The Feminine Future

"She'd done well to make commander so soon even with the Fleet's steady growth in the face of the Havenite threat, for the life-extending prolong process made for long careers....She'd known and accepted from the start that those with less competence but more exalted bloodlines would race past her. Well, they had, but she'd made it at last. A cruiser command, the dream of every officer worth her salt!"

I'm trying not to hate this book. With all due respect for my husband, who eats up these kinds of novels like little leftover Halloween candy bars--Honor Harrington: On Basilisk Station seems like the kind of book that will give me enough of a rash to sit and write a ten-page critique on it, and then inflict it on my few readers in the form of a blog post. Since I'm short on time and long on sympathy, I'll try and compress my main beef with this genre in a quick rant.

My problem with science fiction that attempts to place women on par with men in a tech-oriented far-flung future is that these characters aren't really women--they're men with boobs and vaginas (and guns). The author stumbles all over himself (or herself, as was the case with Cordelia's Honor) to appear forward-thinking by extrapolating current social and technological trends into the future. The problem with this approach in writing an imagined future history is that trends are just that--flashes in the pan that don't last and are mostly written off to the dustbin of history.

The things about men and women and society that last--for example, the fact that societies not based on the family as basic social unit ultimately fail--seem to be lost on these writers.

This kind of future is far from a feminist one; in fact, it is masculinist in the extreme. There is no place for the feminine in this future. No one nurtures (except the Nanny State). No one is soft. No one makes curtains and cans tomatoes. No one cleans the smudges from a child's face and puts band-aids on boo-boos. What's left is a simply horrifying vision of what happens when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics meets Brave New World run amok. No wonder the people in these books are always fighting wars and struggling under totalitarian governments. No wonder that whiz-bang technology serves as the replacement for the soft tissues that formerly supported new life. No wonder everyone sees a military career as the apogee of female achievement. Barrenness reigns supreme: and a queen is the overseer of all!

Adding to the absurdity of this form of long-rage extrapolation from what is essentially history's latest fad (feminism), is the fact that you can see from the quote above that the author includes a classist and ageist bias to his future society. Also, no one believes in God (apparently), but everyone uses blasphemies in their everyday speech. These are supposed to add a gritty, realistic tone that today's reader can relate to. On the other hand, gender bias--which has been with us as long as the earth revolves around the sun and is one of the things that EVERYONE can relate to--has been magically resolved.

Ugh. I can't go any further with this. And don't bother to argue about equal rights for women in the combox, because I'm not against that (look to Ladies Against Feminism for a thoroughgoing critique of the failed platform of feminism). I was just starting to think that I was some kind of cave-dwelling fuddy-duddy for preferring Jane Austen movies and homemaking blogs. Dwelling in the past, I thought--and not even a realistic one. But compared with the futures of Honor Harrington, and Cordelia, et al., I far prefer my lavender-scented cave.

This is what I want: stories that don't have an agenda to throw at me about politics, religion, or social issues. I want stories with a fully-fleshed woman character who is strong AND feminine (or at least, doesn't treat her femininity as a weakness or a weapon). I want a future that is positive for women and children. I want a world that offers options for all. True, such a world offers danger and conflict. Our characters must find their way through it. But it has to be more tasty than just a literary can of SPAM.

"It's pulp!" yells my husband in exasperation. "Just live with it!"

*sigh* I know. I'm so hard to please.

(John C. Wright has more meaty discussions of this nature on his LiveJournal.)