The role of women in speculative fiction
has changed a great deal since the early to mid-20th century. There are
several aspects to women's roles, including their participation as
authors of speculative fiction and their role in science fiction fandom.
Regarding authorship, in 1948, 10–15% of science fiction writers were female. Women's role in speculative fiction (including science fiction) has grown since then, and in 1999, women comprised 36% of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's professional members. Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley has been called the first science fiction novel, although women wrote utopian novels even before that, with Margaret Cavendish publishing the first (The Blazing World) in the seventeenth century. Early published fantasy
was written by and for any gender. However, speculative fiction, with
science fiction in particular, has traditionally been viewed as a
male-oriented genre.
Science fiction originally had a reputation of being created by men for other men, though the genre had women writers, such as Clare Winger Harris, Miriam Allen deFord, and Gertrude Barrows Bennett, from the beginning. Until the late 1960s, women did not win major science fiction awards, such as the Hugos. The 1966 "Analog Science Fiction and Fact All-Time Poll" did not list any novels by women and the 1973 "Locus All-Time Favorite Authors Poll" was over 90% male. One of the two women in Locus's poll, Andre Norton, had been "gender ambiguous" for many of her readers. Other female writers of the era, such as C. L. Moore and Leigh Brackett, also used ambiguous or male names. Women who wrote under their own names, such as Zenna Henderson, initially wrote more "domestic" material concerning teachers and mothers. A partial exception was Katherine MacLean, who wrote sociology- and psychology-oriented fiction and rarely used a male name.
Eric Leif Davin argues in Partners in Wonder that science fiction's "male-oriented" reputation is unjustified and that it was a "safe haven" for outsiders, including women. Davin reports that only L. Taylor Hansen concealed her sex in early years, and that C. L. Moore wanted to hide her career as a science fiction author from her job.
Women writers were in a minority: during the '50s and '60s,
almost 1,000 stories published in science fiction magazines by over 200
female-identified authors between 1926 and 1960 were documented, making
women writers 10-15% of contributors. His is a minority view, "at odds
with the common perception of science fiction".
The advent of second wave feminism
in the 1960s, combined with the growing view of science fiction as the
literature of ideas, led to an influx of female science fiction writers,
and some saw this influx as the first appearance of women into the
genre. In the 1960s and 1970s, authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin (who debuted in 1963) and Joanna Russ (who debuted in the 1950s) began to consciously explore feminist themes in works such as The Left Hand of Darkness and The Female Man, creating a self-consciously feminist science fiction.
As of 2013, publisher statistics indicate that men still
outnumber women about two to one among English-language speculative
fiction writers aiming for professional publication, but that the
percentages vary considerably by genre. The following numbers are based
on the 503 submissions received by Tor Books, a major science fiction and fantasy publisher, between January and July 2013.
Women have been active in science fiction fandom for some time, and the Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction dates the coinage "femfan" (sometimes: "femme fan") to as early as 1944. Leigh Brackett says of the history of women in SF "There always were a certain number of women fans and women readers." Labalestier quotes the editor of Startling Stories, writing in 1953, as saying
Ten years ago [i.e., 1943]
stf fans were practically all male, today with or without benefit of fan
activities, a lot of girls and housewives and other members of the sex
are quietly reading science fiction and beginning to add their voices to
the bable... We honestly never expected such a surge of female women
into science fiction
A 1958 self-reported If survey found that 31% of respondents were women, which the editors said was "surprisingly high (at least to us)". Robert Silverberg
said "probably the first appearance of the 'Women in Science Fiction'
panel soon to become a fixture of these conventions" was at the 10th World Science Fiction Convention in 1953; which was also the first World Science Fiction Convention chaired by a woman, author Julian May.
While science fiction fandom
has been an organized phenomenon for decades—presaging the organized
fandoms of other genres and media—the study of science fiction fandom
within cultural studies and science fiction studies
is relatively new. Consequently, assertions about the prevalence of
women in fandom are largely anecdotal and personal, and sometimes
contradictory. Most prominent among these assertions is the claim that
it was the advent of the original Star Trek
television series which brought large quantities of women into fandom.
This claim is critically analyzed by Davin, who finds it poorly founded,
and cites a long history of female involvement in fandom decades prior
to Star Trek; Larbalestier also cites women active in science fiction fandom before the late 1960s and early 1970s.
