New reading list

Next week on Manfeels Park... (32)

Try pretty much any book by Sheri S. Tepper.

Yes. She is definitely pretty sexist, racist and religion and islamophobic, but she is a brilliant writer. Some of my favourite books. Her earlier ones are denser, more political and slower reads, whereas her later fiction is more streamlined, almost more cartoonish, but still with that incisive wit and humanity that pervades her book, with a complex sociological analysis of the network of oppressive forces that affect all our lives. Some would find the ‘ironic’ punishment rape and impregnation of several characters in The Fresco less funny than it is intended to be, even though the rape victims are male, and religious and anti-abortion, but part of her charm is her vituperative anger at those in charge of the oppressive institutions of our world, (men, white men, religion, muslims), and when she’s not having men say absurd things like “I’m anti-abortion because when we rape women we have to be able to make them have our babies” it’s a riotous read of the oppressed getting their own back on their oppressors.

Highly recommended: Gate to Women’s Country (great twist, makes a lot of sense if you want to end male violence), Gibbon’s Decline and Fall (fuck all those psychotic male religious fucks), the Family Tree (great environmental fable, on a re-read can’t believe I missed the twist the first time, am I stupid?), Grass (old school, dense, great read), The Companions (would you believe that all religious men are out to destroy the environment because they believe god gave it to us to exploit not to manage? This book is for you. Again one of her later and more cartoony books but still great)

She used to be good, but then she got… strange. The Revenants (if you can still find a copy) is beautiful. The True Game series is fun and quirky and only minimally preachy. Grass has an intriguing sense of mystery that pulled me through the whole book. I found Gibbon’s Decline to be unbearably preachy, and both The Visitor and Fresco made me want to throw the books against the wall with their simplistic, heavy-handed treatment of complex issues of gender and the environment. And this is coming from someone who’s both an environmentalist and a feminist! Singer from the Sea, one of her more recent works, is pretty good though.

TL:DR Tepper can be kind of hit and miss.

The only thing ‘baked’ here is anyone who can buy into such a specifically vague gush of bafflegab.

Made perfect sense to me.

[…] “New Reading List” (click link to see comic) – May 19 […]

I recommend the following partial list: Les Guérillères, Monique Wittig; A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century by Donna Haraway; The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir; Sexual Politics, Kate Millet; “Post-Binary Gender in SF: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie” by Alex Dally MacFarlane; “Post-Binary Gender in SF: Introduction” by Alex Dally MacFarlane; “Sexuality, Pornography, and Method: ‘Pleasure under Patriarchy by Catherine A. MacKinnon; “Androgyny and the Uncanny in Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice” by Kevin Palm; Against Our Will by Susan Brownmiller; Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity by Judith Butler; The Furies Lesbian/Feminist Monthly, Vol 1, 1972; Demarginalizing the Intersection ofRace and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics by Kimberle Crenshaw; Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color by Kimberle Crenshaw; “SEX, SOCIETY, AND THE FEMALE DILEMMA: A Dialogue between Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan,” Time Magazine, June 14, 1975; Intercourse by Andrea Dworkin; Woman Hating by Andrea Dworkin; Virginia Wolfe’s Essays: Sketching the Past by Elena Gualtieri; Judith Butler: Sexual politics, social change and the power of the performative by Gill Jagger; I Am Your Sister: COLLECTED AND UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS OF AUDRE LORDE Edited by RUDOLPH P. BYRD JOHNNETTA BETSCH COLE BEVERLY GUY-SHEFTALL; “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” by Audre Lorde; Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism by Daphne Patai; The Orwell Mystique: A Study in Male Ideology by Daphne Patai; RADICAL FEMINISM, WRITING, AND CRITICAL AGENCY: From Manifesto to Modem by Jacqueline Rhodes; Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie; Key Concepts in Feminist Theory and Research by Christina Hughes; Yes Means Yes Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti; The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone; No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women by Estelle Freedman; The Essential Feminist Reader by Estelle Freedman; The Female Man by Joanna Russ; Of Woman Born: Motherhood As Experience and Institution by Adrienne Rich; “It’s not a real heart, it’s a real artificial heart” by Ann Leckie; Friend Island by Francis Stevens; “‘We Have Always Fought’: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative” by Kameron Hurley; “Lucy: Why I’m Tired of Seeing White People on the Big Screen” by Olivia Cole; “When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like ‘Avatar’?” by Annlee Newitz; “A Much-Needed Primer on Cultural Appropriation” by Katie J. M. Baker; “So That Was Readercon” by John Chu; Patriarch’s Day – Part IV” by Laura Mixon; “Women Without Men: A Constantly Undermined Trope” by Alex Dally MacFarlane; “Mary Anne Mohanraj Gets You Up to Speed” Parts 1 and 2; “Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is” by John Scalzi; “Jim Hines, Recruiter of PoC” by Jim Hines; “The Diverse Editors List: a post-production essay” by Bogi Takács; “TERRAFORM, Erasure, and (how to break) Community Norms” by Sarah Wanenchak; “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh; Women Destroy Science Fiction/Lightspeed Magazine; “Set Truth on Stun: Reimagining an Anti-Oppressive SF/F” by Daniel Jose Older; “It’s time to take the white savior out of slavery narratives” by Daniel Jose Older; “Is ‘Game of Thrones’ Too White?” by Saladin Ahmed; Hild by Nicola Griffith; “Science fiction needs to reflect that the future is queer” by Damien Walter; How to Suppress Women’s Writing by Joanna Russ; The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction by Justine Larbalestier; “Sultana’s Dream” by Rokheya Shekhawat; “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love” by Rachel Swirsky; “Good Lesbian Science Fiction Novels” by Nicola Griffith; “The Most Mind-Expanding Lesbian Science Fiction Books” by Charlie Jane Anders

