When did feminist science fiction become popular?
Science fiction
Forrest J Ackerman is credited with first using the term "Sci-Fi" (analogous to the then-trendy "hi-fi") in 1954. As science fiction entered popular culture, writers and fans active in the field came to associate the term with low-budget, low-tech "B-movies" and with low-quality pulp science fiction. By the 1970s, critics within the field such as Knight and Terry Carr were using "sci-fi" to distinguish hack-work from serious science fiction. Peter Nicholls writes that "SF" (or "sf") is "the preferred abbreviation within the community of sf writers and readers". Robert Heinlein found even "science fiction" insufficient and suggested the term speculative fiction to be used instead, which has continued to be applied to "serious" or "thoughtful" science fiction.
Feminist literature
Feminist science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction (abbreviated "SF") focused on theories that include feminist themes including but not limited to gender inequality, sexuality, race, economics, and reproduction. 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.
Feminist science fiction
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.
Feminist science fiction
Feminism has driven the creation of a considerable body of action-oriented science fiction with female protagonists: Wonder Woman (originally created in 1941) and "The Bionic Woman" during the time of the organized women's movement in the 1970s; "" and the "Alien tetralogy" in the 1980s; and "Xena, Warrior Princess", comic book character "Red Sonja", and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". 2001 science fiction TV series "Dark Angel" featured a powerful female protagonist, with gender roles between her and the main male character generally reversed.
Ecofiction
Up through the late 19th century, classics such as Herman Melville's "Moby Dick", Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", H.G. Wells' "The Island of Dr. Moreau", W.H. Hudson's "A Crystal Age", and Sarah Orne Jewett's "The White Heron and Other Stories" and "The Country of Pointed Firs", among many others, had eco-themes. In the 20th and 21st centuries, nature-related fiction evolved and continued, including eco-feminist fiction writers such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Mary Austin. Four "radical" authors also came on the scene: Jack London, D.H. Lawrence, B. Traven, and Upton Sinclair. Environmental science fiction also became popular from authors like Laurence Manning, George Orwell, William Golding, and Aldous Huxley. Regional environmentalists and authors, such as Zora Neale Hutson, William Faulkner, and John Steinbeck, also wrote about problems in their locales. Conservationists and environmentalists, such as Wallace Stegner and George R. Stewart, also contributed. J.R.R. Tolkien's mythology classics went down into history showing famous and iconic battles of industrialization vs. nature. Postwar ecofiction writers arrived too, such as science fiction authors who were cautionary about the environment: Clifford Simak, Jack Vance, Ray Bradbury, and Kurt Vonnegut, to name a few. Enter Peter Matthiessen and Edward Abbey, which Dwyer says are "arguably the most important and enduring new green voices to emerge in this period." And others, such as Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, and Michael McClure, represented "presentations of the nascent environmental consciousness of the Beat movement." [Ibid.]
Genre fiction
Although pre-dated by John Ruskin's "The King of the Golden River" in 1841, the history of the modern fantasy genre is generally said to begin with George MacDonald, the influential author of "The Princess and the Goblin" and "Phantastes" (1858). William Morris was a popular English poet who also wrote several fantasy novels during the latter part of the nineteenth century. Wilkie Collins' epistolary novel "The Moonstone" (1868), is generally considered the first detective novel in the English language, while "The Woman in White" is regarded as one of the finest sensation novels. H. G. Wells's (1866–1946) writing career began in the 1890s with science fiction novels like "The Time Machine" (1895), and "The War of the Worlds" (1898) which describes an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians, and Wells is seen, along with Frenchman Jules Verne (1828–1905), as a major figure in the development of the science fiction genre. He also wrote realistic fiction about the lower middle class in novels like "Kipps" (1905) and "The History of Mr Polly" (1910).
French science fiction
This period of decrease of French science fiction (abbreviated SF) is known to many as a "golden age" of English-language and particularly American science fiction. When French science fiction began reappearing strongly after World War II, it was the themes and styles of Anglophone science fiction which served as an inspiration for new works. The first genre magazine, "Fiction" – at first a translation of the American "Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction" – began appearing in 1953.
Single-gender world
There is a long tradition of female-only places in literature and mythology, starting with the Amazons and continuing into some examples of feminist utopias. In speculative fiction, female-only worlds have been imagined to come about, among other approaches, by the action of disease that wipes out men, along with the development of technological or mystical method that allow female parthenogenic reproduction. The resulting society is often shown to be utopian by feminist writers. Several influential feminist utopias of this sort were written in the 1970s; the most often studied examples include Joanna Russ's "The Female Man", Suzy McKee Charnas's "Walk to the End of the World" and "Motherlines", and Marge Piercy's "Woman on the Edge of Time". Utopias imagined by male authors have generally included equality between sexes, rather than separation. Female-only societies may be seen as an extreme type of a biased sex-ratio, another common SF theme.
The Women's Room
The Women's Room is the debut novel by American feminist author Marilyn French, published in 1977. It launched French as a major participant in the Feminist Movement and, while French states it is not autobiographical, the book reflects many autobiographical elements. For example, French, like the main character, Mira, was married and divorced, and then attended Harvard where she obtained a Ph.D. in English Literature. Despite the connection of "The Women's Room" to the Feminist Movement, French stated in a 1977 interview with "The New York Times": ""The Women's Room"" is not about the women's movement... but about women's lives today."
Feminist literary criticism
The history of feminist literary criticism is extensive, from classic works of nineteenth-century women authors such as George Eliot and Margaret Fuller to cutting-edge theoretical work in women's studies and gender studies by "third-wave" authors. Before the 1970s—in the first and second waves of feminism—feminist literary criticism was concerned with women's authorship and the representation of women's condition within literature; in particular the depiction of fictional female characters. In addition, feminist literary criticism is concerned with the exclusion of women from the literary canon, with theorists such as Lois Tyson suggesting that this is because the views of women authors are often not considered to be universal ones.
Soft science fiction
Carol McGuirk, in "Fiction 2000" (1992), states that the "soft school" of science fiction dominated the genre in the 1950s, with the beginning of the Cold War and an influx of new readers into the science fiction genre. The early members of the soft science fiction genre were Alfred Bester, Fritz Leiber, Ray Bradbury and James Blish, who were the first to make a "radical" break from the hard science fiction tradition and "take extrapolation explicitly inward", emphasising the characters and their characterisation. In calling out specific examples from this period, McGuirk describes Ursula K. Le Guin's 1969 novel "The Left Hand of Darkness" as "a soft SF classic". The New Wave movement in science fiction developed out of soft science fiction in the 1960s and 70s. The conte cruel was the standard narrative form of soft science fiction by the 1980s. During the 1980s cyberpunk developed from soft science fiction.
Janrae Frank
Her first published short story, "Wolves of Nakesht", appeared in the 1980 World Fantasy Award-winning anthology "Amazons!" (edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson). This story introduced her most famous character, Chimquar the Lionhawk, and featured what are arguably her central themes: gender ambiguity and women of martial puissance. Other contributions in this field include "Women Warriors and Earth Mothers" and "New Eves: Science Fiction About the Extraordinary Women of Today and Tomorrow", an anthology of stories which traced the contributions and history of women in science fiction from the 1920s on, decade by decade. This anthology has been used in many women's study courses on science fiction.