However, women became more visibly present in fandom, and more organized, in the 1970s. The slash movement among fans began, as far as anyone can tell, with Diane Marchant's publication of the first known Star Trek "Kirk/Spock" story in Grup #3 in 1974. 1974 also saw the creation of The Witch and the Chameleon, the first explicitly feminist fanzine. The fanzine Khatru published a "Women in Science Fiction" symposium in 1975 (one of the "males" who participated was James Tiptree, Jr.). In 1976, Susan Wood set up a panel on "women and science fiction" at MidAmericon, the 1976 Worldcon; this ultimately led to the founding of A Women's APA, the first women's amateur press association. Also in 1976, WisCon,
the world's leading—and for many years, only—feminist science fiction
convention and conference was founded: an annual conference in Madison, Wisconsin. In turn, as a result of discussions at WisCon, institutions such as the Tiptree Awards and Broad Universe arose to address questions of gender in speculative fiction and issues peculiar to women writers of speculative fiction. Some of the same people involved in creating WisCon also founded the feminist fanzine Janus, which was thrice nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Fanzine (1978–1980).
However, the perception of speculative fiction as mainly a men's
genre continues to be widespread. As the inclusion of women within
science fiction and fantasy more broadly has become obvious, the
specificity of the perception has evolved. For instance, the still
widely held view that "science fiction and fantasy are men's genres" has
been refined by some to distinguish between science fiction as a genre
mainly appealing to men, and fantasy, which is generally seen as being
more accommodating to women (some subgenres, particularly urban fantasy, with female protagonists, and paranormal romance are seen as being more popular with women than with men). Little formal study has supported any of these distinctions, whether based on readers, writers, or characters.
This perception has often been upheld and enforced by men, perhaps to protect themselves from what fandom researcher Henry Jenkins called the stereotype that “men are feminized and/or desexualized through their intimate engagement with mass culture”. Women fans of speculative fiction are called pejorative terms like “fake geek girl”and are chastised for their love of “Mary Sue” characters, while at the same time male characters with the same qualities are beloved, and can even face harassment for their participation in fandom.
However, Jenkins writes, speculative fiction is especially popular with
women who identify with feminism because they reject the gender roles
that are traditionally seen in other types of fiction.
Gender
A 1911 illustration from Camille Flammarion's La Fin du monde. It depicts a fictional future society in which all women are beautiful and have lovely voices.
[...] science fiction and fantasy pulp
magazines were directed mainly at boys[...]. Female characters were only
occasionally included in science fiction pulp stories; the male
protagonists' lengthy explanations to the women with limited knowledge
revealed the plots
Garber, Eric and Paleo, Lyn "Preface" in Uranian worlds.
The highlighting of gender in science fiction
has varied widely throughout the genre's history. Some writers and
artists have challenged their society's gender norms in producing their
work; others have not. Speculative and science fiction fandoms have
generally become less proportionately male over time. In step with
this, so have the casts of characters portrayed in fiction; similarly,
considerations of gender in speculative and science fiction have
increased in frequency and nuance over time.
Influence of political movements
The study of women within science fiction in the last decades of the twentieth century was driven in part by the feminist and gay liberation movements, and has included strands of the various related and spin-off movements, such as gender studies and queer theory.
In the 1970s, a number of events began to focus on women in fandom, professional science fiction, and as characters. In 1974, Pamela Sargent published an influential anthology, Women of Wonder: Science Fiction Stories by Women, About Women—the
first of many anthologies to come that focused on women or gender
rules. Additionally, movement among writers concerned with feminism and
gender roles sprang up, leading to a genre of "feminist science fiction"
including Joanna Russ' 1975 The Female Man, Samuel R. Delany's 1976 Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia, and Marge Piercy's 1976 Woman on the Edge of Time.
The 1970s also saw a vibrant gay liberation movement, which made its presence known in science fiction, with gay/lesbian and gay/lesbian-friendly panels at conventions and articles in fanzines;
gay/lesbian content increasingly present in the fiction itself; the
gay/lesbian bookstore "A Different Light", which took its name from Elizabeth A. Lynn's novel of the same name; and a focus on LGBT issues in the pages of feminist publications.
More recently, the 2010s have sparked a rebirth for speculative
fiction. This revival of the genre can be attributed to the political
chaos that came with the 2016 election in which Donald J. Trump won the U.S. presidency. Margaret Atwood's speculative science fiction novel The Handmaid's Tale
was adapted into a television series Hulu special and saw such success
that it was renewed for a second season. Many critics made the
connection between The Handmaid's Tale and President Trump's
America in multiple reviews of the series. The fears that came with such
a controversial election have given way to a revival of speculative
fiction in the 2010s.
The Handmaid's Tale was also adapted into a ten-episode television series Hulu special released on April 26, 2017. The series saw such success that it was renewed for a second season set to release in April 2018.
Octavia Butler's speculative science/fantasy fiction novel Dawn, the first in her trilogy titled Lilith's Brood, is currently being adapted for television by producers Ava DuVernay and Charles D. King's Macro Ventures alongside writer Victoria Mahoney. There is no projected release date for the adaptation yet.
Feminist science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction (abbreviated "SF") focused on such feminist themes as: gender inequality, sexuality, race, economics, reproduction, and environment.