Thanks! Can we have links and ISBNs please? And some line breaks?

Okay, the following should have all the line breaks.

Les Guérillères, Monique Wittig;

A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century by Donna Haraway;

The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir;

Sexual Politics, Kate Millet;

“Post-Binary Gender in SF: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie” by Alex Dally MacFarlane;

“Post-Binary Gender in SF: Introduction” by Alex Dally MacFarlane;

“Sexuality, Pornography, and Method: ‘Pleasure under Patriarchy by Catherine A. MacKinnon;

“Androgyny and the Uncanny in Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice” by Kevin Palm;

Against Our Will by Susan Brownmiller;

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity by Judith Butler;

The Furies Lesbian/Feminist Monthly, Vol 1, 1972;

Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics by Kimberle Crenshaw;

Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color by Kimberle Crenshaw;

“SEX, SOCIETY, AND THE FEMALE DILEMMA: A Dialogue between Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan,” Time Magazine, June 14, 1975;

Intercourse by Andrea Dworkin;

Woman Hating by Andrea Dworkin;

Virginia Wolfe’s Essays: Sketching the Past by Elena Gualtieri;

Judith Butler: Sexual politics, social change and the power of the performative by Gill Jagger;

I Am Your Sister: COLLECTED AND UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS OF AUDRE LORDE Edited by RUDOLPH P. BYRD JOHNNETTA BETSCH COLE BEVERLY GUY-SHEFTALL;

“The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” by Audre Lorde;

Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism by Daphne Patai;

The Orwell Mystique: A Study in Male Ideology by Daphne Patai;

RADICAL FEMINISM, WRITING, AND CRITICAL AGENCY: From Manifesto to Modem by Jacqueline Rhodes;

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie;

Key Concepts in Feminist Theory and Research by Christina Hughes;

Yes Means Yes Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti;

The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone;

No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women by Estelle Freedman;

The Essential Feminist Reader by Estelle Freedman;

The Female Man by Joanna Russ;

Of Woman Born: Motherhood As Experience and Institution by Adrienne Rich;

“It’s not a real heart, it’s a real artificial heart” by Ann Leckie; Friend Island by Francis Stevens;

