I’ve read some truly hilarious “Science fiction has become nothing more than romance novels in outer space!” arguments in my time, but I don’t think I’ve read one quite as poorly-written and outright hysterical (word used with all due irony) as the article on The Spearhead about “The War on Science Fiction and Marvin Minsky.” (Thanks to Eric Selinger for the link.)
As far as I can tell, the argument in the article can be divided into the following premise and conclusion:
1. Science fiction has been egregiously feminized. Witness the new Battlestar Galactica, where Starbuck is now a woman. (Sidenote: Dear Dirk Benedict: Both Starbucks as played by you and Katee Sackhoff possess gonads. Gonads are not, as you seem to think, strictly male. If they were, that would lead to really interesting results, because assuming humans still reproduced sexually, there’d be a lot more gay sex in the world. Is that really what you’re trying to push for? Think about it.) In short: science fiction is now about stupid relationship drama, and males don’t like stupid relationship drama, they like doing things and exploding things and exploring things and exploding the things they’ve just explored. (I would just like to state for the record that writers like Ray Bradbury, Frank Herbert, Vernor Vinge and Kim Stanley Robinson have never hinged works on the intricacies of human relationship and experience, because that would make them writers of stupid relationship drama, and therefore pansy boys and not at all true purveyors of science fiction.)
2. At any rate, because of this egregious feminization of science fiction, the—ah, fuck it, I’m just going to quote the article verbatim, because it’s JUST THAT GOOD:
As we know science fiction has inspired boys to pursue careers in science, engineering, and technology as men. With women killing science fiction on television, the current generation of boys won’t have this opportunity to be inspired to work in these fields. There is still a great deal of written science fiction that is real science fiction so all is not lost. However, many boys who would have gone on to make scientific discoveries and invent new technologies will not do so since they will never be inspired by science fiction as boys.
I’m not going to attempt to dissect this article line-by-line, because if nothing else, the commenters are doing a decent enough job, but I do want to make two observations:
1. Beneath the anger in the article is a true undertone of fear. This was written by a deeply insecure person, one who sees the world changing around him and is frantic to keep the world static as opposed to adapting to the new realities. This fear is based on a foundation of outraged privilege. When a majority in power has to give up its special privileges, or when it has to share those same privileges with everybody else (therefore making it resemble a basic right, as opposed to a privilege), the majoritarian take is always to cast these losses of power as evidence of bullying, and the sharing of rights as the gaining of special rights by the other minority. As the default milieu changes, the majority will fight to keep things static, because the majority see things as neutral or balanced instead of weighed in their favor. One of the hallmarks—one of the greatest perks, in fact—of societal and cultural privilege is never having to think about it. You just take it for granted. This struggle happens over and over and over again: whenever inroads are made towards equality between the races, the genders or sexual orientations, those who are deeply invested in keeping the things as they used to be start lashing out, with “things need to stay in their place because that’s where they’ve always belonged” being one of their greatest rallying cries.
2. It doesn’t matter that things have never stayed where they belong, and they certainly never stayed in the place envisioned by the people fighting change. Many of the appeals to history or authority by these people are strangely ahistorical. A lot of the appeals to a return to tradition or the right order are typically based on relatively recent history—the pattern I’ve noticed for appeals for a return to traditional womanhood or traditional marriage seem to pinpoint either middle-class white mores of the 1950s or the late Victorian as a desirable era to emulate. And even that’s filtered through a very particular lens: nostalgia, which gives the past a rather nice, fuzzy glow and a pretty gloss over all its intricacies, difficulties and inconsistencies. What’s more, a lot of our current view of the relatively recent past is informed, not by documentarian depictions, but by Hollywood and advertising. We think of John Wayne and Cary Grant; we don’t think of blue-collar families in which both parents worked and scrabbled to make a living. Picking some inchoate time in the past when “men were men and women were women” allows you to ignore things like like how at various points in time, manly men used to wear satin and high heels, or wrote epic poetry about falling in love, and women worked in factories.
I don’t have a good way to end this, other than to point out this bit of absurdity: Starbuck being played by a female, the blurring of old gender roles and the advent of people acting like, y’know, people in science fiction means we’ll have fewer scientists. I know, I know, the article writer specified boys, but really, male scientists are what really count. How’s that for a conclusion?
Edited to add:
One more point I’d like to make. The definition of “male” and “masculine” as used by masculists such as those at The Spearhead are self-reflexive, and it drives me nuts. When you point to men who enjoy the new incarnation of BSG, or who enjoy gender subversion, the first counter is almost always “Well, that’s because they’re not REAL men. Real men are defined by what real men enjoy.” STAB STAB STAB.