Feminist literary criticism
While the beginning of more mainstream feminist literary criticism is typically considered during second-wave feminism, there are multiple texts prior to that era that contributed greatly to the field. Feminist literary criticism can be traced back to medieval times, with some arguing that Geoffrey Chaucer's Wife of Bath could be an example of early feminist literally critics. Additionally, the period considered First wave feminism also contributed extensively to literature and women's presence within it. For example,1929's A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf is undoubtedly considered one of these formative texts. In it, Woolf argues that in order to write creatively and be critically successful, a woman must be able to own her own space and financial stability. And though the basis of the plot is around a Woolf speaking at a conference for women's literature, she speculates that there is still a long way to go for women and so-called 'women's issues' in creative space, especially based on the differences in educational quality Woolf observed between men and women.
Romance novel
While the literary fiction romance continued to develop in the 20th century, the new subgenre of genre fiction, which first developed in the 19th century, started to become more popular after the First World War. In 1919, E.M. Hull's novel "The Sheik" was published in the United Kingdom. The novel, which became hugely popular, was adapted into a movie (1921), which established star Rudolph Valentino as the top male actor of the time. The hero of this book was an iconic alpha male who kidnapped the heroine and won her admiration through his forceful actions. The novel was one of the first modern works to introduce the rape fantasy, a theme explored in Samuel Richardson's "Pamela" (1740). Although women were gaining more independence in life, publishers believed that readers would only accept premarital sex in the context of rape. In this novel and those that followed, the rape was depicted as more of a fantasy; the heroine is rarely if ever shown experiencing terror, stress, or trauma as a result.
Joanna Russ
The late 1960s and 1970s marked the beginnings of feminist SF scholarship—a field of inquiry that was all but created single-handedly by Russ, who contributed many essays on feminism and science fiction that appeared in journals such as "College English" and "Science Fiction Studies". She also contributed 25 reviews to the "Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction", covering more than 100 books of all genres. In their article "Learning the 'Prophet Business': The Merril-Russ Intersection," Newell and Tallentire described Russ as an "intelligent, tough-minded reviewer who routinely tempered harsh criticism with just the sort of faint praise she handed out to Judith Merril", who in turn was among the foremost editors and critics in American science fiction in the late 1960s. Russ was also described as a fearless, incisive, and radical person, whose writing was often characterized as acerbic and angry.
Player Piano (novel)
This satirical take on industrialization and the rhetoric of General Electric and the big corporations, which discussed arguments very topical in the postwar United States, was instead advertised by the publisher with the more innocuous and marketable label of "science fiction," a genre that was booming in mass popular culture in the 1950s. Vonnegut, surprised by that reception, wrote, "I learned from reviewers that I was a science-fiction author. I didn't know that." He was distressed because he felt that science fiction was shoved in a drawer which "many serious critics regularly mistake... for a urinal" because "[t]he feeling persists that no one can simultaneously be a respectable writer and understand how a refrigerator works."
Feminist science fiction
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'".
History of feminism
Modern feminism in Germany began during the Wilhelmine period (1888–1918) with feminists pressuring a range of traditional institutions, from universities to government, to open their doors to women. The organized German women's movement is widely attributed to writer and feminist Louise Otto-Peters (1819–1895). This movement culminated in women's suffrage in 1919. Later waves of feminists continued to ask for legal and social equality in public and family life. Alice Schwarzer is the most prominent contemporary German feminist.
Feminist children's literature
In the early 1990s several studies were carried out that showed an increase in equality in award-winning children's literature. The research found that only 11.1% of Caldecotts during 1967 to 1971 had female protagonist. During the years 1987 to 1991, however, 43.2% had main characters that were female. By the start of the twenty-first century, reverse-stereotyped roles in the protagonist were as popular as stereotyped roles during the late 1960s.
Fat feminism
Fat feminism and the related fat acceptance movement originated in the late 1960s, alongside second-wave feminism. During the late 1960's and 1970's, activists such as Sara Fishman, Dr. Franklin Igway, Judy Freespirit, Aldebaran, and Karen Jones, now known as Karen Stimson, emerged. In 1973, Fishman and Freespirit released "Fat Liberation Manifesto" which opposed size discrimination, describing it as sexism. Their movement was met with mixed reactions during the 1960's, the same decade that very thin models, such as Twiggy, became fashionable. Some of the feminists, such as Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda, who were active during the decade believed that removing traits of "femaleness" was necessary to gain entrance to a male-dominated society. This ideal would make removing feminine curves, making fat unfeminist. Despite this, activists continued to hold demonstrations and continued their course of action. When the fat feminists did not get support from National Organization for Women, they founded organizations to advocate size acceptance, such as Fat Underground (opened up by Judy Freespirit and Aldebaran), The Body Image Task Force (Santa Cruz) and The Body Positive. The first fat feminist book, "Fat is a Feminist Issue", by Susie Orbach was published in 1978.
Edwin Abbott Abbott
With the advent of modern science fiction from the 1950s to the present day, "Flatland" has seen a revival in popularity, especially among science fiction and cyberpunk fans. Many works have been inspired by the novella, including novel sequels and short films.
LGBT themes in speculative fiction
Before the 1960s, explicit sexuality of any kind was rare in speculative fiction, as the editors who controlled what was published attempted to protect their perceived key market of adolescent male readers. As the readership broadened, it became possible to include characters who were undisguised homosexuals, though these tended to be villains, and lesbians remained almost entirely unrepresented. In the 1960s, science fiction and fantasy began to reflect the changes prompted by the civil rights movement and the emergence of a counterculture. New wave and feminist science fiction authors realised cultures in which homosexuality, bisexuality and a variety of gender models were the norm, and in which sympathetic depictions of alternative sexuality were commonplace.
Feminist science fiction
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.
Sensation novel
The sensation novel, also sensation fiction, was a literary genre of fiction that achieved peak popularity in Great Britain in the 1860s and 1870s. Its literary forebears included the melodramatic novels and the Newgate novels, which focused on tales woven around criminal biographies; it also drew on the gothic and romantic genres of fiction. The genre's popularity was conjoined to an expanding book market and growth of a reading public, by-products of the Industrial Revolution. Whereas romance and realism had traditionally been contradictory modes of literature, they were brought together in sensation fiction. The sensation novelists commonly wrote stories that were allegorical and abstract; the abstract nature of the stories gave the authors room to explore scenarios that wrestled with the social anxieties of the Victorian era. The loss of identity is seen in many sensation fiction stories because this was a common social anxiety; in Britain, there was an increased use in record keeping and therefore people questioned the meaning and permanence of identity. The social anxiety regarding identity is reflected in novels such as "The Woman in White" and "Lady Audley's Secret".
Feminist 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.
Feminist children's literature
During the second half of the twentieth century, children's literature and the feminist movement made many improvements together. A currently accepted method of thought for children's literature criticism in the academic world came to life during the 1970s, the same time that the second wave of feminist theory became popular. Early in the decade, feminist critics like Kate Millett explained how good writing was based on a belief that being a white male was normal and anyone else was a deviation from the normal. At this time, many female characters in children's books "play dead or doormats (as in 'Snow White', 'Cinderella', and 'Sleeping Beauty') or are severely mutilated (as in 'The Little Mermaid')". Due to the second wave of feminism, gender roles in all of the classic fairy tales (such as those by Grimm, Andersen, and Perrault) were starting to be questioned. Female heroes of the time were also inadequate. The women were simply "men tricked out in drag" and had the same exact plotlines as the male heroes. The only difference was that instead of needing to be rescued, the heroines did the rescuing. More and more studies began emerging from children's literature. All the findings agreed that women were drastically underrepresented and given few options. Boys were overwhelmingly shown to be much more active and have adventures more frequently, while girls were passive and remained in the home with the adult women. Countless studies conducted over the years all had the same or similar results.
