julieandrews | Entries tagged with gender

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januaryhat brings you Boobieships and Titrockets.

If you agree with me, consider donating a couple bucks to the Clarion Write-a-Thon in Jan's name. She provides a link at the bottom of the post.

EDIT: Fixed the link so it goes to the top of the page and doesn't jump down to my comment on the page.

It's still awesome!

Just saw this in the A Momentary Taste of Wiscon. A project that only lasts a week, so check it out now!

http://hackgender.blogspot.com

I will need to ponder.

I saw this listed in Scalzi's new arrivals on Whatever and I got to wondering how many women made the cut.

Citizens, an anthology of military sf by people who served in the military.

From Amazon:
"Among the top writers appearing in Citizens are Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Elizabeth Moon, Gordon R. Dickson, David Drake, Joe Haldeman, Harry Harrison, Keith Laumer, Frederik Pohl, Jerry Pournelle, Gene Wolfe and more"

I was scanning the list to see if Tiptree made it in, and overlooked Elizabeth Moon in there.

A military sf story of Tiptree's doesn't immediately spring to mind, but I know there must be some. I don't have a full list of the TOC. Anyone know if there's a Tiptree in here? And if Elizabeth Moon is the only woman?

Tanya Huff has written some military sf (any short stories? I'm not sure). Wikipedia says she was in the Canadian Naval Reserve.

If there is a Tiptree, it's a shame the product description left her out. I haven't even heard of Keith Laumer.

So apparently if you wandered into Disney's online fairyland virtual world, you had to be a girl fairy. Except the kids were creating boy fairies anyway, by making girl fairies that looked like boys and giving them a male or gender neutral name. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say they were butch fairies.

But Disney has finally given in and created a male option.

Only they're not fairies. They look like fairies. They presumably smell and sound like fairies. But heaven forbid anyone call them fairies! They're 'sparrow men'. Whatever the heck that's supposed to mean.

You can read more at Salon. And there's a pic.

Remember, Disney, remember back when one of your animation teams created Mulan? Remember when you were awesome? For that one, brief, beautiful year when Mulan was all anyone was talking about?

Look at me
I will never pass for a perfect bride
Or a perfect daughter
Can it be
I'm not meant to play this part?
[...]
When will my reflection show
Who I am inside?

So Realms of Fantasy is doing an all woman issue for August 2011. It's not really a feminist or even gender theme, as they've said such things are welcome, sort of a bonus. The main point is just that it'll be all women contributors (though not all women editors/other staff, I'm assuming).

Girls, ladies: Perhaps I didn't read the original announcement, though I thought I'd seen it pretty quickly. And the use of those words, if they were there, didn't bother me. The tone didn't strike me as wrong. But I don't have a problem with 'girls'. I use girl. I think of myself as a girl. I'm always thrown to be called a 'woman'. Would I be more careful in a professional context such as a request for submissions announcement? Maybe. Or maybe I'd call you all chicks. 'Lady' is an iffy thing. Depends on usage.

August: Really? August? Why August? I think this would have gotten a better reception had they planned it for Women's History Month. Or otherwise came up with a reason they picked August, other than that was the next issue they were slated to think about, which it seems more like it was. I can retroactively think of a reason why August is awesome. But hey, I shouldn't have to do their work for them.

All-Women Contributors versus Women-Themed Issue: I think the latter would have gotten a better reception, if been a little trickier to pull off well. Don't you think a fantasy story about Madam Curie written by a man would be potentially feminist and well within theme? And perhaps better to feature a story like that than a story written by a woman where a boy comes of age by joining the Dragon Corps? (Not that I wouldn't want to read both.)

What's a woman? Female sex? Female gender? Or not-male sex? Or not-male gender? Are you self-identifying as a woman by the act of submitting a story for this issue? And then what's to stop a man from .. well, I hesitate to say 'sneak', because it wouldn't be that hard or even for very devious reasons, necessarily.. but what's to stop someone of the male sex and gender from submitting and getting published in this issue?