The blog got some attention over at io9, which made a viable point:
All I know is that my 12 yo son watched Men In Black and saw the part where Will Smith shot at the cardboard girl holding the Quantum Physics books, and said he wanted to be a quantum physicist. He didn’t know what it was but he liked the sound of it. 6 years later he’s in the military studying…quantum physics. If Men In Black can inspire…ANYTHING can. LOL
I’ve been reading the comments at other blogs, and I only wish I could remember the name of the commenter (or the blog) where someone wondered if the people at The Spearhead know that their blog title would be the best gay bar name ever.
What most bothers me about that article is how the author’s blatant misogyny obscures the underlying valid point. One of the most effective ways to hide the truth is to argue for it from obviously wrong premises.
Here’s what Ursula K. le Guin has to say on the unique value of science fiction as opposed to mainstream fiction.
“If I give my spaceships FTL speed, I must be aware that I’m contradicting Albert Einstein, and accept the consequences—all the consequences. In this, precisely, lies the unique aesthetic delight of SF, in the intense, coherent following-through of the implications of an idea, whether it’s a bit of far-out technology, or a theory in quantum mechanics, or a satirical projection of current social trends, or a whole world created by extrapolating from biology and ethnology. When such an idea is consistently worked out in material, intellectual, social, psychological, and moral terms, something solid has been done, something real: a thing which can be read, taught, and judged squarely on its own terms. The ‘sense of wonder’ isn’t a feeble perfume, it’s build right into a good story, and the closer you look the stronger the sense of wonder.”
(From “Escape Routes”, in the volume _The Language of the Night_.)
I do, in fact, feel like Syfy has abandoned the real substance of science fiction in favor of general fiction with a sciencey veneer, but I wish these people wouldn’t insist on dragging their ridiculous gender prejudices into it. They’re setting up a false dilemma between good science fiction and good feminism. Oh, and lumping the virtues of good science fiction together with the Golden/Silver ages’ blatant sins against competent writing.
Oh, and the BSG remake is awesome.
Hi everyone,
I was rooting around Amazon.com and came across this:http://www.amazon.com/tag/science fiction/forum/ref=cm_cd_dp_rt_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=FxWK0QNW07Z4M7&cdThread=Tx22TYF0NXGDW2S
Essentially this idiot, Jeremy W. Marshall believes there are too many women authors crowding the sci-fi shelves. Perhaps his most incisive comment is this: “I used to read mercedes lackey when she first published, I really liked them but after a while they all sounded alike, and it seemed everyone was gay, ( not knocking gay ppl ) but it seems like most main characters are all gay or elves or gay elves , or gay elves on motorcycles.”
Gosh, reading this stuff—even his title—is like a punch in the gut. Would that someone punch HIM in the gut.
The Spearhead article is an extreme example of misogynist tripe and both your and Scalzi’s takedowns were right on the spot.
However, the attitude behind the article is not that uncommon in the SFF community. Because there are a lot of people in the SFF community (and not all of them are male) who have serious issues with the changing genre landscape and particularly the influx of female fans and writers.
That sort of attitude rears its ugly head every time some blogger or reviewer complains about all those urban fantasy novels with female protagonists taking over the bookstore shelves and crowding out the “real” SF and fantasy and horror and claims how all of those urban fantasy novels are just “vampire porn” anyway, even the ones that don’t even feature vampires, and they know it’s all crap, because they read Laurell K. Hamilton once, only cause they accidentally got her mixed up with Peter Hamilton, of course. And such posts are inevitably followed by a lot of male fans nodding in agreement and/or helpfully posting lists of urban fantasy authors who are actually good and free of “that romance crap”. By some miraculous coincidence, all of those good urban fantasy authors happen to be male, with maybe one or two women published by micro smallpresses thrown in for good measure. And heaven beware one of those good female authors actually dare including love or sex in a work, then she immediately crosses over to the “vampire porn” side.
It rears its ugly head every time another genre anthology containing only stories by straight white men is published and when someone takes exception, the editor inevitably claims that he was only looking for good stories and for some reason only straight white men submitted good stories. Oh yes, and he also asked every female writer he knew to contribute and both of them refused.
It rears its ugly head every time the shortlist for the Hugo awards is dominated by male authors once again and every woman who dares to say something about that is shouted down with “But maybe women just didn’t publish any good books/stories this year” and when given a list of eligible works by female authors have never heard of any of them.
It rears its ugly head every time some male fan states that he never reads books by female authors, because they’re all just Harlequin romances in disguise. And when asked if they have actually ever read a Harlequin romance, they inevitably reply that they read one, back when they were thirteen and spending the summer holidays at grandma and read their way through the collected works of Heinlein or Asimov (nothing against either author, I love both) too quickly and had to resort to plundering grandma’s bookshelves. Besides, everybody knows that Harlequins are crap, cause they’re written to formula.