Sexual revolution in 1960s United States
Feminist movements combined with important literature such as Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique helped change peoples concepts of the woman’s role in relation to sex. In "The Feminine Mystique", Friedan tackles the issue of the domestic role of women in 1960s America and the feeling of dissatisfaction with it. Friedan believed that women should not conform to this popularized view of the feminine, (The Housewife) and that they should participate in, if not enjoy the act of sex. The book itself was very popular on college campuses, among the young and is synonymous with the counter-culture ethic. Its importance to 1960s feminism and the sexual revolution lies in that it created a new wave of thinking in regards to the domestic and sexual role of women in society
Romance novel
The genre continued to expand in the mid-to-late 1980s, as publishers realized that the more popular authors were often those who stretched the boundaries of the genre. A 1984 novel by LaVyrle Spencer featured an overweight, middle-aged hero who had to make drastic changes to his lifestyle to win the heroine, while a 1987 Dailey novel involved an ugly hero and a heroine who was searching for her birth mother. Jayne Ann Krentz's 1986 novel "Sweet Starfire" became the first futuristic romance, combining elements of traditional romance novels and science fiction. The relationships had also modernized: by the 1990s, it was rare to see a book that featured a man raping his future wife.
In the mid-to-late 1980s, contemporary romances began to feature women in more male-dominated jobs, such as offshore oil rigs and the space program. The age range of heroines also began to expand, so that books began to feature women who had already reached 30 and even 40. Heroes also changed, with some authors veering towards a more sensitive man. Despite the broadening of some aspects of the plot, other taboos remained, and publishers discouraged authors from writing about controversial subjects such as terrorism, warfare, and masculine sports. Romance novels began to contain more humor beginning in the 1990s, as Julie Garwood began introducing a great deal of humor into her historical romances.
Feminist Formations
Feminist Formations is a peer-reviewed academic journal established in 1988 as the NWSA Journal (also known as "The National Women's Studies Association Journal"); the name was changed beginning with the Spring 2010 issue. It publishes interdisciplinary and multicultural feminist scholarship in women's, gender, and sexuality studies linking feminist theory with teaching and activism. In addition to its essays focusing on feminist scholarship and its reviews of books, the journal regularly publishes special issues focused on topics especially important in the field of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies and also features vibrant cover art and poetry and cutting-edge feminist artists and poets. The journal is edited by Patti Duncan, a professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Oregon State University, and is published three times per year by the Johns Hopkins University Press.
Feminist pornography
Feminists have disputed pornography ever since the Women's Movement commenced, and the debate gained notorious vehemence throughout the Feminist Sex Wars of the 1980s. Although there is no specific production considered the primary paradigm of feminist porn, feminist porn originated in the 1980s. The contemporary feminist porn association acquired solemn momentum in the 2000s because of the Feminist Porn Awards (FPAs) by Good For Her in Toronto in 2006, which introduced feminist porn to society. The FPAs spread awareness about feminist porn amongst a broader audience, encouraged extra media exposure and assisted in uniting a community of filmmakers, performers, and fans. Feminist porn has various ideas and definitions.
Sex-positive movement
Sex-positive feminism, also known as pro-sex feminism, sex-radical feminism, or sexually liberal feminism, is a movement that began in the early 1980s. Some became involved in the sex-positive feminist movement in response to efforts by anti-pornography feminists, such as Catharine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, Robin Morgan and Dorchen Leidholdt, to put pornography at the center of a feminist explanation of women's oppression. This period of intense debate and acrimony between sex-positive and anti-pornography feminists during the early 1980s is often referred to as the "Feminist Sex Wars". Other sex-positive feminists became involved, not in opposition to other feminists, but in direct response to what they saw as patriarchal control of sexuality. Some authors who have advocated sex-positive feminism include Ellen Willis, Susie Bright, Patrick Califia, Gayle Rubin, Carol Queen, Avedon Carol, Tristan Taormino, Diana Cage, Nina Hartley, and Betty Dodson.
Feminist philosophy of science
The feminist Philosophy of science was born out of feminist science studies in the 1960s. It would however be the 1980s before Feminist Philosophy of Science would develop its own unique identity. One of the first and most important publications released was from a women’s academic journal called “Signs” with a piece titled: “Women, Science, and Society” This piece was published in August 1978 by Catherine Stimpson and Joan Burstyn. "This first collection of what today would be recognizable as "feminist science studies" featured scholarship in three areas: critiques of gender bias in science, history of women in science, and social science data and public policy considerations on the status of women in the science". These three topics have remained prominent issues in feminist science studies of modern day.
Sex and sexuality in speculative fiction
Feminist science fiction authors imagined cultures in which homo- and bisexuality and a variety of gender models are the norm. Joanna Russ's award-winning short story "When It Changed" (1972), portraying a female-only lesbian society that flourished without men, and her novel "The Female Man" (1975), were enormously influential. Russ was largely responsible for introducing radical lesbian feminism into science fiction.
Portrayal of women in American comics
Prior to the Silver age of comics, comic books of all genres were available, including romance, adventure, crime, science fiction and many others. This began to change in the late 1950s and continued into the 80s, and as the superhero genre grew, others shrunk. This also began the marginalization of female voices in comics. The portrayals of female characters and superheroes' were targeted towards a predominantly male demographic, rather than towards female readers. After decades of self-perpetuating male creators did not focus on what women wanted to read about, and therefore didn't try very hard to include female stories. Although many female superheroes were created and featured in comics, very few starred in their own series or achieved stand-alone success outside straightforward erotic works. Most female heroines in comic books were merely supporting characters; for example, the Wasp and the Invisible Girl were both introduced as team characters, fighting alongside male superheroes, and Batgirl and Catwoman both debuted as supporting characters in the Batman comics.Wonder Woman is the only female heroine studied who earned her own comic book title. It has been debated whether the perceived lack of female readership was due to male writers being uncomfortable with writing about or for women, or whether the comic book industry is male dominated due to actual lack of women's interest in comics.
History of feminism
During the 1920s, writers such as Clare Winger Harris and Gertrude Barrows Bennett published science fiction stories written from female perspectives and occasionally dealt with gender- and sexuality-based topics while popular 1920s and 30s pulp science fiction exaggerated masculinity alongside sexist portrayals of women. By the 1960s, science fiction combined sensationalism with political and technological critiques of society. With the advent of feminism, women's roles were questioned in this "subversive, mind expanding genre".
Viagens Interplanetarias
"Rogue Queen" in particular is important in the history of science fiction for breaking the genre's taboo on sexual themes, paving the way for more daring works by Philip José Farmer and others. Steven Silver speculated that "without "Rogue Queen" to lay the groundwork, it is possible that the anthropological science fiction of a later age, as well as its gender examinations, would not have occur[r]ed in the manner it did."
Feminist theory
Feminist theories first emerged as early as 1794 in publications such as "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" by Mary Wollstonecraft, "The Changing Woman", "Ain't I a Woman", "Speech after Arrest for Illegal Voting", and so on. "The Changing Woman" is a Navajo Myth that gave credit to a woman who, in the end, populated the world. In 1851, Sojourner Truth addressed women's rights issues through her publication, "Ain't I a Woman". Sojourner Truth addressed the issue of women having limited rights due to men's flawed perception of women. Truth argued that if a woman of color can perform tasks that were supposedly limited to men, then any woman of any color could perform those same tasks. After her arrest for illegally voting, Susan B. Anthony gave a speech within court in which she addressed the issues of language within the constitution documented in her publication, "Speech after Arrest for Illegal voting" in 1872. Anthony questioned the authoritative principles of the constitution and its male gendered language. She raised the question of why women are accountable to be punished under law but they cannot use the law for their own protection (women could not vote, own property, nor themselves in marriage). She also critiqued the constitution for its male gendered language and questioned why women should have to abide by laws that do not specify women.
