From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Subject: Re: Cross-Writing (was: Books I Got For Xmas)
Originator: mnemonic@eff.org
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 01:45:36 GMT

In article <6JAN93.00155148@vax.clarku.edu> hhenderson@vax.clarku.edu writes:
>Mike Godwin wrote:

>MG:
>>But I think Sayers, for example, always meant to be taken seriously. 
>
>In her scholarly writings, yes.

I had thought Sayers meant for her mysteries to be taken as seriously as
the mysteries written by male writers.

>MG:
>>And George Eliot, a nongenre writer of the last century, certainly did. 
>
>Okay, so you have George Eliot, who wrote under a male pseudonym.  Any other
>suggestions?

I was under the impression that George Eliot's cover had been blown.

>     I find it interesting that in genre fiction, such as mystery, 
>     suspense, and fantasy (and I assume science fiction, though 
>     I don't read much in that genre), authors like Sayers, Christie, 
>     P.D. James, Mary Stewart and Helen MacInnes (not to mention 
>     Anne Rice) have taken the male point of view and profited hugely. 
>     They have also been able to include a degree of violence that 
>     they might not have been able to get away with in "serious" 
>     fiction.  Now, is "writing like a man" only a concept that 
>     comes into play when women writers bid to be taken seriously? 

I now see that you were drawing a distinction between genre fiction and
bidding to be taken seriously. I missed that distinction on the first
pass.

>MG: 
>>Some critics have argued, in their misogynistic way, that women are less 
>>capable or incapable, of the kinds of artistic achievements,
>>toughmindedness, intellectual prowess, or range that men are capable of.  
>
>NO WAY!!  Get outta here!  REALLY?!?!?  Ya puttin' me on.
>
>You know, there's this essay by Joyce Carol Oates you should read.  

I've read it--possibly when I was mere undergraduate, but more likely
during my stint in graduate school.

>MG:
>>(I note that Camille Paglia seems to say this in SEXUAL PERSONAE.) 
>
>We must understand _Sexual Personae_ differently, then; because it doesn't
>seem to me that Paglia says that.

Well, due to the fact that my library is currently elsewhere just now, I
don't have a copy of SP with me. But I do have Paglia's cancelled preface
for SP, as it appears in her SEX, ART, AND AMERICAN CULTURE. Sadly, it
does not include her famous remark about how, if civilization had been
left to women, we'd be living in grass huts. But it does include the
following:

"At midlife, I now accept that there are fundamental sex differences based
on hormones.... There is no masculine power or privilege I did not covet.
But slowly, step by step, decade by decade, I was forced to acknowledge
that even a woman of abnormal will cannot escape her hormonal identity.
One of the themes of this book [SEXUAL PERSONAE], unpalatable to liberal
well-wishers, is woman's limitation by the body....

"Here are my conclusions, after a lifetime of observation and reflection.
Maleness at its hormonal extreme is an angry, ruthless density of self,
motivated by a principle of 'attack' (cf. 'roid rage,' produced in male
bodybuilders by anabolic steroids). Femaleness at its hormonal extreme is
first an acute sensitivity of response, literally thin-skinned (a hormonal
effect in women), and secondly a stability, composure, and
self-containment, a slowness approaching the sultry. Biologically, the
male is impelled toward restless movement; his moral danger is
brutishness. Biologically, the female is impelled toward waiting,
*expectancy*; her moral danger is stasis....

"Equality of opportunity, a crucial political ideal that all must support,
should not be confused with sexual similitude, which remains a wishful
fiction. Some past tests (never entirely reliable) suggested that female
intelligence occupies the broad median of the spectrum and that women do
not reach the heights and depths of men, who may be genius or moron. This
rings true to me. I do not believe that the historical absence of great
women composers, mathematicians, and philosophers is entirely due to
social factors, that is, to woman's lack of access to education and
monitoring. Note, for example, in this liberated age, the rarity of
world-class female chess players. Chess shops and parks all over the world
are filled with men, not women. Obsessed computer hackers are mostly male.
Even sex crimes and mass murders demonstrate the greater conceptualism of
men, who have a monopoly on fetishism and perversion...."

>But I think you're digressing from the real thread here.

Maybe so. Feel free to split this off into a Paglia thread.

>>Well, when you spoke about the Canon and who was "well-received" or not, 
>>that seemed to me to go more to the issue of creating believable characters 
>>to the issue of "inhabiting points of view." 
>
>Really?  Funny, I remember typing the phrase "point of view" a lot, and I
>also remember posting something in which I made a point of saying I wasn't
>discussing the issue of creating believable characters.  

I know. But don't forget that Don Zirilli stepped in to explain what you
really meant.

>How about listing all the female authors you can think of, popular fiction
>and literature, who have written from a male point of view (third-person as
>well as first)?  That should be interesting, and it wouldn't involve too much
>blathering about exactly what point it is we're discussing.  

I'm better at recognition than recall, as are we all, and I'm terrible at
making lists of anything.


--Mike




-- 
Mike Godwin,    |"I'm waiting for the one-man revolution
mnemonic@eff.org| The only one that's coming."
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EFF, Cambridge  |                   --Robert Frost