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Eileen Gunn: writes short stories
(mod) Maria Dahvana Headley:
Rose Lemberg: writer, poet, genderqueer
Maureen McHugh: writer
Paul Park: writer
MH reads panel description. Very binary panel description. Writing stories, you are unbound to binaries.
Q: Boudicca movies keep coming up—apparently only interesting female character. Warrior woman, nobody knows much about her. People see her as a man. In regard to violence (in prompt), why do we feel like that isn't a female (or even non-gendered) action?
RL: Doesn't view any actions as gendered; nurturing isn't fem, violence isn't masc. Question is why do we see those qualities as gendered? What about society perpetuates those associations, and how do SF writers move beyond that? Beyond the woman warrior as the only way to put women into narrative?
MM: Associate violence with gender for a reason. She was in SCA for 9 months, trained to fight. At one event, she watched a guy 6'4” hit so hard that the other guy was lifted off his feet and moved backward. Testosterone (and steroids) make you feel different. There are cultural and social reasons why more men are jailed for murder than women. In aggregate, men have more upper body strength and were better warriors until invention of gun. That fueled societal ideas.
PP: What is it about the structure of stories so that even powerful women in a story start off defensive position. Chara demonstrates power in response to something, usually male impetus. Women characters who are evil have higher sense of agency; gendered ideas of evil. Wonders if it feels to us if women in a plot are less violent than men, if that's implicit thinking or the beginning of dramatic situations and what goes from there. Men drive, women respond.
EG: Many attempts to rewire us as writers. One writer (missed name, Jessica ?) wrote women warriors, people said it was because she was trans. (in the 80s) A lot of thought went into how you create women warriors in a story. Is an aggressive person, frowns, pushes back. But as story writer, you start with the models you're given. Once Jessica presented the model of women warriors, it was easier for others to follow along. Discusses a story she wrote, how she changed the ending of a story to go against cultural assumptions.
Q: The notion of being a writer who can invent a new culture unlike the one we live in, can anyone think of examples of cultures created by writer where feeding people is ferocious?
RL: one Jewish culture (missed the name) has men where men read Torah, women are fierce and do things. Wants to see more SF about women's activities that have agency that don't involve war.
MM: Starting with female warrior is not necessarily good: other ways to get agency. Miles V has agency, but nothing to do with being ass kicking
RL: Miles should never be a warrior, because he's tiny, disabled
(crosstalk)
There's more to agency than being a warrior
Decision to use agency > warrior
RL: Miles' desire to be warrior is cultural, he realizes that
MM: Paul's Romania books
PP: wants to talk about other books. Wrote 2 historicals in patriarchal societies. Thought he had to present a convincing vision of the past, didn't think he could bring in woman warriors. Realized the story was as ungendered as TinTin, didn't want women as décor, wanted them as engines of plot. Felt like it would be a lie to say that these cultures had no female agency, had to put them under the surface. Felt like a lie about the past to say that men are doing everything. Tried a new book, narrated by women, that iconic bible history events occurred because of female choices. Felt liberating.
Reverse sense of how agency works
MH: In terms of story telling, we have an understanding of cultural roles re-fixed every generation. Gender identity and agency have shifted over the last 100 years because of wars—men fighting, women working in industry, started a worker movement. Intellectual agency.
Q: Creating new versions of identity, agency: intellectual agency? What are examples of gendered intellectual agency? Journeys in the mind.
MM: wrote a story “In the kingdom of the blind” about IT people, overweight, female; discover that their system has become self aware. Entirely about people acting on their understanding. She acts. Also about her terror of taking agency: she's convinced she can't code, but she learns that the guys who talk about how great they are are just like her, except they talk about themselves. Very American culturally, gender-bound. Opposite of non-binary explorative story.
RL: Might want to be more careful of saying American culture. Politeness paradigms: when can a woman speak up? See completely different things vary by class, race, ethnicity, within some communities, geographically. Interrupting: men interrupt more in WASP demographic; impolite for women to interrupt. Doesn't hold for all subcultures. There are sociolinguistic markers, variants. Doesn't think it has to do with inside perceptions of gender, but how cultural expectations are set up. People norm each other. Speaking up is an act of bravery for a woman. Not because of gender essentialist notions but because of social norming.
MM: What is the difference between GE and social norming?
RL: Defines gender essentialism: behave certain ways because you're biologically wired. Eg women are more polite because they're nicer by nature. Doesn't bear out in data. Politeness has to do with being disempowered.
EG: In Heinlein's novels, women have agency and intelligence, but all the action revolves around the men. Women are granted ability to fly planes, but guys do everything. This is a fictional construct, not reality.
PP: Shakespeare's comic heroines are smartest, etc, everything happens because of them. Ending is them tying their fate with a boring romantic object. That's the only way he could get away with making women powerful: having them surrender their power at the end. What audience thinks of as proper conclusion.