Leigh Brackett
Brackett first published in her mid-20s; the science fiction story "Martian Quest" appeared in the February 1940 issue of "Astounding Science Fiction". Her earliest years as a writer (1940–42) were her most productive. Some of her stories have social themes, such as "The Citadel of Lost Ships" (1943), which considers the effects on the native cultures of alien worlds of Earth's expanding trade empire. During this period, she was also an active member of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFS), and participated in local science fiction fandom in other ways, including contributing to the second issue of "Pogo's STF-ETTE", an all-female science fiction fanzine (probably the first such).
Science fiction
Respected authors of main-stream literature have written science fiction. Mary Shelley wrote a number of science fiction novels including "Frankenstein", and is considered a major writer of the Romantic Age. Aldous Huxley’s "Brave New World" (1932) is often listed as one of England's most important novels, both for its criticism of modern culture and its prediction of future trends including reproductive technology and social engineering. Doris Lessing, who was later awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, wrote a series of SF novels, "Canopus in Argos", which depict the efforts of more advanced species and civilizations to influence those less advanced including humans on Earth. Kurt Vonnegut was a highly respected American author whose works contain science fiction premises or themes. Science fiction authors whose works are considered to be serious literature include Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke (especially for "Childhood's End"), and Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, writing under the name Cordwainer Smith.
Feminism
Feminist cinema, advocating or illustrating feminist perspectives, arose largely with the development of feminist film theory in the late '60s and early '70s. Women who were radicalized during the 1960s by political debate and sexual liberation; but the failure of radicalism to produce substantive change for women galvanized them to form consciousness-raising groups and set about analysing, from different perspectives, dominant cinema's construction of women. Differences were particularly marked between feminists on either side of the Atlantic. 1972 saw the first feminist film festivals in the U.S. and U.K. as well as the first feminist film journal, "Women and Film". Trailblazers from this period included Claire Johnston and Laura Mulvey, who also organized the Women's Event at the Edinburgh Film Festival. Other theorists making a powerful impact on feminist film include Teresa de Lauretis, Anneke Smelik and Kaja Silverman. Approaches in philosophy and psychoanalysis fuelled feminist film criticism, feminist independent film and feminist distribution.
Feminist film theory
The development of feminist film theory was influenced by second wave feminism and women's studies in the 1960s and 1970s. Initially in the United States in the early 1970s feminist film theory was generally based on sociological theory and focused on the function of female characters in film narratives or genres. Feminist film theory, such as Marjorie Rosen’s "Popcorn Venus: Women, Movies, and the American Dream" (1973) and Molly Haskell’s "From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in Movies" (1974) analyze the ways in which women are portrayed in film, and how this relates to a broader historical context. Additionally, feminist critiques also examine common stereotypes depicted in film, the extent to which the women were shown as active or passive, and the amount of screen time given to women.
Sex and sexuality in speculative fiction
As the readership for science fiction and fantasy began to age in the 1950s, writers were able to introduce more explicit sexuality into their work.
Feminist science fiction
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.
Feminist science fiction
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.
Feminist science fiction
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.
NEQUA or The Problem of the Ages
NEQUA or The Problem of the Ages, according to Reginald's Science Fiction & Fantasy Literature 1700–1974, is one of the first feminist science fiction books published in the United States. It was first serialized in the newspaper "Equity". Two editions were published in Topeka Kansas in 1900. The title page lists Jack Adams as the author. Jack Adams is a pseudonym.
Norma K. Hemming
Norma Kathleen Hemming (born September 1928 in Ilford, Essex, London, England – d. 4 July 1960 in Melbourne, Australia) was a British-Australian writer of science fiction and romance novels. She was Australia's first significant female science fiction writer. As N. K. Hemming published twenty stories in the 1950s, and also wrote and appeared in a series of plays that were performed at Australian science fiction conventions. Under the name Nerina Hilliard, she also wrote 8 romance novels for Mills & Boon. She is now commemorated by the Australian Science Fiction Foundation through the Norma K. Hemming Award, inaugurated at the World Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne in September 2010.
Feminist movement
The women’s movement became more popular in May 1968 when women began to read again, more widely, the book The Second Sex, written in 1949 by a defender of women’s rights, Simone de Beauvoir, (and translated into English for the first time in 1953; later translation 2009). De Beauvior's writing explained why it was difficult for talented women to become successful. The obstacles de Beauvoir enumerates include women’s inability to make as much money as men do in the same profession, women’s domestic responsibilities, society’s lack of support towards talented women, and women’s fear that success will lead to an annoyed husband or prevent them from even finding a husband at all. De Beauvoir also argues that woman lack ambition because of how they are raised. Girls are told to follow the duties of their mothers, whereas boys are told to exceed the accomplishments of their fathers. Along with other influences, Simone de Beauvoir’s work helped the feminist movement to erupt, causing the formation of Le Mouvement de Libération des Femmes (The Women’s Liberation Movement). This determined group of women wanted to turn these ideas into actions. Contributors to The Women’s Liberation Movement include Simone de Beauvoir, Christiane Rochefort, Christine Delphy and Anne Tristan. Through actions the women were able to get few equal rights for example right to education, right to work, and right to vote. One of the most important issues that The Women’s Liberation movement faced was the banning of abortion and contraception. The women saw this banning as a violation of women’s rights and were determined to fight it. Thus, the women made a declaration known as Le Manifeste de 343 which held signatures from 343 women admitting to having had an illegal abortion. The declaration got published in Le Nouvel Observateur and Le Monde, two French newspapers on 5 April 1971. The group gained support upon the publication. Women received the right to abort with the passing of the Veil Law in 1975.
Feminist literature
According to Elyce Rae Helford, "Science fiction and fantasy serve as important vehicles for feminist thought, particularly as bridges between theory and practice." Feminist science fiction is sometimes taught at the university level to explore the role of social constructs in understanding gender. Notable texts of this kind are Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Left Hand of Darkness" (1969), Joanna Russ' "The Female Man" (1970), Octavia Butler's "Kindred" (1979) and Margaret Atwood's "Handmaid's Tale" (1985).
Women in speculative fiction
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”, 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.
Feminist science fiction
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.
Female president of the United States in popular culture
Female presidents of the United States have often appeared in science-fiction novels. In the 1959 science-fiction novel "Alas, Babylon" by Pat Frank (the pen name of Harry Hart Frank) President Josephine Vannebuker-Brown, formerly the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, becomes president of the United States because she was the only member of the line of succession to survive nuclear war; this novel was one of the first apocalyptic novels of the nuclear age and consistently ranks in Amazon.com's Top 20 Science Fiction Short Stories list (which groups together short story collections and novels). Other science-fiction novels which feature female presidents of the United States include K.A. Applegate’s 2001-2003 series "Remnants", Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter’s 2005 "Sunstorm" and 2001 "The Light of Other Days", Jack McDevitt’s 1998 "Moonfall", Robert J. Sawyer’s 2013 "Red Planet Blues", John Shirley's 1985, 1988, and 1990 cyberpunk "Eclipse Trilogy" of novels, Allen Steele's 2002, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 "Coyote" series of novels, and Robert Anton Wilson’s 1979 "Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy" of novels.
