From: julie@eddie.jpl.nasa.gov (Julie Kangas)
Subject: Re: The the great ongoing misogyny/misandry discussion
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 17:03:34 GMT

In article <"22-Jan-93..8:18:23.EST".*.Alexandra_Haropulos.ADFMcLean_CSD@Xerox.com> Alexandra_Haropulos.ADFMcLean_CSD@XEROX.COM writes:
>DANNY@ccm.umanitoba.ca says -
>
><I have read female authors who write strictly from a female viewpoint and no
>one is pointing at them and saying 'MAN HATER".

A lot depends.  You can write within a female veiwpoint without a
misandronistic tone just like you can write from a male viewpoint without
a misogynistic tone.  Having a female protagonist and a female 
viewpoint does not it itself make a book which blasts men.  (If it
did then I could point at every book with a male protagonist and
say the author was a woman hater.)

But I agree that many books do have misandronistic (and misogynistic)
tones.

>
>Remember, you read it here first.
>
>It appears that SFantasy in particular is veering off into some rather 'radical
>feminist' directions. I no longer read much new Anne McCaffrey or Marion Zimmer
>Bradley, because I have gotten a bit tired of listening to repeated tirades on
>how men are testosterone-poisoned, irresponsible, abusers of all that is good
>in the universe (i.e., The Mother Goddess and her many crafts, which appear to
>consist primarily of herbal medicine, weaving, natural childbirth and crystal
>hugging/singing/worshipping/younameit)...These authors are MAN HATERS! As well
>as Luddites. (I'm sure people can point to sympathetic male characters in their
>fiction, especially their early works, but I'm talking about the preponderance
>of characters in their recent work).

I was encouraged a while back by a little book 'Fire in the Mists' or
something (written by a woman).  At first I thought it was your typical 
'mother goddess, crystal worship, etc'.  While it did have those elements, 
I also felt it was trying to warn against slamming men.  That is, while 
all the women sorcerers were blaming the men sorcerers for 
death/doom/destruction, it turned out it was one of their own doing
it.  The female protagonist works hard at getting the women to stop
hating the men and at the end each side decided maybe the other side 
wasn't so bad after all.  While it certainly wasn't "highbrow" reading, 
it sticks in my mind as a book where the author is working against the man
bashing going on in other books.

>
>Folks (or Filks), we are all in this together. I like to read books where there
>are males and females cooperating equally as members of the human race. Lois
>McMaster Bujold's LORD VORKOSIGAN books stand out in my mind. Certainly there
>are bad guys (Count Vorrutyer, Prince Serg) but there are are also bad gals
>(the Betan Psychologist, Livia Nu). If we humans start being reflexively
>confrontational with the opposite sex, how are we ever begin to get along with
>people who aren't humans? So how does this posited future of doctrinaire
>antagonism help us shape the future into what we want it to be? Or isn't that
>part of the point of SF?
>
>Flame on, mes amis

Moi? I agree with you.

Julie
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