MH: author utopia: our own personal ideas of how things should be. Heinlein: those wonderful women! But I don't want them to do anything. Very gendered notion from male authors, wanting wonderful but reduced other gender. Do we need to look at every aspect when writing?
PP: Doesn't think we should overemphasize the importance of individual qualities on their fate. Feels like he has built in agency that women, minorities don't have. It's not because of anything inherent in them, but how society is structured. In fiction, you can create the world you want based on one aspect of yourself.
EG: 2 aspects: what are you creating? What are you not creating that's in the characters & the story structure? Hard part is figuring out what's in there that could be turned inside out. In SF you're rewarded for turning things inside out. Write about people who don't think just like you.
MH: act to shift society and self.
MM: in 20s believed gender was entirely a social construct; now believes there are aspects that are biological and others that are sociological; fascinated where they run into each other. Range of them is so huge. Should we be blowing up gender stereotypes? Yeah; fiction is moral. What you write is your statement of ethics and morality to the world. It's an action. Do you have to? No. But you made a moral decision. What you write is an act you create. Do you want to think about the consequences of those actions or not?
MH: Wizard of Earthsea. Women's magic is weak. Years later, Tehanu is a critique of that by flipping it over. Going back and critiquing own notions. Albanian tradition of sworn virgins. Example of fascinating thing that happened in the world. When people fall back on “society isn't like that,” they're just not looking hard enough.
Aud: [can't hear.] Can't write frivolous fiction? John Gardner on moral fiction
MM: He's wrong
Aud: is it your job as a writer to overcome the established metanarratives
RL: it's easier to make money if you follow them. It is brave act to not follow them. If you don't, what are you obligated to do? What follows from that decision? Queer norms, various queer norms
MH: don't mash everything into one story.
EG: JG is wrong. When you tell writers “do this,” it's bad. Some will react badly. Some won't be able to do it, or do it well.
RL: If you want to make political statements, do. Responsibility to think about it deeply, do a good job.
MM: may be responsibility or not, but you should definitely think about it.
RL: We all move within paradigms.
PP: It's a moral act to be accurate about the world, how you perceive the world, without having a formed idea of a political or social point to be made. Conscientious desire to tell the truth about your own experience, or what you perceive > message
RL: Message isn't important (it is), doesn't like the authors who write Message Novels. Likes MM's work because of compassionate writing of all characters.
(mod) Maria Dahvana Headley:
Rose Lemberg: writer, poet, genderqueer
Maureen McHugh: writer
Paul Park: writer
MH reads panel description. Very binary panel description. Writing stories, you are unbound to binaries.
Q: Boudicca movies keep coming up—apparently only interesting female character. Warrior woman, nobody knows much about her. People see her as a man. In regard to violence (in prompt), why do we feel like that isn't a female (or even non-gendered) action?
RL: Doesn't view any actions as gendered; nurturing isn't fem, violence isn't masc. Question is why do we see those qualities as gendered? What about society perpetuates those associations, and how do SF writers move beyond that? Beyond the woman warrior as the only way to put women into narrative?
MM: Associate violence with gender for a reason. She was in SCA for 9 months, trained to fight. At one event, she watched a guy 6'4” hit so hard that the other guy was lifted off his feet and moved backward. Testosterone (and steroids) make you feel different. There are cultural and social reasons why more men are jailed for murder than women. In aggregate, men have more upper body strength and were better warriors until invention of gun. That fueled societal ideas.
PP: What is it about the structure of stories so that even powerful women in a story start off defensive position. Chara demonstrates power in response to something, usually male impetus. Women characters who are evil have higher sense of agency; gendered ideas of evil. Wonders if it feels to us if women in a plot are less violent than men, if that's implicit thinking or the beginning of dramatic situations and what goes from there. Men drive, women respond.
EG: Many attempts to rewire us as writers. One writer (missed name, Jessica ?) wrote women warriors, people said it was because she was trans. (in the 80s) A lot of thought went into how you create women warriors in a story. Is an aggressive person, frowns, pushes back. But as story writer, you start with the models you're given. Once Jessica presented the model of women warriors, it was easier for others to follow along. Discusses a story she wrote, how she changed the ending of a story to go against cultural assumptions.
Q: The notion of being a writer who can invent a new culture unlike the one we live in, can anyone think of examples of cultures created by writer where feeding people is ferocious?
RL: one Jewish culture (missed the name) has men where men read Torah, women are fierce and do things. Wants to see more SF about women's activities that have agency that don't involve war.