Women in speculative fiction
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 both genders. However, speculative fiction, with science fiction in particular, has traditionally been viewed as a male-oriented genre.
History of US science fiction and fantasy magazines to 1950
Mainstream magazines began publishing science fiction after the war. Heinlein amazed fans and fellow writers when, Asimov recalled in 1969, "an undiluted science fiction story of his" appeared in "The Saturday Evening Post". Small science fiction magazines often lost experienced authors to mass-market publications like "Playboy" so did not benefit, Asimov said, "from the field's new-won respectability".
Scientific romance
Scientific romance is an archaic term for the genre of fiction now commonly known as science fiction. The term originated in the 1850s to describe both fiction and elements of scientific writing, but has since come to refer to the science fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, primarily that of Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle. In recent years, the term has come to be applied to science fiction written in a deliberately anachronistic style, as a homage to or pastiche of the original scientific romances.
Science fiction
In the 1960s and 1970s New Wave science fiction was known for its embrace of a high degree of experimentation, both in form and in content, and a highbrow and self-consciously "literary" or artistic sensibility. In 1961 "Solaris" by Stanisław Lem was published in Poland. The novel dealt with the theme of human limitations as its characters attempted to study a seemingly intelligent ocean on a newly discovered planet. 1965's "Dune" by Frank Herbert featured a much more complex and detailed imagined future society than had been common in science fiction before. In 1968 Philip K. Dick’s best-known novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" was published. It is the literary source of the film "Blade Runner". 1969's "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin was set on a planet in which the inhabitants have no fixed gender. It is one of the most influential examples of social science fiction, feminist science fiction, and anthropological science fiction.
Feminist science fiction
"Femspec" is a feminist academic journal specializing in speculative fiction, 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 the winter of 2014 and has brought over 500 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.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Gender and sexuality are prominent themes in a number of Le Guin's works. "The Left Hand of Darkness", published in 1969, was among the first books in the genre now known as feminist science fiction, and is the most famous examination of androgyny in science fiction. The story is set on the fictional planet of Gethen, whose inhabitants are ambisexual humans with no fixed gender identity, who adopt female or male sexual characteristics for brief periods of their sexual cycle. Which sex they adopt can depend on context and relationships. Gethen was portrayed as a society without war, as a result of this absence of fixed gender characteristics, and also without sexuality as a continuous factor in social relationships. Gethenian culture was explored in the novel through the eyes of an Terran, whose masculinity proves a barrier to cross-cultural communication. Outside the Hainish cycle, Le Guin's use of a female protagonist in "The Tombs of Atuan", published in 1971, was described as a "significant exploration of womanhood".
Science fiction on television
For decades, the majority of science fiction media fandom has been represented by males of all ages and for most of its modern existence, a fairly diverse racial demographic. The most highly publicized demographic for science fiction fans is the male adolescent; roughly the same demographic for American comic books. Female fans, while always present, were far fewer in number and less conspicuously present in fandom. With the rising popularity of fanzines, female fans became increasingly vocal. Starting in the 2000s (decade), genre series began to offer more prominent female characters. Many series featured women as the main characters with males as supporting characters. "True Blood" is an example. Also, such shows premises moved away from heroic action-adventure and focused more on characters and their relationships. This has caused the rising popularity of fanfiction, a large majority of which is categorized as slash fanfiction. Female fans comprise the majority of fanfiction writers.
Feminist literature
The widespread interest in women's writing is related to a general reassessment and expansion of the literary canon. Interest in post-colonial literatures, gay and lesbian literature, writing by people of colour, working people's writing, and the cultural productions of other historically marginalized groups has resulted in a whole scale expansion of what is considered "literature", and genres hitherto not regarded as "literary", such as children's writing, journals, letters, travel writing, and many others are now the subjects of scholarly interest. Most genres and subgenres have undergone a similar analysis, so literary studies has entered new territories such as the "female gothic" or women's science fiction.
Don't Bite the Sun
Tanith Lee wrote "Don’t Bite the Sun" in the early 1970s, and it represents the New Wave of science fiction, in which feminist writers played a substantial role. Fantastic fiction can be a way of describing an imperfect world that can provoke social change. Women writing science fiction as part of the New Wave “recuperate[d] female archetypal roles that have fallen into stereotypes; … recover[ed] a lost matriarchal tradition in myth and history … deal[t] explicitly with woman-centered issues such as rape and gender inequality … and … reenvision[ed] traditional fantasy from a feminized perspective of caring and community.” "Don't Bite the Sun" formed part of a projected trilogy (with "Drinking Sapphire Wine" and an unwritten third novel); such long novels and multibook series became increasingly common during the 1970s. "Don’t Bite the Sun" features considerable technology developed in the 1970s, including robots, game rooms and virtual reality, and compact computers.
Publication history of Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman was introduced in "All Star Comics" #8 (December 1941), during the era known to comics historians as the "Golden Age of Comic Books". Following this debut, she was featured in "Sensation Comics" #1 (January 1942), and six months later appeared in her own comic book series (Summer 1942). Wonder Woman took her place beside the extant superheroines or antiheroes Fantomah, Black Widow, Invisible Scarlet O'Neil, and Canada's Nelvana of the Northern Lights. Until his death in 1947, Dr. William Moulton Marston was credited with writing all of the Wonder Woman stories; however, later in life, he hired assistant Joye Hummel to ghostwrite stories for him. H. G. Peter penciled the book in a simplistic yet easily identifiable style.
Feminist science fiction
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 superhero Wonder 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").
Feminist science fiction
One common trend in feminist science fiction utopias is the existence of utopian worlds as single-gendered – most commonly female. 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.
Lesbian literature
The feminist movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s saw the development of a more politicized voice in lesbian literature and more mainstream acceptance of lesbian-themed literature that moved away from the 'tragic lesbian' theme that had dominated earlier works. A pioneering autobiographical novel of this era was the picaresque 1973 novel "Rubyfruit Jungle" by Rita Mae Brown, which became a national best-seller. Jill Johnston argued for lesbian separatism in her 1973 book "Lesbian Nation". In the 1970s, more voices of American lesbians of color began to be heard, including works by Audre Lorde, Jewelle Gomez, Paula Gunn Allen Cherrie Moraga, and Gloria Anzaldua. In France, Monique Wittig published "Les Guérillères", (The Women Warriors), which envisioned a lesbian-dominated world. Similarly, Joanna Russ's 1975 novel "The Female Man" contains an alternative universe inhabited solely by lesbians. The 1970s also saw the advent of feminist and LGBT publishing houses, such as Naiad Press, and literary magazines like "Sinister Wisdom", and "Conditions" which published lesbian works. Adrienne Rich and Judy Grahn were important poets and essayists of the era. "Patience and Sarah" by Alma Routsong, published under the pen name "Isabel Miller" in 1971, examined the historical confines of a romance between two 19th century women in a Boston Marriage.
Feminist science fiction
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."
Feminist science fiction
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.
Sheri S. Tepper
Sheri Stewart Tepper (July 16, 1929 – October 22, 2016) was an American writer of science fiction, horror and mystery novels. She is primarily known for her feminist science fiction, which explored themes of sociology, namely gender and equality, as well as theology and ecology. Often referred to as an eco-feminist of science fiction literature, Tepper personally preferred the label eco-humanist. Though the majority of her works operate in a world of fantastical imagery and metaphor, at the heart of her writing is real-world injustice and pain. She employed several pen names, including A. J. Orde, E. E. Horlak, and B. J. Oliphant during her lifetime.
