Sexism Rampant in Science Fiction Fandom
Not long after I posted the story of the female religious sexist, here comes another one from the male perspective, this time not religious but fannish.
According to The Spearhead, science fiction is primarily a male form of entertainment. It’s about men doing things, being manly and generally being misogynists because they’re so much better than women. There was a time when that might have been true to some degree, back in the 1950s pulp era, but it certainly isn’t the case today, nor has it been any time in the past several decades. Science fiction has been far more liberated than fantasy, both in print, television and movies. In fantasy, you have sexist, fetishist dreck like John Norman’s Gor series, where the men are overwhelmingly manly and the women are just begging to submit to them.
One of the earliest science-fiction novels was written by Mary Shelley in 1818. Frankenstein is considered by many to be the very first in the science fiction genre. Women authors have been quite common, even if some of them have gone by male pen-names to hide their gender from a largely male-dominated readership. Andre Norton, C.L. Moore, Leigh Beckett, Ursula K. LeGuin, Joanna Russ and many, many more have appeared in print.
If you want to step back just to the 1970s, we have heroines like Ellen Ripley defeating the aliens in the sci-fi classic “Alien”. We can’t leave out Angelina Jolie’s Lara Croft in the “Tomb Raider” series of movies and games, Michelle Yeoh in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”, Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor in the “Terminator” series and heroines like Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Buffy on television. The list is long and distinguished and cannot be denied.
In fandom, much of what started the modern age of sci-fi fandom included women. One of the first Star Trek fan-stories back in the 1970s was written by Dianne Marchant and this helped lead many conventions in the mid-70s to address women in science fiction. There have been female-based fanzines, such as Janus, which was nominated for a Hugo award three times in the late 70s. In fact, there have been books written on the females that helped form science fiction fandom, such as Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-1965 by Eric Lief Davin. To say that science fiction has always been a boy’s club is to be ignorant of the history of sci-fi.
Yes, there was a time when sci-fi was more of a men’s club, but that time is long since gone and good riddance to it.
They then go on to complain about the Sci-Fi Channel (I will never call it Syfy) and what’s been done to it by Bonnie Hammer. While I certainly don’t condone the direction Hammer took, she was absolutely right that the channel needed to change and draw in more viewers. When she took it over, it was on the verge of bankruptcy, it was losing market share and needed a fresh direction. I can’t say that their current horror-centric direction is one I enjoy, it’s at the center of their change in name, but it’s certainly invigorated the channel and given them much better ratings than they’ve had in the past and let’s be honest, that’s what the television game is all about. Given a choice between changing focus to draw in more viewers, and it’s not just women but men as well, and going out of business, the former is always preferable to the latter. The reason Sci-Fi was losing viewers had nothing to do with the so-called “feminization” but because they weren’t showing anything anyone wanted to watch. For a channel that was founded on showing almost entirely old reruns, the explosion of television-on-DVD pretty much guaranteed it’s doom.
Now on to Battlestar Craptacular… I mean Galactica. I absolutely agree with the author that the show sucked rancid donkey balls, but it had nothing to do with feminization, it had to do with being dark, dreary and disgusting. I’ve written on this before. However, the show did have strong characters, both male and female and the whole whine-fest comes off as sour grapes. Even Dirk Benedict’s Lost in Castration piece is more about misplaced hetero-fanaticism, he’s got a stake in being remembered for Starbuck and faces being replaced by Stardoe. Likewise, Flash Gordon, which was an abyssmal disaster, had nothing to do with gender and everything to do with bad writing. It just wasn’t Flash Gordon, it bore none of the classic elements of Flash Gordon, it was a terrible show with the name “Flash Gordon” tacked on.
Sorry, but this is all a bunch of misogynist whining from someone who is apparently terrified of reality. Like it or not, pal, there are homosexuals in the world. Get used to it. They’re not going to go back into the closet like I’m sure you’d like them to. You’re going to have to deal with it. Sitting on your pathetic male-centric blog and whining about how horrible it is that you might catch cooties from women and the idea that two men might love each other might tempt you off the straight and narrow seems grossly immature.
Besides, isn’t there an old saying that the more you deny something, the more likely it is to be true? Ever notice how such screwballs like Fred Phelps spend all their time talking about how horrible homosexuality is? Most likely it’s because they’re hiding from their own homoerotic feelings. Anyone doubt it? Anyone?
In the end, this is bunk. Women have always been a part of science fiction and they always will be. Hiding behind the absurd notion that it’s ever been otherwise is denying reality. Maybe instead of pretending that science fiction is a men’s game (or a boy’s game according to some), you ought to actually embrace the wonderful contributions that women have made. Who knows, you might even get laid some day.
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