I think the flak that Realms is getting for this is mostly coming from the argument/discussion that surrounds the question: Are more women not being published because there's bias against them as women? Or are more women not being published because the themes, tone, and style of writing that women (generally speaking) write is under-valued by the establishment?

The former problem can be helped by all-women issues and anthologies. The latter is not helped nearly as much, if at all. Because an all-woman issue is directly addressing the first problem. It's indirectly, or not at all, addressing the second.

Since I fall in the camp that says both of these things are problems, while leaning more towards the second, I believe that an issue focussed on women in fantasy WITHOUT being exclusionary in regard to the gender of the contributors would be of greater benefit. Provided that there IS a balance of at least 75%-ish female-identified contributors. And that each contribution is chosen carefully with a look at it individually and as part of the whole.

But I do thank Realms of Fantasy for thinking about things like this and getting engaged in the discussion. Far better to try and then face the objections than to just keep the status quo going.

There's discussion over on SF Signal and elsewhere about the latest table of contents with major issues. It's The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF edited by Mike Ashley.

Immediately obvious is that the 22 names (not counting the editor's) are all male. Less obvious, they're also all white.

Here's some other stats I managed to glean from Wikipedia, with forays into The Internet Speculative Fiction Database and one or two dips into author websites.

I couldn't find anything on Larry McCombs except that he(?) also cowrote a story with Ted White in 1965. So he's either obscure or somebody's pseudonym.

The youngest in the TOC is Ian Creasey, at either 39 or 40.
The one born the earliest is Arthur C. Clarke, in 1917.
Average age if they were all still alive is 62.

9 are British, 12 are American, 1 is unknown. Though at least one American moved to the UK (and Clarke moved to Sri Lanka).

I don't really have enough information to say how many of them are straight, though at least one is not.

5 were born in the Fall
5 were born in the Winter
4 were born in the Spring (3 of them on May 20-something!)
1 was born in the Summer
(7 unknown birth month/day)

Something about being born at the coldest part of the year must have inspired them to write mindblowing science fiction.

A couple have PhDs, some studied math, physics or biology. Though one of the PhDs is in English. But the vast majority, I couldn't find any info on whether they received any sort of advanced degree or what in.

Conclusions? Well, obviously this isn't a sampling of any size, so you can't really draw statistical conclusions. Though it might be interesting to do a birthday breakdown of the field at large. Is there an actual reason behind it? Am I doomed to write fantasy by having a summer birthday? Hmmmmm.

Oh, as for the stories themselves, I don't think I've read any of them. I also don't recognize them from the list of Hugo short story winners, which I've been working my way through. So I guess, my mind, she has not yet been blown.

I borrowed This Perfect Day through ILL and even after renewing it, I think it's still overdue, so I figured I'd better get around to reading it. As I was reading, I couldn't remember why I'd requested this book. There's no deaf character, there's no gay character, there's no gender stuff, the themes and plots and whatnot aren't things that particularly interest me, so why? I just went through all the award lists I was working on, and I didn't even spot it on the Hugo or Nebula lists.

So I did some Googling and found it was only a winner of one award.. some libertarian thing. So that wasn't it. But, aha, it was reviewed by Joanna Russ. So I think that review must've been included in the collection of essays by her that I just read. I just really wish I could remember thing one about what she said about the book. Because I must have read that essay. I don't like not completing a collection/anthology, because then I can't add it to my Have Read list. So I must have finished it, and I must have read the review or the essay or whatever mentioned this book, but I have no memory of it. (If anyone knows the essay of which I must be speaking and if it's available online somewhere, please point it out to me. The book of essays was also an ILL book and has gone back to the originating library.)

So since I've gone through all the trouble of reading the book anyway, you get to hear my thoughts on it.