Famous Fantastic Mysteries
By the early decades of the 20th century, science fiction (sf) stories were frequently seen in popular magazines. The Munsey Company, a major pulp magazine publisher, printed a great deal of science fiction in these years, but it was not until 1926 that "Amazing Stories", the first pulp magazine specializing in science fiction appeared. Munsey continued to print sf in "Argosy" during the 1930s, including stories such as Murray Leinster's "The War of the Purple Gas" and Arthur Leo Zagat's "Tomorrow", though they owned no magazines that specialized in science fiction. By the end of the 1930s science fiction was a growing market, with several new sf magazines launched in 1939. That year Munsey took advantage of science fiction's growing popularity by launching "Famous Fantastic Mysteries" as a vehicle for reprinting the most popular fantasy and sf stories from the Munsey magazines.
Feminist science fiction
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".
Aline Valek
In one of her interviews, Valek explains that science fiction can be a tool used by feminist writers to raise questions about gender roles, transphobia, race, and sexuality. Within feminist science fiction, Valek and Lady Sybylla organized a collection of ten short stories called "Universo Desconstruido". She claims that through this genre different points of view emerge and it contributes to bring reflection about how the world is and should be. According to Cranny-Francis, feminist science fiction is not a generic fiction with female protagonists. In fact, feminist writers can act as a political actors. Science fiction "may be a site for the allegorical description of social injustices displaced in time and/or place from the reader's own society, but still clearly recognizable as a critique of that society". In Universo Desconstruido, Valek also published a short story. In her tale – Eu, Incubadora – Valek imagines a society in which abortion is equivalent to murder and no women would be able to terminate a pregnancy under any circumstances. Diana, the main character, is judged in the court of law because she refuses the role of being a mother and transferred her unborn child to a machine which works as an incubator. In her judgement, questions about life, abortion, individual choice, women's body, freedom and gender roles are brought as an attempt to justify her decision against a male jury and authorities. Valek draws a parallel between the microcosm of Diana's judgment in court and the actual Brazilian society. Currently in Brazil, there is a growing effort by the religious, right wing politicians in parliament to restrict, even more, access to abortion. In this sense, Valek uses science fiction as a way to challenge phallocentric concepts of abortion and women's body which are used to propagate domination and inequality. She employs pop culture as a political tool and brings into this universe an actual debate which takes place in Brazilian society. Similarly, bell hooks (1994) talks about how important it is to bring a feminist discourse on the terrain of popular culture. In this domain, feminist ideas can be heard by a wider audience located outside of universities. She argues that if feminist ideas stay away from popular culture, we are responsible for an increase in hegemonic antifeminist discourse. In this sense, bell hooks talks about a feminist activism through pop culture which it can be seen through Valek work as a writer and editor.
The Female Man
Russ's novel refers to the problematic issues in the 1970s when the feminist movement became highly influential. Because "The Female Man" was written during the 1970s, the character Joanna's world is most similar to the world the author lived in. The novel also addresses the environmental movement as shown through Janet's utopian society. Though Janet's world is extremely technologically advanced, the women choose to live in agrarian societies. Whileaway forms an idealistic image of an organic environment where nature is preserved despite the radical development of technology.
Sex and sexuality in speculative fiction
Prior to the 1960s, explicit sexuality of any kind was not characteristic of genre speculative fiction due to the relatively high number of minors in the target audience. In the 1960s, science fiction and fantasy began to reflect the changes prompted by the civil rights movement and the emergence of a counterculture. New Wave and feminist science fiction authors imagined cultures in which a variety of gender models and atypical sexual relationships are the norm, and depictions of sex acts and alternative sexualities became commonplace.
Paranormal romance
The first futuristic romance to be marketed by a mainstream romance publisher, Jayne Ann Krentz's "Sweet Starfire", was published in 1986 and was a "classic road trip romance" which just happened to be set in a separate galaxy. This genre has become much more popular since 2000. Krentz attributes the popularity of this subgenre to the fact that the novels "are, at heart, classic historical romances that just happen to be set on other worlds".
The Women's Room
Critics of "The Women's Room" considered the novel too harsh on men, whereas its average women readers did not; the latter found French's writing correct in its assessment. French's novel was a turning point for feminist fiction. While non-fiction works, such as "The Feminine Mystique", were helping to recruit feminists, feminist fiction was still not widely read and was considered reading for only "hardcore" feminists. French's "The Women's Room" changed that, as shown by its wide reception and "New York Times" bestseller ranking.{9)
The Female Man
As the feminist movement began to gain attention, however, many regarded the novel as one of the most influential works in feminist literature and its wide acceptance heralded the start of feminist science fiction.
“A work of frightening power, but it is also a work of great fictional subtlety…it should appeal to all intelligent people who look for exciting ideation, crackling dialogue, provocative fictional games-playing in their reading.” – Douglas Barbour, Toronto Star
Feminist art
In the 1970s, society started to become open to change and people started to realize that there was a problem with the stereotypes of each gender. Feminist art became a popular way of addressing the social concerns of feminism that surfaced in the late 1960s to 1970s. The creation and publication of the first feminist magazine was published in 1972. "Ms. Magazine" was the first national magazine to make feminist voices prominent, make feminist ideas and beliefs available to the public, and support the works of feminist artists. Like the art world, the magazine used the media to spread the messages of feminism and draw attention to the lack of total gender equality in society. The co-founder of the magazine, Gloria Steinem, coined the famous quote, "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle", which demonstrates the power of independent women; this slogan was frequently used by activists.
Ms.
In 1969, in a lull during a WBAI-radio interview with "The Feminists" group, Michaels suggested the use of "Ms." A friend of Gloria Steinem heard the interview and suggested it as a title for her new magazine. The magazine "Ms." debuted on newsstands in January 1972, and its much-publicized name quickly led to widespread usage. In February 1972, the US Government Printing Office approved using "Ms." in official government documents. In 1976 Marvel Comics introduced a new superhero named Ms. Marvel, billing her as the "first feminist superhero".
Kate Chopin
It wasn't until Per Seyersted, a Norwegian professor and scholar, rediscovered her almost 70 years later that the general public began to really appreciate her work as essential Feminist and Southern literature from the 19th Century. Seyersted wrote that she "broke new ground in American Literature." According to Emily Toth, Kate Chopin's work rose in popularity and recognition during the 1970s due to themes of women venturing outside of the constraints set upon them by society, which appealed to people participating in feminist activism and the sexual revolution. She also argues that the works appealed to women in the 1960s, "a time when American women yearned to know about our feisty foremothers"." Academics and scholars began to put Chopin in the same feminist categories as Louisa May Alcott, Susan Warner, and Emily Dickinson. Parallels between Alcott and Chopin have been drawn to point out how both authors wrote about females who departed from their traditional roles by dreaming of or striving for independence and individual freedoms, also described as a dramatization of a woman's struggle for selfhood. A reviewer for "Choice Reviews" stated that it was ultimately a struggle doomed to failure because the patriarchal conventions of her society restricted her freedom. Karen Simons felt that this failed struggle was perfectly captured by the ending of the novel, where Edna Pontellier ends her life due to her realization that she cannot truly be both the traditional mother role and have a sense of her self as an individual at the same time but especially not during those times.
