman who has lost her mind and regressed to infancy; an ugly woman who is in love with the hero and begging him to marry her and have kids even though she knows he doesn't love her; and various further minor characters who are defined by their sex appeal. Not a single female character plays an active role in the story.

Bester's clearly written it with a lot of Freudian stuff in mind, and that works about as well as you think it would for women's representation. :(

Nick wrote: "Lena, welcome! I hope you enjoy discussing the book!

I've just finished The Demolished Man and can say it is one of the least feminist SF books I've ever read. The female characters i..."

I think that The Demolished Man was fairly typical in its portrayal of women in that era. Have you read Heinlein?

Outis wrote: "Shomeret wrote: "Re my faux pas--My original purpose when I proposed this thread was to expand participation in this group. Outis, I hope your purpose isn't to limit participation."
Other than kidd..."

Since I wasn't reading any science fiction, and I wanted to participate in the thread, I went to my GR science fiction shelf and found within seconds that there was a book that I thought could lead to discussion. That's all that went into the decision for me. I'm sorry if I made thread management more difficult for you.

Shomeret wrote: "I think that The Demolished Man was fairly typical in its portrayal of women in that era."

How depressing! I don't read much noir and I don't read much American 1950s fiction, but if this was the general depiction of women then it must've been a really terribly misogynistic society. :(

Giving an author the it-was-just-the-way-things-were-then pass on bad depictions of women is a tricky thing, I can only really do it on a book by book basis.

For this story, I would say that I could have forgiven Bester for having few women in important roles: it's a police procedural and there weren't many women in the police, justice system, or business in the 1950s, so maybe it's fair enough for Bester to leave them out.
But I can't forgive him for making every female character so stereotypical and weak. Literally every one of them only exists in sexual relation to the heroes. The only thing that matters in their characters is how much they want to get with the hero, or how much the hero wants to get with them.

It is possible to find fiction, written by men, from any era that depicts women as fully formed human beings with their own wants and desires independent of men. So authors don't get the it-was-the-era pass for bad charactisation.

This is such an interesting topic to me; I could talk about it forever, but I'm sure that if we did it would have to end up covering all fiction, not just SF.

Shomeret wrote: "Have you read Heinlein? "

Some. Heinlein I find more difficult to judge. He was only really capable of about 3 or 4 characters. I can't really criticise him for having 1 stock female character, when he was the same for men.

He's certainly better than Bester. At least Heinlein women share certain positive traits with Heinlein men: hyper-competence, good health, good looks, intelligence, resilience, and work ethic.
To a certain extent I agree with people who say that he was feminist for his time. Inasmuch as he was showing women as talented and competent in a time when many other authors were relegating them to damsel-in-distress status.

On the other hand they all have certain character traits than are less feminist. The worst one for me is Heinlein's belief that the highest aim for all humans is to set up a farm somewhere and have as many children as possible. And the fact that he thinks 14 is about the right age for girls to start doing this is pretty nasty.
And of course, his approach to sex which is so absurdly pro-sex that Friday just shrugs off her rape as no big deal and later gets together with her rapist. Gross.

So yeah, he has his ups and downs.

Amazing article:
https://www.tor.com/2017/08/08/beyond...

Great article; thanks for posting!