“‘We Have Always Fought’: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative” by Kameron Hurley;

“Lucy: Why I’m Tired of Seeing White People on the Big Screen” by Olivia Cole;

“When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like ‘Avatar’?” by Annlee Newitz;

“A Much-Needed Primer on Cultural Appropriation” by Katie J. M. Baker;

“So That Was Readercon” by John Chu;

Patriarch’s Day – Part IV” by Laura Mixon;

“Women Without Men: A Constantly Undermined Trope” by Alex Dally MacFarlane;

“Mary Anne Mohanraj Gets You Up to Speed” Parts 1 and 2;

“Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is” by John Scalzi;

“Jim Hines, Recruiter of PoC” by Jim Hines;

“The Diverse Editors List: a post-production essay” by Bogi Takács;

“TERRAFORM, Erasure, and (how to break) Community Norms” by Sarah Wanenchak;

“White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh; Women Destroy Science Fiction/Lightspeed Magazine;

“Set Truth on Stun: Reimagining an Anti-Oppressive SF/F” by Daniel Jose Older;

“It’s time to take the white savior out of slavery narratives” by Daniel Jose Older;

“Is ‘Game of Thrones’ Too White?” by Saladin Ahmed; Hild by Nicola Griffith;

“Science fiction needs to reflect that the future is queer” by Damien Walter;

How to Suppress Women’s Writing by Joanna Russ;

The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction by Justine Larbalestier;

“Sultana’s Dream” by Rokheya Shekhawat;

“If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love” by Rachel Swirsky;

“Good Lesbian Science Fiction Novels” by Nicola Griffith;

“The Most Mind-Expanding Lesbian Science Fiction Books” by Charlie Jane Anders

You’re gonna kick yourself, ’cause after all those attempts you still missed a couple of line breaks 😛

Yeah… I missed three… But I give up. The list should be readable enough.

Sadly only drawing attention to the fact that precious few of the works on it are actually SFF fiction. Most of them appear to be treatises or blog posts… that everyone’s already read.

Not necessarily. And polemics can be interesting too, y’know. 🙂

Yeah, unfortunately I’ve already read most of these, and at a glance it looks like only three of them are sf/f fiction. Which is too bad, because I’m always looking for more recommendations!

Thank you so much, Mr. May! I think you’ve just made my reading list for the next year. 🙂

I drew attention to what I wanted to, namely the irony that the bizarre lingo and ideas you objected to and attempted to satirize come not from me but from your own ideology, and that I know quite a bit more about it than you do. Judith Butler is for a fact bafflegab. In effect you satirized yourselves, Judith Butler, Charlotte Bunch, Ann Leckie and Alex MacFarlane. If you want to portray confused manfeels you’ll have to do a better job. The funny part is you not only object to yourselves but find it weird, stupid and funny enough to make a comic about it. I have an idea for a comic: Use text from Woman Hating.

Dworkin devotes an entire chapter to the subject called “Gynocide: The Witches” which takes up one-sixth of the book’s actual text. In that chapter Dworkin claims a society of “neolithic” “matriarchal” “fairies” existed in England into the 17th century who were “sorcerers.” Dworkin further suggests the women being persecuted actually were witches in possession of “esoteric magic.” Of these “covens” Dworkin writes “There may have been an actual continental organization with one all-powerful head.” Upon a “neophyte” joining “she no doubt also learned the secrets of medicine, drugs, telepathy, and simple sanitation, which would have considerably improved all aspects of her earthly existence.” Telepathy would’ve indeed been a boon in medieval Europe, particularly in reading the minds of men about to burn you at the stake. I’m actually not surprised medieval Europeans would kill telepathic witches on sight who were in possession of magic and who hung out with a “fairy race” of sorcerers which “concealed their dwellings in mounds half hidden in the ground.” That would scare the crap out of me.