Feminist children's literature
Beginning in the 1960s, feminism began to appear in many forms of media because of the social changes taking place at the time. Feminists began to use children's books to spread a better understanding of feminism and the stereotypes of women. As children are a main target of the influential stereotypes of patriarchal mass media and important receptors of literature, they can be influenced by feminist literature to help abandon any learned stereotypes. Since second-wave feminism, children's literature has been influenced by feminist theory and ideals, and is still growing as an influential media source in literature in today's society.
Gender in speculative fiction
SF portrayals of future societies remained broadly patriarchal, and female characters continued to be gender stereotyped and relegated to standardised roles that supported the male protagonists. Early feminist SF visions of all-women utopias were inverted by pulp writers to tell cautionary tales about the "sex war", in which brave men had to rescue society from joyless and dictatorial women, usually to the satisfaction of both sexes. John W. Campbell's "Astounding Science Fiction" was unusual in its covers not depicting men with ray guns and women with large breasts. William Knoles wrote in his 1960 "Playboy" article on the era, "Girls of the Slime God", that
How to Suppress Women's Writing
Although Russ was an active feminist and one of the central contributors to the feminist science fiction scene during the late 1960s and 70s, "How to Suppress Women's Writing" marked a transition towards her focus on literary criticism. In the same decade, she went on to write an essay entitled "Recent Feminist Utopias," which was later published in 1995 as part of her book, "To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction".
Feminist movement
Although antecedents to feminism may be found far back before the 18th century, the seeds of the modern feminist movement were planted during the late part of that century. Christine de Pizan, a late medieval writer, was possibly the earliest feminist in the western tradition. She is believed to be the first woman to make a living out of writing. Feminist thought began to take a more substantial shape during the Enlightenment with such thinkers as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Marquis de Condorcet championing women's education. The first scientific society for women was founded in Middelburg, a city in the south of the Dutch republic, in 1785. Journals for women that focused on issues like science became popular during this period as well.
Gay literature
Science fiction and fantasy have traditionally been puritanical genres aimed at a male readership, and can be more restricted than non-genre literature by their conventions of characterisation and the effect that these conventions have on depictions of sexuality and gender. During the pulp magazine era (1920s-30s), explicit sexuality of any kind was rare in genre science fiction and fantasy. Then, according to Joanna Russ, in the more relaxed Golden Age of Science Fiction (1940s-50s) the genre "resolutely ignored the whole subject" of homosexuality. Some writers were able to introduce more explicit sexuality into their work as the readership for science fiction and fantasy began to age in the 1950s, however until the late 1960s few depicted alternative sexuality or revised gender roles, or openly investigated sexual questions. After the pushing back of boundaries in the 1960s and 70s, homosexuality gained much wider acceptance, and was often incorporated into otherwise conventional SF stories with little comment. By the 1980s, blatant homophobia was no longer considered acceptable to most readers. In Lois McMaster Bujold's "Ethan of Athos" (1986), the titular "unlikely hero" is gay obstetrician Dr. Ethan Urquhart, whose dangerous adventure alongside the first woman he has ever met presents both a future society where homosexuality is the norm and the lingering sexism and homophobia of our own world. "Uranian Worlds", by Eric Garber and Lyn Paleo, was compiled in 1983 and is an authoritative guide to science fiction literature featuring gay, lesbian, transgender, and related themes. The book covers science fiction literature published before 1990 (2nd edition, 1990), providing a short review and commentary on each piece.
Golden Age of Science Fiction
Asimov said that "The dropping of the atom bomb in 1945 made science fiction respectable" to the general public. He recalled in 1969 "I'll never forget the shock that rumbled through the entire world of science fiction fandom when ... Heinlein broke the 'slicks' barrier by having an undiluted science fiction story of his published in "The Saturday Evening Post"". The large, mainstream companies' entry into the science fiction book market around 1950 was similar to how they published crime fiction during World War II; authors no longer could only publish through magazines. Asimov said, however, that
Gabrielle Suchon
Suchon remained relatively undiscovered until the second revival of the Feminist Movement in the 1980s. Historians argue that Suchon's work did not gain significant popularity because male intellectuals discredited 'feminized' writing throughout the early modern era. In the 1980s, Suchon's life and work was studied by feminist historians and moral philosophers for the first time. It was not until the late 20th century that Suchon was established as an influential moral philosopher and feminist writer in the academic community.
Feminist businesses
The feminist mail-order magazine came from Great Britain around the 1970s and lasted until the 1990s. The collectives were notable for allowing women to take equal parts in the creation of the magazine in all areas including: copy typing, design, layout or interviewing. By allowing women the equal chance at learning, women were developing their creativity and gaining new skills. Women were allowed to fight back at the patriarchal system by voicing their opinions and allowing women who were excluded also have a platform. Excluded women during that time were black, lesbian, working class, or single mothers. Popular magazines at the time were Spare Rib, Scarlet Woman, Catcall, and Outwrite. The magazines were not afraid to comment about inequalities the women were facing or issues that needed to be addressed. Feminist activities were also talked about in the magazines creating networks, reformation, expressing opinions or attitudes relating to a certain topic. Mail-order magazines were a way for women to become educated on feminism and how to join the movement.
Zenna Henderson
Henderson was one of the first 203 female science fiction authors to publish in American science fiction magazines between 1926 and 1960. She never used a male pseudonym. In an essay on the increase in women authors of science fiction in 1950, Sam Merwin mentioned her as an up-and-coming woman SF writer. Her first story was published in "The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction" in 1951. Her work has been referred to as feminist, but perhaps more accurately is cited as pre-feminist. Some feminist critics disliked the gender stereotypes present in her fiction, though her work depicts middle-aged and old women as well as women's relationships. In an analysis of "Subcommittee," Farah Medlesohn examines how Henderson uses stereotypical gender roles to emphasize how feminine communication is conducive to peacemaking. In "Subcommittee," the wife of a general, Serena, befriends an alien mother and her child. Through their sharing of "women's things" like cooking and knitting, Serena finds out that the aliens need salt to continue their species. After hearing that peace negotiations are deteriorating, Serena interrupts a meeting with her revelation and a proposed solution. Unlike other popular science fiction at the time, which often centered around war with aliens, "Subcommittee" focuses on conflict resolution. The characters' gender roles enabled the ending plot twist, but were not the focus of speculation.
Gender novels
The 20th century was a significant time period of change and growth across the world, with movements such as feminism making their presence during the latter half of the century. This is reflected in the emergence of gender novels during this time period, one of the most important being Ursula Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness. These gender novels shed light on new concepts regarding the gender construct and revisioned new theories surrounding what gender actually means and how it impacts the human person.
Another quintessential gender novel that was produced in the 20th century is Le Guin's text, Left Hand of Darkness, which was published in 1969. Her book deals with whether gender constructs are in fact what constitutes a human being. To highlight just how entrenched the construct of gender is within society, she bases her entire novel on a planet where gender does not exist and where the androgynous race live in harmony. She imagined a world whose inhabitants have no permanent gender: their sexual roles are determined by context and express themselves only once every month. Le Guin effectively uses her novel to express her thoughts on the role gender and sexual stereotypes play in the way one acts, behaves and responds. ""He, after all, had no standards of manliness, of virility, to complicate his pride.”"
Le Guin's text focuses a lens on 1960s concerns and the concept of constructivism, which focuses on the idea that feminine attributes are created as a consequence of living in a patriarchal society. Her novel pictures this portrayal of a progressive gender construct where her depiction of the planet is a level playing field, equal for all peoples. This foundational novel was the first of its kind and one of the first texts to address the impacts of the construction of gender that have become entrenched throughout history, and throughout societies all over the world. It became the inspiration and springboard for many gender novels that were to come.