Basic premise: The entire world is one society controlled by a central computer called Uni. Everyone dresses alike, eats some sort of nutrient cake and coke, and does what the computer tells them to do. They're also drugged to the gills. Naturally, the main character, Li somethingorother, also known as Chip, "wakes up" at various times and in various ways and eventually is in an undrugged state, and he falls in with different groups trying to fight the system.

All right, so that's interesting enough. No worse than Brave New World or 1984, which I'm not a huge fan of. The author is obsessed with cigarettes. The drugged people have been told smoking will kill them, but the undrugged people are sure it won't, so they do it a whole lot. And the author's fullsized picture on the back cover has him smoking a cigarette. Oh well, at least it's a change from the usual drugs of choice for books of this age, which is pot or LSD.

In the beginning of the book, the two sexes are treated pretty much equally, as far as I could tell. They all get to have sex once a week. They only make a baby if Uni lets them. Their job assignments don't seem particularly gender-based. The main character is male, but you can't hold that against him.

But then there develops a power imbalance and a number imbalance. More of the characters doing all the action and all the leading and all the fighting are male. Which, okay, not all that great, but whatever.

But then the main character, Chip, is in an undrugged state and he decides to steal one of the girls he's previously been friends with and had feelings for (which mostly amounted to Hey, She's Got Bigger Boobs Than Other Chicks, but also involved learning Italian and French together). So he kidnaps her and she's not too keen on this, being fully drugged at that point. But eventually it starts to wear off, and it turns out she thinks he betrayed her previously and stuff, so she's still not so keen on running off with him.

And that's when we get the rape scene.

Because, he's no longer drugged, so he's got all these sexual urges, and he was oh-so-good about not having sex with her for the two weeks while her drugs were wearing off. And he's fighting her and got her pinned to the ground, and well, you know, he just couldn't help himself.

And she's mad about it. For like 12 hours or something. Then it's okay. He couldn't help it. And he feels a little guilty.

So then they have more sex and all is well, and they run off together, and eventually get married. And then she's pretty much a non-entity while he goes off and saves the world.

So, I'm actually very curious now as to what Joanna Russ had to say about this book, and I wish I had that book of essays back. If I see it at Wiscon, I'll probably buy it. It was To Write Like a Woman, btw.

And now I get back to reading the pile of books I want to finish before Wiscon.

Here's some brief thoughts on books I've read recently:

(Historical YA) The Green Glass Sea/White Sands, Red Menace - Ellen Klages

I read these because Ellen Klages is one of the Guests of Honor at this year's Wiscon. I hope she's still doing the Tiptree Auction MCing though, because that was great fun last year. (As I gather is the case every year.) The second book just won the California Book Award in the YA category, so it was timely.

The first book is about two girls whose parents are working on the first atomic bomb and what it's like growing up around all thsoe scientists. It's rather like a true-life version of Eureka. Both girls aren't what you'd imagine a typical 1940's girl to be. This is historical fiction for geeks. Sometimes I do think there should be a category for science+fiction. Like House. Where it's all about the science, but it's just.. there's no extrapolating, so it's not really science fiction.

The second book continues their story post-war, as you might guess from the 'red menace' part.

These books are amazingly awesome and I don't know why I didn't discover them before.

(Science Fiction YA) The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness

One of the winners of this year's Tiptree, which is why I read it. I didn't realize going into it that it ends on a HORRIBLE CLIFFHANGER and that the next book won't be published until September. Argh. It tells the story of a boy who grew up in an all-male world, after a disease made all the men's thoughts audible (and sometimes it really does seem to mean audible in a literal sense) and killed off all the women. And I was all set to read a book about an all-male society, but wouldn't you know it? Sure enough a girl shows up. I won't say more about the plot, but the voice of the character is really good and the world-building is also quite interesting. I do have some nagging questions, but perhaps they'll be answered in the next book. It may just be a general sense of 'unfinished' left in my head by the ruddy cliffhanger.