Dworkin finishes “Annihilated with the 9 million was a whole culture, woman-centered, nature-centered —all of their knowledge is gone, all of their knowing is destroyed.” So they actually were witches. Given that, I’m not surprised a patriarchy arose to protect us from a coalition of matriarchal Hobbit-sorcerers and flying mind-reading sorceresses. For all I know they were vampires as well. As Dworkin writes, “A lot of knowledge disappears with 9 million people” to which I say thank God for that.

A blurb by Audre Lorde on the back of Woman Hating goes “To see where we are going we must understand where we have been. Woman Hating is a much needed and long overdue addition toward that understanding.” Lorde apparently thought Lord of the Rings was real. That wouldn’t surprise me given she thought white man-phobic radical feminists were “tools of a racist patriarchy.”

Given such facts as feminists successfully ditching Jonathan Ross from the Hugos, hounding 3 people out of gigs at the SFWA bulletin, Hurley’s 2 Hugos for an imaginary feminist event, now 3 successive SFWA intersectional presidents, getting the SFF-less Hild a nomination and Ancillary Justice awards sweeps, the idea this ideology isn’t baked into the length and breadth of SFF’s core institutions is ridiculous.

Just let me know anytime you want your own ideology mansplained to you. Satire is a double-edged sword. As they say, you can’t make this stuff up and I appreciate you making my own case for me, signal boosting it, and taking Flint and Glyer down when they attempted to do that courtesy for me.

You know, sir, just to quote the Honorable Eric Flint:

So. Fucking. What.

So this: the internet’s forever, and you’ve been had, along with Comrade Flint and Prounoun Glyer.

I don’t know how to tell you this (and I mean that literally — I don’t know how one would go about getting through to you on this point), but what was being satirized is the fact that you haven’t the faintest idea what the hell you’re talking about. And that you’re very, very scared of any kind of thinking that doesn’t seek to uphold the status quo.

What’s more of a bald-faced lie than telling someone who’s read all that insane stuff they don’t know what they’re talking about? For some reason the fact I do know that material frightens you. That’s no surprise coming from a trigger warning cult afraid of clouds passing over the sun. If I ever debated you, Flint or anyone else in the SFF community on this material I’d slam them.

“Rommel, you magnificent bastard! I read your book!”

Hahahah.

What’s more of a bald-faced lie than telling someone who’s read all that insane stuff they don’t know what they’re talking about?

Reading and understanding are two very different things.

Otto: Apes don’t read philosophy.

Wanda: Yes they do, Otto. They just don’t understand it. Now let me correct you on a couple of things, OK? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not “Every man for himself.” And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up.

Do you actually listen to yourself speak, or do you just drift in and out?

Seriously. I’m concerned for you. These feeling of persecution and alienation, around when did they begin? Do you tend to preemptively attack others when feeling threatened? Do you spend much of your time dwelling on past slights or holding grudges? Do you feel as though you are able to sense patterns and plots meant to target you?

Bots can hear themselves speak?

Oh my god, you’re adorable.

Okay, so real talk, I want on next year’s Puppy ballot. How do I do that? I promise to hate anyone I’m told to hate. Also, if I win I will decline the Hugo and pass it along to a more deserving man.

You, good sir, are a truly curious breed. I see in you a level of self-proclaimed intellect, yet you seem so utterly committed to tearing down the words and works of others without listening earnestly to their voices nor truly adding anything of substance to the conversation. I mean seriously. I think it’s cute that you claim to know more regarding Butler’s work than a vaguely defined second person pronoun. Please then explain to me the role of the petty sovereign in modern military (Here’s a hint, the answer is in Precarious Life, but I’m sure you knew that since you understand butler so well).

The fact that you claim to understand her at all and then in the same breath pronounce her work to be bafflegab is as ironic as it is hilarious. To call Butler bafflegab is to have read her work with you mind so firmly committed to already ‘de-bunking’ her analysis that I’m not sure there is much hope for you in your current paradigm of thought. No, her work is not easy to understand, but something tells me that when reading those authors who’s analysis is written for a general audience, you’d accuse them of not having “academic enough” arguments. Oh and guess what? Not every feminist author needs a mythical perfect argument. To believe anyone can hold up a golden chalice of truth is quite problematic (even more so if you believe yourself to be the one doing so). What each text does is add to an ever growing conversation, a conversation which you seem intent on ignoring by putting your hands over your ears and shouting “LALALALALALA.”