Feminist SF is political because of its tendency to critique the
dominant culture. Some of the most notable feminist science fiction
works have illustrated these themes using utopias to explore a society in which gender differences or gender power imbalances do not exist, or dystopias to explore worlds in which gender inequalities are intensified, thus asserting a need for feminist work to continue.
Science fiction and fantasy serve
as important vehicles for feminist thought, particularly as bridges
between theory and practice. No other genres so actively invite
representations of the ultimate goals of feminism: worlds free of
sexism, worlds in which women's contributions (to science) are
recognized and valued, worlds that explore the diversity of women's
desire and sexuality, and worlds that move beyond gender.
Feminist science fiction (SF) distinguishes between female SF authors and feminist SF authors.
Both female and feminist SF authors are historically significant to the
feminist SF subgenre, as female writers have increased women's
visibility and perspectives in SF literary traditions, while the
feminist writers have foregrounded political themes and tropes in their
works.
Because distinctions between female and feminist can be blurry, whether
a work is considered feminist can be debatable, but there are generally
agreed-upon canonical texts, which help define the subgenre.
Women writers involved in the utopian literature
movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries could be
considered the first feminist SF authors. Their texts, emerging during
the first-wave feminist movement, often addressed issues of sexism through imagining different worlds that challenged gender expectations. In 1881, Mizora: A Prophecy described a women-only world with technological innovations such as parthenogenesis, videophones, and artificial meat.
It was closely followed by other feminist utopian works, such as Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett's New Amazonia: A Foretaste of the Future (1889). In 1892, poet and abolitionist Frances Harper published Iola Leroy, one of the first novels by an African American woman. Set during the antebellum South, it follows the life of a mixed race woman with mostly white ancestry and records the hopes of many African Americans for social equality—of race and gender—during Reconstruction. Unveiling a Parallel
(1893) features a male protagonist who takes an "aeroplane" to Mars,
visiting two different "Marsian" societies; in both, there is equality
between men and women. In one, Paleveria, women have adopted the
negative characteristics of men; in Caskia, the other, gender equality
"has made both sexes kind, loving, and generous." Two American Populists, A.O. Grigsby and Mary P. Lowe, published NEQUA or The Problem of the Ages (1900), which explores issues of gender norms and posited structural inequality. This recently
rediscovered novel displays familiar feminist SF conventions: a heroine
narrator who masquerades as a man, the exploration of sexist mores, and
the description of a future hollow earth society (like Mizora) where women are equal.
The Sultana's Dream(1905), by BengaliMuslim feministRokeya Sakhawat Hussain, engages with the limited role of women in colonial India. Through depicting a gender-reversed purdah in an alternate technologically futuristic world, Hussain's book has been described as illustrating the potential for cultural insights through role reversals early on in the subgenre's formation. In the utopian novelBeatrice the Sixteenth (1909), transgender writer Irene Clyde creates a world where gender is no longer recognized and the story itself is told without the use of gendered nouns. Along these same lines, Charlotte Perkins Gilman explores and critiques the expectations of women and men by creating a single-sex world in Herland (1915), possibly the most well-known of the early feminist SF and utopian novels.
Among the francophones, Renée Gouraud d'Ablancourt [fr] published in 1909 Vega la magicienne, depicting L'Oiselle, a winged superheroine and the first of the francophone superhero series.
Between the wars
During
the 1920s and 1930s, many popular pulp science fiction magazines
exaggerated views of masculinity and featured portrayals of women that
were perceived as sexist. These views would be subtly satirized by Stella Gibbons in Cold Comfort Farm (1932) and much later by Margaret Atwood in The Blind Assassin (2000). As early as 1920, however, women writers of this time, such as Clare Winger Harris ("The Runaway World," 1926) and Gertrude Barrows Bennett (Claimed,
1920), published science fiction stories written from female
perspectives and occasionally dealt with gender and sexuality based
topics.
John Wyndham,
writing under his early pen-name of John Beynon Harris, was a rare pulp
writer to include female leads in stories such as The Venus Adventure (Wonder Stories,
1932), in which a mixed crew travel to Venus. The story opens in a
future in which women are no longer enslaved by pregnancy and childbirth
thanks to artificial incubators, which are opposed by a religious
minority. Women have used this freedom to enter professions including
chemistry. Wyndham's outlook was so rare that in a serialisation of his
novel Stowaway to Mars, one magazine editor "corrected" the name of the
central character Joan to John. Wyndham then had to write them a new
final instalment to replace the conclusion in which Joan fell in love
and became pregnant.
Post World War II
The Post-WWII and Cold War eras were a pivotal and often overlooked period in feminist SF history.
During this time, female authors utilized the SF genre to assess
critically the rapidly changing social, cultural, and technological
landscape.