(Fantasy.. also possibly YA) Northlander - Meg Burden

Another book that's number one of a series. I read this one because it promised a deaf character. He's a minor character, but not an unimportant one. The main character is a girl whose father is a healer and who aspires to be one herself. Her father is treating the sick king of the Northlanders, but without being able to use his healing power because there's laws forbidding it. The Northlanders look down on her kind, and she's certainly not of prince standing, but she rather readily becomes friends with the princes. First one, then another, and another.. That combined with the story being told in the present tense gave it a rather fanficky feel to me. Though the plot does take some twists and turns I wasn't expecting, so it was still quite enjoyable.

The deaf character turns out to be one of the princes. A twin. Telepathic. (Did I mention the fanficky feel?) Other than the main character not being able to sign to him, he's treated like anyone else by the other characters in the book. The sign language is always described as involving 'fingers', and never arms, body, expression. So I wonder if it's supposed to be complicated fingersigning, the main character not being able to describe it better than that, or the author not quite having a grasp on the concept.

I do want to read the next book.

For full-fledged reviews of some other books I've read lately, I'm J over on Triple Take.

Current Mood: reviewy

I was going to just post this on facebook, but though the buffer limit is larger than twitter, it wasn't large enough for the full quote. This is from the New Hampshire marriage bill:

"457:4 Marriageable. No male below the age of 14 years and no female below the age of 13 years shall be capable of contracting a valid marriage that is entered into by one male and one female, and all marriages contracted by such persons shall be null and void. No male below the age of 18 and no female below the age of 18 shall be capable of contracting a valid marriage between persons of the same gender, and all marriages contracted by such persons shall be null and void."

http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/legislation/2009/HB0436.html

It's probably not the only state with stupid stuff like that. Seriously, what decade is this? No 13-year old should be getting married. And there should be no gender or orientation disparity in the ages. Everyone should be 18, or everyone should be 16, or at least everyone should be 15. I think younger than 15 is just insane.

If a 13, 14, 15, 16, or 17 year old had sex with someone of the same age (or younger), they'd be on the sex offender list right quick. But it's okay if they get married to do it?

I'm okay with Lynch not signing this thing until they've fixed it better. :P

There was also some stupidity regarding religions in there: "The issue the Senate dealt with involved an oversight that allowed only “ministers of the gospel” to perform marriage rites. The Senate amendment adds rabbis and Quakers to those qualified to officiate." (Union Leader)

I don't know where that leaves Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and others. I'm thinking out in the cold somewhere.

Current Mood: annoyed

The Telegraph has an article on survey results about men and women's reading habits. Apparently women are more likely to finish a book quickly.

More interestingly, apparently a lot of people are lying about what they've read to impress people, particularly the opposite sex. To which I say 'huh?'. If you want to have read a book to sound impressive, such as Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, why don't you just go ahead and read it already? (Note: I have not. I own it. I mean to read it. Bought it at Readercon last year.)

If the other person is going to be impressed by you saying you read a book, then why not impress them with a book you actually have read? Then you could at least talk about it without sounding like a doofus!

Also, apparently both sexes think the other sex is impressive if they've read Shakespeare. Yea, well, okay. Or it could just mean they graduated high school in an English-speaking country, y'know.

(ObLJ: I will be reading more of the comments left on my previous entry when I have a larger chunk of time to get into it. The early part of the week is always busy for me.)

WorldCon is expensive. I didn't even go when it was somewhat local. Well, I was in the vicinity. Met up with someone there. But didn't actually attend. It's even expensive just to be able to vote. Still, I'm sure you're all curious as to how I would vote if I could. Because my ego's just big enough for that. :)

Best Novel:

I've only read two of the nominees, but I have to say Little Brother edges out Graveyard Book for me.

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form:

I've seen all but one of these. Not too thrilled with any of them, but narrow it down to Dark Knight and Wall-E and I go for Wall-E.