It rears its ugly head every time someone states how he hates “Insert popular SF TV show here”, because it’s all just relationship drama these days and the science/technology content is just background and bad science besides. Extra points if that someone is an SF writer whose novels contain characters so cardboard and relationships so unbelievable one cannot help but wonder if writer had ever interacted with real life people before.
I was initially drawn to SF, because SF offered not just a whole lot of cool stuff (spaceships, robots, aliens, time travel) but also had the strongest women. Princess Leia, Susan Calvin, Uhura and Tamara Jagellowsk were my heroines as a young girl. I eventually left SFF fandom behind, because I’ve had the arguments above or arguments very much like them one too many times. And because I was sick of being insulted for reading the wrong books and watching the wrong TV shows.
Oh yes, and the Spearhead guy obviously never watched the original Battlestar Galactica, because that show was all about the characters and their relationships. Whereas the new version was basically one long, thinly veiled analogy to current US politics with lengthy political discussions and zero excitement. Oh yes, and women in the new Galactica were only there for sex (but of course the sex in new Galactica was not porn at all, but deep and philosophical because the characters talked about religion while doing it), having babies (and of course abortion is evil and wrong), being raped and/or tortured or getting breast cancer. Because women are basically a set of walking wombs and breasts, hence all of the prominent Cylons were sexbot babes.
I’m thinking the “hard core” sci-fi was all about pushing the boundaries of human reality rather than explaining the intricacies of a warp-core engine.
Even alien culture had to be explained and filtered through simple human concepts so readers wouldn’t just stare stupefied at the page.
Perhaps it’s just my crazy female relationship brain but androids, aliens, AI, and whatever else crawled across a sci-fi field all struggled to understand the concept of BEING and FEELING. Not just accelerating their knowledge. And the ones that DID were, more often than not, the evil villains without care or compassion.
Silly man. It’s OK to let women play in your sandbox! We promise not to pee on your space ship!
my word – getting75 These battles of the sexes are getting old and I want to start slapping people around with a carp who bring them forward.
Here’s a thing I’ve been noticing lately: if I’m on the fence about buying a book in the speculative category (what the hell is it called now, anyway? SFF?) and I notice the author’s name is masculine, I don’t buy it.
I love to sink into a big epic full of angst and quests and personal transformation, but with a few exceptions, I find that men just don’t pull it off. They get the angst and tortured soul, and they win the big battle, but they never get out of the bitterness. Their heroes face big betrayal and overcome all obstacles, and never learn anything except that they’re alone in the world and everybody will betray them. The power they gain is all about staying in power and maintaining their emotional isolation.
The successful (imo) male authors always include romance, or some kind of positive emotional relationship, in their stories. Louis L’Amour’s westerns endure because they were about people. Heinlein’s space operas are classics because they were about people.
I’ve been immersed in the genre for a while and if I know a male author and know I can expect the human drama to be as compelling as the worldbuilding. However, if a male author is new or unknown to me, he probably has a harder time being picked up by me, unless I have a recommendation from someone I trust. Because in the past few years, I have been burned several times by picking up a new, highly touted SF or fantasy novel by a new (male) author only to be disappointed by a story with great worldbuilding and cardboard characters.
The bitter, tough loner hero with the tortured soul and no friends or loved ones that do not betray them is unfortunately en vogue at the moment. A certain subset of the SFF community, consisting mainly of emotionally insecure young men, adore these books and consider them gritty and realistic, because that in their opinion, depressing and dark is how the world really is and everything that offers a glimmer of hope let alone a happy ending is consolatory fiction that lies to the reader.
Once upon a time I smiled patiently at those deluded souls with their gritty and realistic books and thought that given time, they would grow out of it. Unfortunately, most of them never did.
Science Fiction has never been about misogyny. Anyone who thinks that, isn’t a true fan of the genre.
PS: Dirk Benedict is just angry that he got out-acted so effortlessly.
To be fair, the original Battlestar Galactica includes Dirk Benedict’s finest acting moment, the only time I actually believed in his character.
@Cora I…I think I want to have your (mutant squid) internet babies.
That comment was awesome. It should be a blog of its own. I want to print it out, laminate it to a finely carved wooden paddle, shellac said paddle to a high-gloss sheen, and carry it around every time someone brings this up…and use it every time they bring up the romance argument, too, except I’m already slapping people with the Heaving Bosoms (the book! the book!)
Thanks for that, and thanks to Candy for nailing it shut yet again.
As a scientist and a writer, I encountered such naked knuckle-dragging in several self-labeled “progressive” groups. Here’s my take on it:
Is It Something in the Water? Or: Me Tarzan, You Ape
http://www.starshipnivan.com/blog/?p=712