Women SF authors during the post-WWII and Cold War time periods
directly engage in the exploration of the impacts of science and
technology on women and their families, which was a focal point in the
public consciousness during the 1950s and 1960s. These female SF
authors, often published in SF magazines such as The Avalonian, Astounding, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Galaxy, which were open to new stories and authors that pushed the boundaries of form and content.
At the beginning of the Cold War, economic restructuring, technological advancements, new domestic technologies (washing machines, electric appliances), increased economic mobility of an emerging middle class, and an emphasis on consumptive practices, carved out a new technological domestic sphere where women were circumscribed to a new job description – the professional housewife.
Published feminist SF stories were told from the perspectives of women
(characters and authors) who often identified within traditional roles
of housewives or homemakers, a subversive act in many ways given the
traditionally male-centered nature of the SF genre and society during
that time.
In Galactic Suburbia, author Lisa Yaszek recovers many women SF authors of the post-WWII era such as Judith Merril, author of "That Only a Mother" (1948), "Daughters of Earth" (1952), "Project Nursemaid" (1955), "The Lady Was a Tramp" (1957); Alice Eleanor Jones "Life, Incorporated" (1955), "The Happy Clown" (1955), "Recruiting Officer" (1955); and Shirley Jackson "One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts" (1955) and "The Omen" (1958). These authors often blurred the boundaries of feminist SF fiction and feminist speculative fiction, but their work laid substantive foundations for second-wave feminist
SF authors to directly engage with the feminist project. "Simply put,
women turned to SF in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s because it provided
them with growing audiences for fiction that was both socially engaged
and aesthetically innovative."
Second-wave feminism
By
the 1960s, science fiction was combining sensationalism with political
and technological critiques of society. With the advent of second-wave feminism, women's roles were questioned in this "subversive, mind expanding genre". Three notable texts of this period are Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) and Joanna Russ's The Female Man (1970). Each highlights what the authors believe to be the socially constructed aspects of gender roles by creating worlds with genderless societies. Two of these authors were pioneers in feminist criticism of science fiction during the 1960s and 1970s through essays collected in The Language of the Night (Le Guin, 1979) and How To Suppress Women's Writing (Russ, 1983). Also of note, Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time
(1962), written for children and teens, features a 13-year-old girl
protagonist, Meg Murry, whose mother, Mrs. Murry, is a scientist with
degrees in biology and bacteriology. L'Engle's novel is decidedly
science fiction, feminist, and deeply Christian, and the first of her
series, The Time Quintet. Meg's adventures to other planets, galaxies, and dimensions are aided in Wrinkle by three ancient beings, Mrs What, Mrs Which, and Mrs Who who "tesser" to travel vast distances. A Wrinkle in Time was awarded the Newbery Medal in 1963 and has never been out of print. Men also contributed literature to feminist science fiction. Prominently, Samuel R. Delany's short story, "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones" (1968), which won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story
in 1970, follows the life of a gay man that includes themes involving
sadomasochism, gender, significance of language, and when high and low
society encounter one another, while his novel Babel-17 has an autistic woman of colour as its primary hero and protagonist. Octavia Butler's Kindred
(1979) tells the story of an African American woman living in the
United States in 1979 who uncontrollably time travels to the antebellum
South. The novel poses complicated questions about the nature of
sexuality, gender, and race when the present faces the past.
The Demon Breed is a 1968 science fiction novel by James H. Schmitz
in which the female main character, Nyles Etland, armed only with
intelligence and intimate knowledge of her home environment, allies and
science, intimidated an alien species who had intended to invade.
Schmitz, who still commands a cult audience half a century after his
death, dealt almost exclusively in competent and intelligent female main
characters in dozens of novels and short stories.
1980s onwards
Feminist science fiction continues on into the 1980s with Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale
(1985), a dystopic tale of a theocratic society in which women have
been systematically stripped of all liberty. The book was motivated by
fear of potential retrogressive effects on women's rights. Sheri S. Tepper is perhaps best known for her series The True Game, which explore the Lands of the True Game, a portion of a planet explored by humanity somewhere in the future. In November 2015, she received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement for this series. Tepper has written under several pseudonyms, including A. J. Orde, E. E. Horlak, and B. J. Oliphant. Carol Emshwiller is another feminist SF author whose best known works are Carmen Dog (1988), The Mount (2002), and Mister Boots (2005). Emshwiller had also been writing SF for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction since 1974. She won the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2005 for her novel The Mount (2002). This novel explores the prey/predator mentality through an alien race. Another author of the 1980s, Pamela Sargent has written the "Seed Series", which included Earthseed, Farseed, and Seed Seeker (1983–2010), the "Venus Series" about the terraforming of Venus, which includes Venus of Dreams, Venus of Shadows, and Child of Venus (1986–2001), and The Shore of Women (1986). Sargent is also the 2012 winner of the Pilgrim Award for lifetime contributions to SF/F studies. Lois McMaster Bujold has won both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award for her novella The Mountains of Mourning, which is part of her series the "Vorkosigan Saga" (1986–2012). This saga includes points of view from a number of minority characters, and is also highly concerned with medical ethics, identity, and sexual reproduction.