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form:

I'd go for Doctor Who, but I recently rewatched both of the episodes nominated and they're not that great. Not like Blink, or a few other good ones. So I'm going to go for Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog for this one.

Those are the three I'd feel qualified enough to vote for. But if I went so far as to pay to vote, I might make an effort to decide on a few other categories. Hunt down some stories or whatnot.

I'll conclude with some numbers, which I'm sure someone else has compiled, but it pleases me to count.

Novel: 5 men, 0 women
Novella: 4 men, 1 woman
Novelette: 4 men, 1 woman
Short Story: 3 men, 2 women
Related Book: 4 men, 3 women (afaik)
Graphic Story: 15? men, 5? women (more uncertain on this)
Best Editor, Short: 3 men, 2 women
Best Editor, Long: 3 men, 2 women
Professional Artist: 5 men, 0 women (afaik)
Fan Writer: 4 men, 1 woman
Fan Artist: 4 men, 1 woman (afaik)
Best New Writer: 4 men, 1 woman (afaik)

lesigh

Found off of John Scalzi's Whatever, Charles Stross discusses book series and breaks them down into 2 basic types. What I would call episodic and um.. non-episodic. "The Art of Being Late" is in response to the annoying, self-centered fans being jerks to George R. R. Martin.

In a rather different topic altogether (except it's still about writing), Salon.com's Laura Miller asks "Why can't a woman write the Great American Novel?". It's about Elaine Showalter's A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx. Women currently share equality as far as bestsellers go, but when it comes to recognition by academics, critics, jurors, etc, there's a huge discrepancy.

Here's a quote from the article:

Most illuminating, she will, when needed, chart the rise and fall of the reputation of someone like Sarah Orne Jewett (who wrote about late 19th-century life in the small towns of coastal Maine), a trajectory that went from being "patronized as the epitome of the little woman writer" in her own time to being touted as a "recovered" feminist pioneer in the 1970s and '80s, and finally, in the '90s, to being "excoriated and banished by feminist critics for her endorsement of bourgeois values and her political thought crimes."

Jewett's posthumous "dizzy ride on the roller coaster of critical politics" offers a textbook case of the absurdities of ideological criticism in the late 20th century. One scholar convinced herself that the meandering structure of Jewett's best-known work, "The Country of Pointed Firs" (a lovely book, by the way), was intended to be a weblike, "feminine" alternative to the oppressively "masculine" convention in which a linear plot accelerates to a climax; a more circular story supposedly corresponds to the purportedly non-goal-oriented unfolding of women's sexual response. This dubious sort of analogy is surprisingly popular among academic critics, despite the fact that the vast majority of women readers have always exhibited a hearty appetite for linear narratives -- much as most women, when given a choice, would prefer to have that orgasm, thanks very much.

One of the conclusions seems to be that American women writers historically have just not had enough time to practice writing and get good enough to be taken seriously. Having recently read Talent is Overrated and Outliers and watched some British documentaries on reading, I have to agree with this to a certain extent. American women historically have not had the leisure to read and write in any great quantity. The article mentions the Brits having a servant class to do the domestic chores, giving some women more time to read and write and discuss books. Which is apparently what the Bronte sisters grew up doing.

If you need 10,000 hours of practice to become accomplished at a task, then you can see how girls raised up to cook, clean, keep house, and care for children would find it difficult to find those 10,000 hours. Keeping in mind how long it used to do household chores, that it often included farm chores like tending chickens, and that light is a scarce commodity before electricity was widespread.

Not that most of the men had the free time either, but at least it wasn't looked at askance if they showed interest in learning more and going on to college. As long as they had brothers to take their place at the farm.

But all that only takes you so far. Have we done any better in the last 100 years?

Just read this short article on Tor.com about a manga panel at the New York Comic Con. Dealing with Dragons: Gender and Sexuality in Manga". The panel was presented by librarians, which is a nice change of pace, and I don't know if the panel was focussed on gender and sexuality in manga, but the article is.

