why do I fight? and why do I feel that I carry a sword through a battlefield?

[starlady]

I had to explain "harshing [one's] squee" to my dad tonight. Which was amusing.

In other news, cofax7 brought to my attention that apparently there is a war on that I did not know about--the feminist war against science fiction! That's right, those damn women [and PoC, and non-heterosexuals] are going to destroy...um, what exactly? oh, that's right, civilization as we know it, since the presence of characters who aren't [straight, white] males in any given text automatically invalidates it as a work of...science fiction, or something. I guess this means I'm a foot soldier and didn't know it, in a war (to quote The Hunt for Red October) "with no battles, no victories...only casualties." 

And finally...well, nothing much else is new. Graduate school apps blah blah blah.

Comments

[aquaeri]

I believe I expressed my opinion on this subject some time ago.

[starlady]

I read your post on that in April but didn't comment. You're quite right that it's the same damn thing.

Every time I walk into a (chain) bookstore I see that the SFF section has shrunk--and you know, the stuff that's left is not the stuff that these people claim to read, write and enjoy. To quote something I said in another post on a slightly different topic, What about these facts does not constitute the writing on the wall?

[outou.livejournal.com]

Oh, horror! Without completely male-dominated science fiction shows on television, we're going to lose almost half of the West's future scientists!

Setting that aside, I'm surprised that there isn't more revulsion toward Dirk Benedict's (admittedly older) piece on the new Starbuck.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

I think there is rage about him dismissing the new Starbuck, just not directly at those links--I paged through some of the linked entries on the GF post, and it's there. What an asshat.

I don't even know where to start with that crap. Maybe, as the sister of an aspiring woman chemical engineer, it's the idea that only men can be scientists? Or maybe it's the idea that science fiction has anything to do with actual science. Not that I don't love (good) sf, but give me a break. truepenny linked to this post (http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/10/why_i_hate_star_trek.html) by Charles Stross yesterday in which he excoriates Star Trek for not actually having anything to do with science: Ron Moore explains that they literally wrote "tech the tech tech" in scripts and had technobabble consultants fill in the blanks later. My point being...well, it might be just because I'm a WYMMYN, but I think that any self-aware reader or writer of sf knows it's way more about fiction than science. Of course, I'm thinking of Samuel R. Delany here, and he's not a straight white guy, so that might have something to do with it. Or not.

[jade42.livejournal.com]

What gets me about this debate is the rational/emotional divide it uses. I think when these people invoke "science" in science fiction, they're really thinking not so much about specific sciences and technologies as about the whole masculinist Western Enlightenment discourse where any problem can be solved by rational thinking and direct, cause-and-effect action. This is opposed to irrational, feminized emotional relationships, so when "relationship drama" starts showing up in a series, it undercuts the rationalist, "cognitive" basis science fiction is supposedly founded on.

It's silly, because the opposition just doesn't hold up. (Exhibit A: Spock.) The fact that these guys are getting their knickers in a twist about sci fi not being rational enough shows how emotionally invested in it they are. That's what being a fan is about: thinking and feeling strongly about something. So I say, rant away, misogynists. It's just more fodder for my cannon. ^^

[merin-chan.livejournal.com]

Whoops, sorry, that was me signed in under an old username. I really suck at the whole "secret identity" thing. I should never be a superhero. ^^'

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

OH HAI.

I get a fair number of walk-ins in here, so I wasn't even wondering. ^_^

Or you could think of yourself as the Tony Stark of the superhero world: "Screw it. I'm Iron Man."

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

Ooh, good point.

Yeah, really good point. In some ways too it's also the fear/disorientation of the classical humanist subject at the rise of the posthumanist subject (i.e. women, PoC, non-heterosexuals) who has no use or need for the humanist discourse that disenfranchises them. (I just read a really good article on posthumanism and The Office in the Journal of Popular Culture, which has sensitized me to these concepts.)

It's silly, because the opposition just doesn't hold up. (Exhibit A: Spock.)

Yup. And I wouldn't characterize classic Trek--and honestly, maybe not any Trek--as feminist, but each show does have at least one character whose very existence puts paid to these old cliches. Of course, most of these characters in Trek are male.