More recent science fiction authors illuminate what they contend are injustices that are still prevalent. At the time of the LA Riots, Japanese-American writer Cynthia Kadohata's work In the Heart of the Valley of Love
(1992) was published. Her story, set in the year 2052, examines
tensions between two groups as defined as the "haves" and the
"have-nots" and is written as seen through the eyes of a
nineteen-year-old girl who is of Asian and African descent. Nalo Hopkinson's Falling in Love With Hominids
(2015) is a collection of her short stories whose subjects range from
an historical fantasy involving colonialism in the Caribbean, to age
manipulation, to ethnic diversity in the land of Faerie, among others.
In the early 1990s, a new award opportunity for feminist SF authors was created. The James Tiptree, Jr. Award is an annual literary prize for works of science fiction or fantasy that expand or explore one's understanding of gender (Alice Sheldon was a female writer who published science fiction under the Tiptree pen name). Science fiction authors Pat Murphy and Karen Joy Fowler initiated this subsequent discussion at WisCon
in February 1991. The authors' publishing in feminist SF after 1991
were now eligible for an award named after one of the genre's beloved
authors. Karen Joy Fowler herself is considered a feminist SF writer for her short stories, such as "What I Didn't See", for which she received the Nebula Award in 2004. This story is an homage to Sheldon, and describes a gorilla hunting expedition in Africa. Pat Murphy won a number of awards for her feminist SF novels as well, including her second novel The Falling Woman (1986), a tale of personal conflict and visionary experiences set during an archaeological field study for which she won the Nebula Award in 1988. She won another Nebula Award in the same year for her story "Rachel in Love". Her short story collection, Points of Departure (1990) won the Philip K. Dick Award, and her 1990 novella "Bones" won the 1991 World Fantasy Award.
Other winners of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award include "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell (1996), "Black Wine" by Candas Jane Dorsey (1997), Redwood and Wildfire by Andrea Hairston (2011), "The Carhullan Army" by Sarah Hall (2007), Ammonite by Nicola Griffith (1993), and "The Conqueror's Child" by Suzy McKee Charnas
(1999). All of these authors have had an important impact on the SF
world by adding a feminist perspective to the traditionally male genre.
Eileen Gunn's science fiction short story "Coming to Terms" received the Nebula Award (2004) in the United States and the Sense of Gender Award (2007) in Japan, and has been nominated twice each for the Hugo Award, Philip K. Dick Award and World Fantasy Award, and short-listed for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. Her most popular anthology of short stories is Questionable Practices,
which includes stories "Up the Fire Road" and "Chop Wood, Carry Water".
She also edited "The WisCon Chronicles 2: Provocative Essays on
Feminism, Race, Revolution, and the Future" with L. Timmel Duchamp. Duchamp has been known in the feminist SF community for her first novel Alanya to Alanya (2005), the first of a series of five titled "The Marq'ssan Cycle". Alanya to Alanya
is set on a near-future earth controlled by a male-dominated ruling
class patterned loosely after the corporate world of today. Duchamp has also published a number of short stories, and is an editor for Aqueduct Press. Lisa Goldstein is another well respected feminist sf author. The novelette Dark Rooms (2007) is one of her better known works, and another one of her novels, The Uncertain Places, won the Mythopoeic Award for Best Adult Novel in 2012.
Recurrent themes
Works
of feminist science fiction are often similar in the goals they work
towards as well as the subjects and plotlines they focus on in order to
achieve those goals. Feminist science fiction is science fiction that
carries across feminist ideals and the promotion of societal values such
as gender equality, and the elimination of patriarchal oppression.
Feminist science fiction works often present tropes that are recurrent
across science fiction with an emphasis on gender relations and gender
roles. Many elements of science fiction, such as cyborgs
and implants, as well as utopias and dystopias, are given context in a
gendered environment, providing a real contrast with present-day gender
relations while remaining a work of science fiction.
Utopian and dystopian societies
Representations of utopian and dystopian societies in feminist science fiction place an increased emphasis on gender roles while countering the anti-utopian philosophies of the 20th century. Male philosophers such as John Rawls, Isaiah Berlin, and Michael Oakeshott
often criticize the idea of utopia, theorizing that it would be
impossible to establish a utopia without violence and hegemony. Many
male authored works of science fiction as well as threads of
philosophical utopian thought dismiss utopias as something unattainable,
whereas in feminist science fiction, utopian society is often presented
as something both achievable and desirable.