Nothing new to manga readers in here, but I found it interesting to read a review from someone who's quite likely a geek, yet seems rather manga clueless.

The title of the panel was "Are You There God? It's Me, Manga." But I'm left thinking, "Yes, Virginia, there's gender stuff in manga."

The article (again, don't know about the panel) is also very NA-centric. "The librarians closed by looking towards the future, and wondering how these books will shape the current generation." No mention there of how the Japanese kids who were growing up on this stuff turned out.

Always interesting, and amusing, and a little frustrating, when mainstream outlets (well, tor.com is more mainstream than other things) pick up on some new trend.. like it's a new trend. I mean, the picture is taken from Ranma 1/2 for crying out loud. It's 20 years old! Yes, /20/!

Feel free to join me in feeling old.

First up: io9 has Women Who Pretended to be Men to Publish SciFi Books. A few names I'd never heard of, but it's more than a list of names, there's reasons and quotes given. I found it interesting, but I still find it difficult to draw any conclusion. Is it conforming and reinforcing stereotypes to take a male or gender neutral name? Or is it proving the stereotypes wrong? And ultimately, is it aiding or hurting your present career, and/or your future notoriety? And should it depend on the type of science fiction you're writing?

Second up: In a Google blog search for 'gender science fiction', this came up. It's not a lengthy or in-depth post, but I wanted to argue against it. So it's Choosing Baby Gender is Not Science Fiction Anymore. (Can anyone give me examples of when it was science fiction, btw?)

There are many things wrong with this. And the most important is that it will lead to a dislocation of the natural balance between genders. 70% of families would like their first child to be a girl (see article above). What would all these girls do when they grow up and face with the shortage of boys to date, marry and have kids with?

70% of which families, we're not told. The article referenced is Choose a baby, not its sex. That article doesn't say either, but as it's an Australian newspaper, we can perhaps assume they mean Australian families. Which certainly isn't a large percentage of the world population. And it's still lacking too much vital information. Like, is this 70% of people trying IVF who want a girl? They might have legitimate, IVF specific reasons for wanting a girl. I believe (hey, if they didn't quote a source, I don't have to dig one up), that girl embryos, fetuses, and young babies have a better chance of survival than boy ones. So it'd be logical for people with infertility problems to go for the better odds of a girl.

The 70% aside, that's just for their first child. I'm betting nearly 100% of those 70% would want a boy for their second child. Granted you'd still end up skewed towards girls, but so what? We're already skewed towards girls in most societies. All the good men are taken or gay? Well, yea, because there aren't enough straight ones to go around.

And, again I say, so what? So those girls will grow up realizing that there aren't enough boys to go around, and they'll have internalized quite early on that finding a straight boy and marrying him and having kids with him isn't the only path to happiness. How horrible would that be? The ones with bi tendencies can find themselves a nice girl. The ones who want kids can have them on their own (and pick whichever gender they want) or even pair up with a friend to raise kids together, manless. And well, quite frankly the others can seek out men from a) the communities, religious and otherwise, who went mostly for boy babies, b) the communities, again religious and otherwise, who were against picking a gender in the first place, c) the communities, socioeconomic in this case, who couldn't afford to pick baby gender, and d) the next generation, where the gender choice rebounded and swung the other way.

Because society is not a homogenous entity. And humans grow and change and adapt. Would society be different if a large percentage of it chose the sex of their children? Undoubtably. But would it be horrible? Not likely.

For the sake of maintaining the balance between men and women, we should not allow selection of baby gender.

We don't have a balance now, not if you mean 50/50. Will it upset the status quo? Sure. But so would eliminating gun violence and a gender disparate military and all the other ways that young men get killed at rates faster than young women. Are people advocating against doing that?

swanjun pointed me to this lj post on female characters. Do you prefer reading about male characters to female ones? If so, why? For me, I'm not sure if I prefer reading about male characters or not, but when it comes to writing characters, I do much better with male ones. They hold my interest better. Does it come from years and years of reading about interesting male characters and less-than-interesting female characters? Or is it from something else?