MM: Starting with female warrior is not necessarily good: other ways to get agency. Miles V has agency, but nothing to do with being ass kicking
RL: Miles should never be a warrior, because he's tiny, disabled
(crosstalk)
There's more to agency than being a warrior
Decision to use agency > warrior
RL: Miles' desire to be warrior is cultural, he realizes that
MM: Paul's Romania books
PP: wants to talk about other books. Wrote 2 historicals in patriarchal societies. Thought he had to present a convincing vision of the past, didn't think he could bring in woman warriors. Realized the story was as ungendered as TinTin, didn't want women as décor, wanted them as engines of plot. Felt like it would be a lie to say that these cultures had no female agency, had to put them under the surface. Felt like a lie about the past to say that men are doing everything. Tried a new book, narrated by women, that iconic bible history events occurred because of female choices. Felt liberating.
Reverse sense of how agency works
MH: In terms of story telling, we have an understanding of cultural roles re-fixed every generation. Gender identity and agency have shifted over the last 100 years because of wars—men fighting, women working in industry, started a worker movement. Intellectual agency.
Q: Creating new versions of identity, agency: intellectual agency? What are examples of gendered intellectual agency? Journeys in the mind.
MM: wrote a story “In the kingdom of the blind” about IT people, overweight, female; discover that their system has become self aware. Entirely about people acting on their understanding. She acts. Also about her terror of taking agency: she's convinced she can't code, but she learns that the guys who talk about how great they are are just like her, except they talk about themselves. Very American culturally, gender-bound. Opposite of non-binary explorative story.
RL: Might want to be more careful of saying American culture. Politeness paradigms: when can a woman speak up? See completely different things vary by class, race, ethnicity, within some communities, geographically. Interrupting: men interrupt more in WASP demographic; impolite for women to interrupt. Doesn't hold for all subcultures. There are sociolinguistic markers, variants. Doesn't think it has to do with inside perceptions of gender, but how cultural expectations are set up. People norm each other. Speaking up is an act of bravery for a woman. Not because of gender essentialist notions but because of social norming.
MM: What is the difference between GE and social norming?
RL: Defines gender essentialism: behave certain ways because you're biologically wired. Eg women are more polite because they're nicer by nature. Doesn't bear out in data. Politeness has to do with being disempowered.
EG: In Heinlein's novels, women have agency and intelligence, but all the action revolves around the men. Women are granted ability to fly planes, but guys do everything. This is a fictional construct, not reality.
PP: Shakespeare's comic heroines are smartest, etc, everything happens because of them. Ending is them tying their fate with a boring romantic object. That's the only way he could get away with making women powerful: having them surrender their power at the end. What audience thinks of as proper conclusion.
MH: author utopia: our own personal ideas of how things should be. Heinlein: those wonderful women! But I don't want them to do anything. Very gendered notion from male authors, wanting wonderful but reduced other gender. Do we need to look at every aspect when writing?
PP: Doesn't think we should overemphasize the importance of individual qualities on their fate. Feels like he has built in agency that women, minorities don't have. It's not because of anything inherent in them, but how society is structured. In fiction, you can create the world you want based on one aspect of yourself.
EG: 2 aspects: what are you creating? What are you not creating that's in the characters & the story structure? Hard part is figuring out what's in there that could be turned inside out. In SF you're rewarded for turning things inside out. Write about people who don't think just like you.
MH: act to shift society and self.
MM: in 20s believed gender was entirely a social construct; now believes there are aspects that are biological and others that are sociological; fascinated where they run into each other. Range of them is so huge. Should we be blowing up gender stereotypes? Yeah; fiction is moral. What you write is your statement of ethics and morality to the world. It's an action. Do you have to? No. But you made a moral decision. What you write is an act you create. Do you want to think about the consequences of those actions or not?
MH: Wizard of Earthsea. Women's magic is weak. Years later, Tehanu is a critique of that by flipping it over. Going back and critiquing own notions. Albanian tradition of sworn virgins. Example of fascinating thing that happened in the world. When people fall back on “society isn't like that,” they're just not looking hard enough.
Aud: [can't hear.] Can't write frivolous fiction? John Gardner on moral fiction
MM: He's wrong
Aud: is it your job as a writer to overcome the established metanarratives
RL: it's easier to make money if you follow them. It is brave act to not follow them. If you don't, what are you obligated to do? What follows from that decision? Queer norms, various queer norms
MH: don't mash everything into one story.
EG: JG is wrong. When you tell writers “do this,” it's bad. Some will react badly. Some won't be able to do it, or do it well.
RL: If you want to make political statements, do. Responsibility to think about it deeply, do a good job.
MM: may be responsibility or not, but you should definitely think about it.
RL: We all move within paradigms.
PP: It's a moral act to be accurate about the world, how you perceive the world, without having a formed idea of a political or social point to be made. Conscientious desire to tell the truth about your own experience, or what you perceive > message
RL: Message isn't important (it is), doesn't like the authors who write Message Novels. Likes MM's work because of compassionate writing of all characters.