Anti-utopian philosophies and feminist science fiction come to
odds in the possibility of achieving utopia. In "Rehabilitating Utopia:
Feminist Science Fiction and Finding the Ideal", an article published in
Contemporary Justice Review, philosophers against the dream of utopia
argue that "First is the expectation that utopia justifies violence,
second is the expectation that utopia collapses individual desires into
one communal norm, and third is the expectation that utopia mandates a
robotic focus on problem-solving." In feminist science fiction, utopias
are often realized through a communal want for an ideal society. One
such novel is summarized in the aforementioned article, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's novel Herland,
in which "Gilman perfectly captures the utopian impulse that all
problems are solvable. She establishes a society where every
consideration about a question aims for the rational answer."
Gilman's utopia is presented as something attainable and achievable
without conflict, neither enabling violence nor extinguishing
individualism.
In the Parable series by feminist science fiction novelist Octavia Butler, anti-utopian philosophies are criticized via a dystopian setting. In the first novel, Parable of the Sower,
following the destruction of her home and family, Lauren Olamina, one
of many who live in a dystopian, ungoverned society, seeks to form her
own utopian religion entitled 'Earthseed'. Olamina's utopian creation
does not justify the use of violence as a means, no matter how
expedient, to justify the end, achieving utopia, no matter how
desirable. Yet we witness that she cannot avoid violence, as it results
from little more than promulgating ideas different from those held by
the majority of those living within the current social structure,
however disorganized and ungoverned that social structure may be. Butler
posits that utopian society can never be achieved as an entity entirely
separate from the outside world, one of the more commonly held beliefs
about conditions necessary to achieve utopia. Olamina's, and Butler's,
utopia is envisioned as a community with a shared vision that is not
forced on all within it.
One common trend in feminist science fiction utopias is the existence of utopian worlds as single-gendered – most commonly female, an early example being Emília Freitas’s 1899 novel A Rainha do Ignoto.
In literary works female utopias are portrayed as free of conflict, and
intentionally free of men. The single gendered utopias of female
science fiction are free of the conflicts that feminism aims to
eliminate, such as patriarchal oppression and the gender inequality
inherent in patriarchal society. In a statement about these single
gendered utopias, Joanna Russ, author of The Female Man
, theorized that male-only societies were not written because in
patriarchal society, male oppression is not as pressing an issue as is
female oppression.
Utopia as an ideal to strive for is not a concept wholly limited
to feminist science fiction, however many non-feminist science fiction
works often dismiss utopia as an unachievable goal, and as such, believe
that pursuits for utopia should be considered dangerous and barren.
Anti-utopian theory focuses on the 'how' in the transition from present
society to a utopian future. In feminist science fiction, the
achievement of a utopian future depends on the ability to recognize the
need for improvement and the perseverance to overcome the obstacles
present in creating a utopian society.
Representation of women
Perhaps
the most obvious attraction of science fiction to women writers –
feminist or not – is the possibilities it offers for the creation of a
female hero. The demands of realism in the contemporary or historical
novel set limits which do not bind the universes available to science
fiction. Although the history of science fiction reveals few heroic,
realistic, or even original images of women, the genre had a potential
recognized by the women writers drawn to it in the 1960s and 1970s.
Before this time, the appeal for women writers was not that great. The
impact of feminism on the science fiction field can be observed not only
in science fiction texts themselves, but also on the development of
feminist approaches to science fiction criticism and history, as well as
conversations and debates in the science fiction community. One of the
main debates is about the representation of women in science fiction.
In her article "Redefining Women's Power through Feminist Science
Fiction", Maria DeRose suggests that, "One of the great early
socialists said that the status of women in a society is a pretty
reliable index of the degree of civilization of that society. If this is
true, then the very low status of women in science fiction should make
us ponder about whether science fiction is civilized at all".
The women's movement has made most of us conscious of the fact that
Science Fiction has totally ignored women. This "lack of appreciation"
is the main reason that women are rebelling and actively fighting to be
noticed in the field anyway.
Virginia Wolf
relates to this aspect of feminist science fiction in the article
"Feminist Criticism and Science Fiction for Children". As she discusses
the scarcity of women in the field, she states, "During the first
period, that of the nineteenth century, apparently only two women wrote
Science Fiction, Mary Shelley and Rhoda Broughton,"
and continues, "In the early twentieth century, a few women were
successful Science Fiction writers". But, "The times changed. Repression
gave way to questioning and outright rebellion, and in the Science
Fiction of the 1960s stylistic innovations and new concerns emerged
'Many of their stories, instead of dealing with the traditional hardware
of science fiction, concentrated on the effects that different
societies or perceptions would have on individual characters'". Andre Norton,
a semi-well known analyst of Science fiction argues along these lines
as well. As Norton explored one or more novels she came across, she
realized that the creation of characters and how they are shown is a
clear connection to the real world situation. From here, she goes in
depth of characters in these feminist novels and relates them to the
real world. She concludes here article along these lines. She wanted to
get the idea out that feminists have a way to get their voice out there.