Broad Universe's mailing list directed me to this article on the ambition of women writers. It doesn't touch on the cultural upbringing women receive that tells them to keep quiet, be submissive, try not to get noticed. Which I think is a great deal of the problem here.

That's why when people say there aren't enough women writers writing science fiction, getting their science fiction published, or getting their science fiction acknowledged, I have to wonder how much is on the women. Why aren't you writing? Why aren't you submitting? If you are submitting, why are you submitting to low-pay, no-pay, or low-circulation markets? Fanfic writers, are you really content with being read only by fanfic readers and not getting paid for it? Or is the 'hobby' aspect of it what keeps it safe and comfortable? Are you not winning awards because you're too humble and nice-quiet-girl to get yourself on the list, or to tell your publisher to put you on the list?

What gets less attention is the dearth of female main characters in science fiction, particularly at certain age levels and certain subgenres. Even if an anthology is half women authors, it might still be all male protagonists. Were we all raised on such a heavy dose of interesting male characters that that's all any writer can write, male or female? When a writer does use a female protagonist, are they usually less interesting and thus that story doesn't get published?

Does The Other play a part? Male writers may be drawn to female characters because they're not like themselves? While female writers are drawn to male ones for the same reason? Many of the more memorable, likeable, enjoyable, interesting female main characters and even supporting characters I can think of are written by male writers. Is this because male writers write more interesting female characters? Or is it because they write them more like male characters and we're right back to liking male characters better?

Read. Ponder.

Current Mood: thoughtful

I was browsing Novelist and plugged in the keyword 'tomboy'. (After having little luck with 'crossdress*' 'intersex' and 'asexual'.) Books about tomboys are probably fun and interesting, right? Maybe they're kicking butt with a sword, or piloting a spaceship, or at least climbing trees and playing baseball.

Well, no.. apparently the vast majority of them are trying to turn into girly girls to catch a boy.

The Tomboy - Mary Lou Rich
"When tomboy Allie Daltry turns in her britches for a fancy dress, she discovers that she can turn the head of every gentleman in town,[...]"

High School Debut - Kazune Kawahara (manga)
"Haruna, a tomboy, is determined to change her stripes when she enters high school, but is sadly lacking in fashion or social sense, so she recruits cute upperclassman Yo to instruct her on how to make herself more appealing to boys."

( More examples )

There is the occasional exception. Which makes each of them stand out and almost makes me want to read them just because they're not in the mold of the above. Here's one example:

The Adventures of Flash Jackson - William Kowalski
"Sixteen-year-old Haley "Flash Jackson" Boomhauer, tomboy extraordinaire, confined to her room after breaking her leg, unexpectedly finds her boredom allieviated [sic] by her eccentric grandmother who teaches her the magical arts."

Maybe it's something about the word 'tomboy' that implies it's a state she needs to grow out of and become a 'real' girl, preferably with a boy or a man by the end of the story. Do I need to look for other keywords? Butch? Strong? Spunky? Sporty?

Halleluia for the tomboy 'extraordinaire', Flash Jackson, who, from the evidence of the term, rejoices in who she is.

Maybe all the tomboys who aren't in need of reforming just aren't using that term, or any term. Maybe they're just doing their thing and any book summary about them just calls them girl and gets on with it. Though I do wonder where all the bi and lesbian tomboys went.

I'll leave you with one last thought. Look at the (presumed) gender of the writers in the examples I quoted above. It reminds me that my favorite series featuring a girl right now is the Jacky Faber books by Louis A. Meyer.

