Cheryl Morgan asks what feminism is, and explores some of the various answers in a thoughtful post on her blog. The comments there are also full of interesting points (like that the wave model is not really ideal, for instance). One of the things that Cheryl brings up is the idea of intersectionality–that feminism shouldn’t be in opposition with anti-racist movements or LGBTQI rights movements. That’s definitely something that most of the OA membership seems to agree with, based on the way people interact on the mailing list. It’s one of the reasons why we try to point out works by and about people of all sorts of genders and racial identities, and not just works by and about gay white men. Not that there’s anything wrong with gay white men, mind you. As a group, we love work by and about them (have I mentioned lately that Hal Duncan writes awesome stories, one of which just won the Spectrum Award for short fiction? I have? Oh, right then). Just, personally, I want to see everyone represented, and I think other OA members do, too.

There’s a long road ahead of us, I’m afraid. Even though there are awesome things like the Tiptree Award (and The Carl Brandon Awards, and the Lammies, and the Spectrum, and…), there are still a lot of people who don’t recognize works that don’t fit into their idea of normality. Which sucks. A lot.

Nicola Griffith points this out over on her blog with a post about The Guardian’s Favourite SF Books list (of which, out of over 500 listed books, 18 are by women–slightly imbalanced?). On the heels of that post, Nicola calls for us to take the Joanna Russ Pledge.

“The single most important thing we (readers, writers, journalists, critics, publishers, editors, etc.) can do is talk about women writers whenever we talk about men. And if we honestly can’t think of women ‘good enough’ to match those men, then we should wonder aloud (or in print) why that is so.”

I’m going to go a step beyond, and say that we should be doing this for people of color and LGBTQI people as well. The way to become visible is to refuse invisibility.

Finally, talking of Joanna Russ, the awesome women of Galactic Suburbia (an Australian feminist SF podcast) are planning to have a big discussion of The Female Man and “When it Changed” in an upcoming episode. I mention this because it’s a great chance to read and listen and contribute to the conversation about feminism and queerness in SF. I’d like to see more open conversation about this spread all over the internet.

That’s it for this week. Next week will bring the June episode of the OA Podcast. In the meantime, please feel free to share your thoughts on feminism, SF, Joanna Russ, intersectionality, and other related topics in the comments here, on the google group, or by e-mailing me at julia@juliarios.com.

Katharine is currently a graduate student specializing in 18th century British Literature at the University of Texas in Austin, but her first novel, Alcestis, reflects her B.A. in Classical Studies from Smith College. Alcestis is a retelling of a Greek myth from the point of view of a woman who usually doesn’t get a voice. It explores the gender roles and sexual politics in Greek mythology, and the inherent power imbalance in relationships between mortals and gods.

Katharine has a short short in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #19, and She is currently working on another novel, Killingly. She identifies as bisexual, and appreciates the Outer Alliance for its ability to bring queer-friendly speculative fiction fans and writers together. In addition to her personal webpage, Katharine maintains a Twitter feed as @katharine_b. She lives with her husband and two cats.

***

OA: What made you decide to retell a Greek myth, and why this one in particular?

KB: I’ve always loved Greek mythology, but my desire to tell this story was a response to Euripides’ Alcestis, specifically. I knew the myth of Alcestis from the Rainer Maria Rilke poem, which I love — but it ends with Alcestis disappearing after she has chosen to go to the underworld in her husband Admetus’s place. I was outraged when I realized that, in most traditional versions of the myth, she’s then rescued by Heracles after three days in the underworld. I knew Alcestis was seen as a model wife because she’d sacrificed herself for her husband, but I hadn’t known that she’d been won back like a trophy so that the story would end happily. I wanted to retell the story in such a way that the basic facts would match the play’s narrative, but the tone of the story would be entirely different — to make it Alcestis’s story, to follow her into the underworld and see what happened to her there. Part of what happens to her, in this novel, is Persephone.

OA: Ancient Greek culture was full of male queerness, but we don’t usually hear all that much about the women. In Alcestis, it seems as though women may have the same kinds of homosexual attachments that men do, but that it is less socially acceptable. What’s your take on that?

KB: In my version of Mycenaean Greece, at least, women are simply considered less important, and in some ways less human than men (even classical Greek culture reflects this, I think). So I’m not sure that I’d say that female queerness in Alcestis’s society is less socially acceptable than male queerness — I think it’s more that any show of defiance or passion in a woman, any evidence that she considers her desires more important than the needs of men, is definitely frowned upon. I based this largely on the way women are treated in the Homeric epics; nobody cares what Penelope‘s feelings about waiting for Odysseus were, she’s simply expected to remain faithful or get slaughtered when he comes home.

OA: As a classics scholar, where would you advise a newcomer who enjoyed Alcestis to begin with Greek mythology?

KB: Well, this isn’t really very scholarly, but I began with the D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths when I was a kid, and I still think it’s stunning — it’s full of illustrations that will make you think of William Blake, just gorgeous bright colors. Beyond that, each of the big three Greek dramatists has his own specialty. If you like soap opera, read Aeschylus; if you like procedurals and believe in dramatic unity, Sophocles; if psychological realism in crazy circumstances is your thing, Euripides. (I’m a Euripides girl, myself, despite my irritation about his version of Alcestis’s story, but I see the appeal in the others, too.)

OA: You’re currently working on another novel, Killingly. Can you tell us anything more about that?