Now, all their works are famous/ popular enough for their ideas to be
let out. Virginia Wolf can attest to this fact. She introduced the idea
that women were not represented well in the field till the early 1900s
and added to the fact by stating, "Women are not represented well in
Science Fiction".
Individual characters, as we come to know, have their own
perception and observation of their surroundings. Characters in novels
such as The Girl Who Was Plugged In by James Tiptree and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale
are fully aware of the situation at hand and their role in society.
This idea is a continuation of the argument presented by Andre Norton.
Wolf argues the same point in her analysis of Le Guin's
writing, who has many contributions to the works of feminist Science
Fiction. Wolf argues, "What matters to Le Guin is not what people look
like or how they behave but whether or not they have choice and whether
or not they receive respect for who they are and what they do rather
than on the basis of sex. Feminism is for her not a matter of how many
women (or characters in Science Fiction) are housewives but a part of
our hope for survival, which she believes lies in the search for balance
and integration".
This stirs up many questions about equality (a debate which has been
going on for many years) but nobody seems to have an answer. In this
continual search for equality, many characters find themselves asking
the same question: "Is Gender Necessary" (which is, coincidentally, one
of Le Guin's novels and also another problem arising from gender
biases). Robin Roberts, an American literary historian,
addresses the link of these characters and what that means for our
society today. Roberts believes that men and women would like to be
equal, but are not equal. They should be fighting the same battle when
in fact they are fighting each other. She also debates that gender
equality has been a problem in every reach of feminism, not just in
feminist science fiction. Wolf also tackles this problem, "As she
explains in "Is Gender Necessary?", The Left Hand of Darkness
convinced her that if men and women were completely and genuinely equal
in their social roles, equal legally and economically, equal in freedom,
in responsibility, and in self-esteem, ... our central problem would
not be the one it is now: the problem of exploitation—exploitation of
the woman, of the weak, of the earth' (p. 159)".
Science fiction criticism has come a long way from its defensive desire
to create a canon. All of these authors demonstrate that science
fiction criticism tackles the same questions as other literary
criticism: race, gender, and the politics of Feminism itself. Wolf
believes that evaluating primarily American texts, written over the past
one hundred and twenty years, these critics locate science fiction's
merits in its speculative possibilities. At the same time, however, all
note that the texts they analyze reflect the issues and concerns of the
historical period in which the literature was written. DeRose introduces
her article with, in effect, the same argument. She says, "the power of
women in Science Fiction has greatly depreciated in the past few
years".
Gender identity
Feminist
science fiction offers authors the opportunity to imagine worlds and
futures in which women are not bound by the standards, rules, and roles
that exist in reality. Rather, the genre creates a space in which the gender binary might be troubled and different sexualities may be explored.
As Anna Gilarek explains, issues of gender have been a part of
feminist discourse throughout the feminist movement, and the work of
authors such as Joanna Russ and Marge Piercy
explore and expose gender based oppression. Gilarek outlines two
approaches to social critique via Feminist SF: the use of fantastical
elements such as "invented worlds, planets, moons, and lands", used to
call attention to the ills of society by exaggerating them, or a more
straightforward approach, "relying on realist techniques to convey the
message about the deficiencies of our world and its social organization,
in particular the continued inequality of women".
There are many examples of redefined gender roles and gender identity
found in Feminist SF, ranging from the inversion of gendered oppression
to the amplification of gender stereotypes and tropes. In the short story "The Matter of Seggri", by Ursula Le Guin,
traditional gender roles are completely swapped. Men are relegated to
roles of athletes and prostitutes while women control the means of
production and have exclusive access to education. In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, gendered oppression is exaggerated in a dystopian
society in which women's rights are stripped away and fertile women are
relegated to the roles of handmaids who will bear children to further
the human race. New books continue the dystopian theme of women living
in a society which conforms to the wishes of men, at the expense of
women's rights and well-being, such as in Louise O'Neill's young adult novel Only Ever Yours.
In this work, females are no longer born naturally but are genetically
designed before birth to conform to the physical desires of men, then
placed in a school in which they are taught not to think (they are never
taught to read), and to focus on appearance until they are rated by
beauty on a scale at age sixteen, with the top ten becoming the brides
of elite men, the middle ten forced into concubinage, and the bottom ten
forced to continue their lives as instructors at the school in very
humiliating circumstances. At age forty, the women are euthanized. In
the post-apocalyptic novel, Gather the Daughters, by Jennie Melamed,
females living in an island society are sexually exploited from the
time they are girls, are forced to marry at adolescence, and after they
become grandmothers must commit suicide.
Over the decades, SF and feminist SF authors have taken different
approaches to criticizing gender and gendered society. Helen Merrick
outlines the transition from what Joanna Russ describes as the "Battle
of the Sexes" tradition to a more egalitarian or androgynous approach.