Rule #1 of nom de plumes, pick one that people can spell easily. Not saying Stephenie Meyer chose her name, but she might've considered using a pen name. Even if people get the Meyer right, they invariably get the Stephenie wrong. Smart, intelligent, reader- and writer-type people. If she wasn't so popular, people would have trouble doing searches on Google and Amazon for her books. :)

Okay, so what follows is some of my thoughts on the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn in particular, and perhaps venturing into discussion of Orson Scott Card's stuff and maybe even Octavia Butler if I get that far.

( Spoilers Ahoy! )

Current Mood: contemplative

Here's the final list as compiled by Naamen over on Feminist SF -- The Blog.

Bold means I've read it. Feel free to copy the list in the comment thread and bold the ones you've read.

11. God Stalk - P. C. Hodgell
10. A Door Into Ocean - Joan Slonczewski
9. Herland - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
8. Fire Logic - Laurie J. Marks
7. The Fox Woman - Kij Johnson
6. The Shadow Speaker - Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
5. Bone Dance - Emma Bull
4. Zahrah the Windseeker - Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
3. Swordspoint - Ellen Kushner
2. Midnight Robber - Nalo Hopkinson
1. Solstice - Ulises Silva

I'd heard of a couple of these before, and a couple others I'd heard of the author, but some are entirely new to me.

Current Mood: inspired to read

Any fictional ones that is.

By way of the Feminist SF blog, Helen Merrick is compiling a database of fictional representations of female scientists. If you're interested, you can go check it out. And if you're like me, you'll have fun racking your brain for characters that aren't in the db yet.

Current Mood: thoughtful

Here's some stuff I've read recently that I think is worth taking the time to click over to.

I wasn't aware of this before, but Andre Norton's will is in dispute and there's a number of unpublished books on hold until it's sorted out. I read about it over here. Reads more like a news article than a blog entry.. wish people wouldn't try to make one look like the other. Anyway, curiously, it mentions a Grand Master of Fantasy Award by SWFA and a Nebula Grand Master Award. As far as I can tell, there's only one Grand Master Award granted by SFWA and I don't think either of those names is its name. But perhaps it's had more than two names in its history.

SF Signal's Mind Meld asked a bunch of writers/editors this question: Is There Gender Imbalance in Genre Fiction Publishing?. Apparently that wasn't even the original question sent out, and it is still badly phrased. Would they have posted a reply if one respondant had talked exclusively about Westerns? Anyway, some interesting comments there. Some I agree with, some to ponder, and many, many that I do not agree with. Want to skip right to the response that'll get your blood boiling? Check out John C. Wright's.

And if you want to read even more on gender in sf/f, you can check out Cheryl Morgan's blog. I'll warn you, it's a very long post to be reading off a screen, but worth it.

coffeeandink calls for a boycott of F&SF. Not sure I agree with that, but the entire post highlights a few things being discussed lately and makes one think. So you can check that out here.

And just in general, you should be checking out John Scalzi's blog, Whatever. I discovered it only lately, but then he keeps referring to past posts that have been popular, and I've been like.. whoa, I saw that! Apparently I'd been visiting his blog several times without ever sticking around. Well, I'm sticking around now. Like bacon on a cat.

Current Mood: linky

Insert Witty Journal Title Here

The title wasn't witty enough for you?

The Funniest, Best, Most Awesomest Thing Ever

Wiscon 34 - HackGender Project

Military Anthology - Boys Club?

Disney and Gender

Realms of Fantasy All-Women Issue

Cootie-Free TOC

Thoughts on This Perfect Day by Ira Levin

Book Roundup

Mawwiage

Gender-Based Reading Habits

If I could vote for the Hugos...

Interesting Things to Read Today

Manga is so Gay

Two Links to Posts on Gender

Female Characters, Female Writers

The Plight of Tomboys

Thoughts on Stephenie Meyer's "Breaking Dawn"

Top Eleven Obscure Non-straightwhitemale Science Fiction and Fantasy Books

Know any female scientists?

Science Fiction and Fantasy Link Roundup

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May 2014

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