Yours appears to be an ideology that seems to hear the phrase “The arc of history is long yet it bends towards justice,” and think its meaning is “The arc of history is long, but we’ll get those cis-white-hetero-men eventually!”

Oh. James.

Nobody reads your posts.

A quick counterpoint:

Why should anyone give a shit?

Leslie Fish is an old pal of mine; a big-name SF fan, an SF filk-song singer and composer, pro-labor, pro-union (former Wobbly!) and pro-gun; she’s as individual an individual as I’ve been lucky enough to meet. Anyhow, she laughs at the SJW/MRA fights in fandom; she notes the long history of corruption of democratic forms, and she modestly suggests to both SJWs and MRAs that if they want her vote, then they can pay for her attending Worldcon.

Oh dear. Oh dear, dear, dear.

May, sweet boy, I’m very, very sorry that you feel your penis has in some way been threatened. But you know, it really hasn’t been.

I stopped writing fantasy after “Plainsong” in the late 1980s (trust me, May, you would loathe that one; the birth of a new god, but no worries because by the time the story begins, everyone like you has died in a plague, to make room for children and savants and sentient beings who are capable of actual, you know, tolerance). While my husband and I, as proprietors of a small press, do publish some fantasy – try Roz Kaveney’s brilliant Rhapsody of Blood quartet, absolutely epic lesbian fantasy, with a paragraph-long endorsement blurb from Neil Gaiman on the cover – I stay far away from the awards stuff. I’d far rather watch it from outside, laugh and laugh and laugh, and write about it afterwards.

But really, your level of mansplaining is breathtaking in its idiocy.

Now, please, do go and have a soothing natter with your nether regions and tell them to calm down. Offer them a nice cup of tea. Because really, they’re under no sort of threat and ’tis pity you’re too thick-skulled to accept that.

Bah.

I have to disagree with Deborah … subjecting your nethers to a hot cup of tea isn’t at all soothing or calming, don’t ask me how I know!

Tanya Huff is a fun SFF writer I can recommend. She’s actually written heroic fantasy, the Quarters series, where she decided that since she was creating the world herself, she could put in gender equality and leave out homophobia. So jobs are equally divided between women and men, most people are bisexual without its being a big deal, and there’s rather a nice focus on male parenting too. You still get magic and excitement and good plotting and so forth. There was never any reason why all of that had to be set in a sexist, homophobic universe. Some male readers have been known to whine that the pregnant heroine nips to the toilet too often. The poor dears, it must be awful to have to hear what it’s like to be pregnant, just when they thought they were safe in their nice little male-dominated fantasy world.

Her Keeper series, urban fantasy this time, is also fab. I think it may be considered YA, the protagonists are certainly youngish, and there is a hilarious scene in the third book where two teenage lesbians resist the forces of evil by snarking about tampons. I can copy it in if people want. Also there are talking cats. Very opinionated talking cats. And elderly Greek gods who aren’t what they used to be, and oh just read it, it’s awesome.

The Blood series and the Smoke series are great too. I mean, how could you go wrong when you start with the vampire bastard son of Henry VIII who writes romance novels? More urban fantasy, detective stuff, once again with bi and gay characters, and polyamory too. At one point there’s a wizard from another world who works in special effects on TV, and she does divination by using spider solitaire.

The Valor series is about space marines, didn’t really do it for me but a friend of mine loves it.

Another thing I really like about Huff is that she explores disability in her books, and does it well. That’s far too rare. You even get sexy disabled characters, huzzah.

[…] write a longer post, but by way of celebrating, here are two of my favourite feminist web comics: https://www.manfeels-park.com/comic/new-reading-list/ http://rebeccacohenart.tumblr.com/feminism Ashley Author Ashley MasonPosted on March 17, […]