Also known as the "Dominant Woman" stories, the "Battle of the Sexes"
stories often present matriarchal
societies in which women have overcome their patriarchal oppressors and
have achieved dominance. These stories are representative of an anxiety
that perceives women's power as a threat to masculinity and the
heterosexual norm. As Merrick explains, "And whilst they may at least
hint at the vision of a more equal gendered social order, this
possibility is undermined by figuring female desire for greater equality
in terms of a (stereotypical) masculine drive for power and
domination." Examples of these types of stories, written in the 1920s
and 30s through the 50s, include Francis Steven's "Friend Island" and
Margaret Rupert's "Via the Hewitt Ray"; in 1978, Marion Zimmer Bradley released The Ruins of Isis, a novel about a futuristic matriarchy on a human colony planet where the men are extremely oppressed.
In the 1960s and 1970s, feminist SF authors shifted from the
"Battle of the Sexes" writing more egalitarian stories and stories that
sought to make the feminine more visible. Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness portrayed an androgynous society in which a world without gender could be imagined. In James Tiptree Jr.'s short story "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?", women are able to be seen in their full humanity due to the absence of men in a post-apocalyptic society. Joanna Russ's works, including "When it Changed" and The Female Man are other examples of exploring femininity
and a "deconstruction of the acceptable, liberal 'whole' woman towards a
multiple, shifting postmodernist sense of female 'selfhood'".
Comic books and graphic novels
Feminist science fiction is evidenced in the globally popular mediums of comic books, manga, and graphic novels. One of the first appearances of a strong female character was that of the superheroWonder Woman, co-created by husband and wife team William Moulton Marston and Elizabeth Holloway Marston. In December 1941, Wonder Woman came to life on the pages of All Star Comics, and in the intervening years has been reincarnated in from animated TV series to live-action films, with significant cultural impact. By the early 1960s, Marvel Comics
already contained some strong female characters, although they often
suffered from stereotypical female weakness such as fainting after
intense exertion. By the 1970s and 1980s, true female heroes started to emerge on the pages of comics. This was helped by the emergence of self-identified feminist writers including Ann Nocenti, Linda Fite, and Barbara Kesel.
As female visibility in comics increased, the "fainting heroine" type
began to fade into the past. However, some female comic book writers,
such as Gail Simone, believe that female characters are still relegated to plot devices (see Women in Refrigerators).
Feminism in science fiction shōjo manga has been a theme in the works of Moto Hagio among others, for whom the writings of Ursula K. Le Guin have been a major influence.
However, feminists have also created science fiction that directly engages with feminism beyond the creation of female action heroes.
Television and film have offered opportunities for expressing new ideas
about social structures and the ways feminists influence science.
Feminist science fiction provides a means to challenge the norms of
society and suggest new standards for how societies view gender.
The genre also deals with male/female categories, showing how female
roles can differ from feminine roles. Hence feminism influences the film
industry by creating new ways of exploring and looking at
masculinity/femininity and male/female roles. A contemporary example of feminist science fiction television can be found in Orphan Black, which deals with issues of reproductive justice, science, gender, and sexuality.
Fandom
By the 1970s, the science fiction community was confronting questions of feminism and sexism within science fiction culture itself. Multiple Hugo-winning fan writer and professor of literature Susan Wood and others organized the "feminist panel" at the 1976 World Science Fiction Convention against considerable resistance. Reactions to the appearance of feminists among fannish ranks led indirectly to the creation of A Women's APA and WisCon.
Feminist science fiction is sometimes taught at the university level to explore the role of social constructs in understanding gender.
Publications
In the 1970s, the first feminist science fiction publications were created. The most well-known are fanzines The Witch and the Chameleon (1974–1976) and Janus (1975–1980), which later became Aurora SF (Aurora Speculative Feminism) (1981–1987). Windhaven, A Journal of Feminist Science Fiction was published from 1977 to 1979 by Jessica Amanda Salmonson in Seattle.
Special issues of magazines linked to science fiction meetings were
also published at that moment, like the Khatru symposium's fanzine Women in Science Fiction in 1975.
Femspec is a feminist academic journal specializing in works that challenge gender through speculative genres, including science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, mythic explorations in poetry and post-modern fiction, and horror. There is a conscious multicultural focus of the journal, both in content and in the diverse makeup of its editorial group. The first issue came out in 1999 under the editorial direction of founder Batya Weinbaum, who is still the Editor-in-Chief. Femspec is still publishing as of 2021
and has brought over 1000 authors, critics and artists into print.
Having lost their academic home in May 2003, they increasingly cross
genres and print write-ups of all books and media received, as well as
of events that feature creative works that imaginatively challenge
gender such as intentional communities, performance events, and film festivals.