KB: Sure — it’s also a historical novel, but it’s set in 1890s New England, and concerns the disappearance of a student from Mt. Holyoke College just after it became a college rather than a seminary. I went to Smith, and I loved women’s college culture, so I’m looking forward to trying recreate the world of a late nineteenth century women’s college. I managed to get to Mt. Holyoke last June to do some archival research and found some amazing things; I’ve also been reading “college novels” from the turn of the century. My favorite so far is called A Sweet Girl Graduate. Seriously.

OA: You’ve got a pretty full plate. How do you balance your fiction writing time with your PhD work time and other life commitments? Do you have any tips for busy writers?

KB: I wish I were better at time management or had easily-applied tips to share! I think understanding your own working style is important — some people enjoy working on two or more projects at once, while others (like me) really need to focus on one thing at a time. I find that I tend to need to divide my time into chunks rather than managing multiple threads of work simultaneously; right now, I’m working on my dissertation, but once I have a draft of it finished, I’ll go back to working on Killingly. Of course, other administrative stuff always pops up, but I try to limit myself to one major project at a time.

***

Thanks, Katharine! Join us next Friday for another Spotlight, and in the meantime, check out Alcestis.

Books and bookstores

After 35 Years, Lambda Rising [bookstore] to Close (that is, in the January that’s just been).

Chris / M-Brane SF  reviews Wired Hard 4, an anthology of m/m erotica “packed with terrific speculative fiction”.

The Science Fiction for Lesbians Website “is a list of science fiction books with lesbian characters or by lesbian authors” (specifically excluding fantasy). The site is divided into categories for:

• Lesbian Authors
• Lesbian/Bi Female Characters
• Female/Gay Dominated Worlds
• Other Books of Interest

Politics and religion

Chris / M-Brane SF writes that [Senator Inhofe (R-OK)] needs to be removed from office regarding his involvement in Uganda and its anti-gay laws.

News worth celebrating: Fiji’s new decree says gay sex is now legal. The article quotes (among others) Christian church ministers both for and against the law change, and so I segue neatly into an essay describing the way Jesus affirmed a gay couple (from the Would Jesus Discriminate? collection extracted from The Children Are Free: Reexamining the Biblical Evidence on Same-sex Relationships by gay Christians Rev. Jeff Miner and John Tyler Connoley).

For more regular linkdumps, please let me know of any interesting links in comments, by email, on the Outer Alliance forum or bookmark them on delicious or diigo with tag “outeralliancelinks“.

Benjamin Solah reviews Tom Cho’s short story collection Look Who’s Morphing.

As part of a series on American women athletes, the Angry Black Woman writes about transgender athletes.

• Benjamin Solah also blogs about the recent media circus surrounding Caster Semenya.
• On the same topic, Chris / M-Brane SF says Do we ask if Michael Phelps is really a human male and not half fish?

Anna Caro writes City of Possibilities as part of New Zealand Speculative Fiction Blogging Week.

The Lambda Literary Foundation has announced changes in its board of trustees and its executive director position. These have coincided with a clarification of the Lambda Literary Award guidelines (see the guidelines at the LLF website).

Coming Out in Middle School in the New York Times explores the trend of gay and bisexual middle-schoolers increasingly being able to come out to friends, family, and adults at school. Benoit Denizet-Lewis talks to students, parents, and educators:

Though many of the parents I spoke to needed a period of adjustment before accepting their children’s announcement that they were gay or bisexual, others offered immediate and unequivocal support. “The biggest difference I’ve seen in the last 10 years isn’t with gay kids — it’s with their families,” says Dan Woog, an openly gay varsity boys’ soccer coach at Staples High School in Westport, Conn., who helped found a gay-straight alliance at his school in 1993. “Many parents just don’t assume anymore that their kids will have a sad, difficult life just because they’re gay.”

If you come across any links to share for next week’s linkdump, please post them to the Outer Alliance forum or bookmark them on delicious or diigo with tag “outeralliancelinks”.

McHugh continued:

There are no excuses for this omission. That it happens, and it was allowed to happen, speaks to the deeply cultured disregard for women’s opinion in the world. I see it every day. We are marginalised, silenced, side-lined, forgotten, conveniently dropped, patronised, under-represented, dismissed, subtly intimidated and ignored.

Indeed, sexism within horror and speculative fiction as a whole is an issue that is often overlooked. And if you look at the norms of the genre, it’s easy to see how gender roles with society are reflected in the genre.

One of the most obvious examples that come to mind are those of passive female victims in slasher films from the 90s such as Scream and Friday the 13th. In addition, I recently had a conversation with another writer about how horror has often fostered a sexist revulsion to women’s bodies, such as with the symbolism of menstrual blood in many books and movies.

The contradiction, of course, is that from Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein onward, women have made significant contributions to the horror genre. There are numerous female horror writers that easily match their male counterparts in their ability to scare and disturb their audiences. As David Barnett’s article in the Guardian points out, a quick visit to the book store easily demonstrate just how many women are writing horror.

While it’s still shocking that such an oversight happened, it is a sobering reminder for speculative fiction writers, as well. Sexism and homophobia are deep-seeded in our culture, and there is much work to be done to challenge these norms within the genre.

Benjamin Solah is a Marxist horror writer from Melbourne, Australia. He blogs his thoughts on writing and politics, including on gender and sexuality, and you can find these and other articles at Benjamin Solah, Marxist Horror Writer.