The 21st century brought about a number of changes, including more social movements and many philosophical schools of thought. Postmodernism, narcissism and revisionism are just a few movements that dominated literature and philosophical writings during this period. The rise in technology use and social media were also factors that had a significant impact on some of these phenomenal gender novels.
Women in speculative fiction
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".
Joan Nestle
Nestle began writing fiction in 1978, when a prolonged illness prevented her from teaching for a year. Her erotica focusing on butch and femme relationships made her a controversial figure during the feminist sex wars of the 1980s; members of Women Against Pornography called for censorship of her stories. In her political writings, Nestle, a self-identified femme, argued that contemporary feminism, in rejecting butch and femme identities, was asking her to repress an important part of herself. She said she "wanted people, especially lesbians, to see that the butch-femme relationship isn't just some negative heterosexual aping". Her writings on the subject were highly influential; Lillian Faderman describes her as the "midwife" to a revised view of butch and femme, and her 1992 anthology "The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader" became the standard work in its field.
Sex and sexuality in speculative fiction
By the late 1960s, science fiction and fantasy began to reflect the changes prompted by the civil rights movement and the emergence of a counterculture. Within the genres, these changes were incorporated into a movement called "the New Wave," a movement more skeptical of technology, more liberated socially, and more interested in stylistic experimentation. New Wave writers were more likely to claim an interest in "inner space" instead of outer space. They were less shy about explicit sexuality and more sympathetic to reconsiderations of gender roles and the social status of sexual minorities. Notable authors who often wrote on sexual themes included Joanna Russ, Thomas M. Disch, John Varley, James Tiptree, Jr., and Samuel R. Delany. Under the influence of New Wave editors and authors such as Michael Moorcock (editor of the influential "New Worlds" magazine) and Ursula K. Le Guin, sympathetic depictions of alternative sexuality and gender multiplied in science fiction and fantasy, becoming commonplace.
Susan Wood (literary scholar)
Wood discovered science fiction fandom while she was studying at Carleton University in the 1960s. Wood met fellow fan Mike Glicksohn of Toronto at Boskone VI in 1969. Wood and Glicksohn married in 1970 (she subsequently sometimes published as Susan Wood Glicksohn), and they published the fanzine "Energumen" together until 1973. "Energumen" won the 1973 Hugo for Best Fanzine. Wood and Glicksohn were co-guests of honor at the 1975 World Science Fiction Convention. Wood published a great deal of trenchant criticism of the field, both in fanzines and in more formal venues. She received three Hugo Awards for Best Fan Writer, in 1974, 1977, and 1981. In 1976 she was instrumental in organizing the first feminist panel at a science fiction convention, at MidAmericon (that year's WorldCon). The reaction to this helped lead to the founding of "A Women's APA" and of WisCon.
Golden Age of Science Fiction
It is harder to specify the end of the Golden Age of Science Fiction than its beginning, but several factors changed the market for magazine science fiction in the mid- and late 1950s. Most important was the rapid contraction of the pulp market: "Fantastic Adventures" and "Famous Fantastic Mysteries" folded in 1953, "Planet Stories, Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories" and "Beyond" in 1955, "Other Worlds" and "Science Fiction Quarterly" in 1957, "Imagination", "Imaginative Tales", and "Infinity" in 1958. In October 1957, the successful launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1 narrowed the gap between the real world and the world of science fiction, sending the west into a space race with the east. Asimov shifted to writing nonfiction he hoped would attract young minds to science, while Robert A. Heinlein became more dogmatic in expressing political and social views in his fiction. Emerging British writers like Brian W. Aldiss and J. G. Ballard cultivated a more literary style, indicating the direction other writers would soon pursue. Women writers, such as Joanna Russ and Judith Merril, emerged. When the leading Golden Age magazine, "Astounding Stories", changed its title to Analog Science Fiction and Fact in 1960, it was clear the Golden Age of Science Fiction was over.
Women in speculative fiction
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 GLBT issues in the pages of feminist publications.
History of science fiction
The development of American science fiction as a self-conscious genre dates in part from 1926, when Hugo Gernsback founded "Amazing Stories" magazine, which was devoted exclusively to science fiction stories. Though science fiction magazines had been published in Sweden and Germany before, "Amazing Stories" was the first English language magazine to solely publish science fiction. Since he is notable for having chosen the variant term "scientifiction" to describe this incipient genre, the stage in the genre's development, his name and the term "scientifiction" are often thought to be inextricably linked. Though Gernsback encouraged stories featuring scientific realism to educate his readers about scientific principles, such stories shared the pages with exciting stories with little basis in reality. Much of what Gernsback published was referred to as "gadget fiction", about what happens when someone makes a technological invention. Published in this and other pulp magazines with great and growing success, such scientifiction stories were not viewed as serious literature but as sensationalism. Nevertheless, a magazine devoted entirely to science fiction was a great boost to the public awareness of the scientific speculation story. "Amazing Stories" competed with several other pulp magazines, including "Weird Tales" (which primarily published fantasy stories), "Astounding Stories", and "Wonder Stories", throughout the 1930s. It was in the Gernsback era that science fiction fandom arose through the medium of the "Letters to the Editor" columns of "Amazing" and its competitors. In August 1928, Amazing Stories published Skylark of Space and Armageddon 2419 A.D., while Weird Tales published Edmond Hamilton's "Crashing Suns", all of which represented the birth of space opera.
Wiscon
WisCon or Wiscon, a Wisconsin science fiction convention, is the oldest, and often called the world's leading, feminist science fiction convention and conference. It was first held in Madison, Wisconsin in February 1977, after a group of fans attending the 1976 34th World Science Fiction Convention in Kansas City was inspired to organize a convention like WorldCon but with feminism as the dominant theme. The convention is held annually in May, during the four-day weekend of Memorial Day. Sponsored by the Society for the Furtherance and Study of Fantasy and Science Fiction, or "(SF)³", WisCon gathers together fans, writers, editors, publishers, scholars, and artists to discuss science fiction and fantasy, with emphasis on issues of feminism, gender, race, and class.
Feminism in the United States
Second-wave feminism in the United States began in the early 1960s. In 1963 Betty Friedan, influenced by "The Second Sex", wrote the bestselling book "The Feminine Mystique" in which she explicitly objected to the mainstream media image of women, stating that placing women at home limited their possibilities, and wasted talent and potential. The perfect nuclear family image depicted and strongly marketed at the time, she wrote, did not reflect happiness and was rather degrading for women. This book is widely credited with having begun second-wave feminism in the United States.
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
After centuries of disinterest due to her eccentricity, Margaret Cavendish became popular in the 1980s as she was rediscovered and analyzed from a modern feminist perspective; in that time, there have been nine book length critical studies of Cavendish, not including a biography that was written in 1957, which can be found here. There have been many attempts to justify her eccentricity with a historic lens. She has also gained fame as one of the first female science fiction writers, namely for her early utopian novel "The Blazing World". Her self insert character, named Margaret Cavendish, in "The Blazing World" is said to be one of the earliest examples of the modern Mary Sue trope. More recently, her plays have also been examined by the lens of Performance Studies, as they blur the lines between performance and literature, challenge gender identities, and upset gender norms. Additional analysis on Margaret Cavendish can be found here.
Counterculture of the 1960s
The role of women as full-time homemakers in industrial society was challenged in 1963, when US feminist Betty Friedan published "The Feminine Mystique", giving momentum to the women's movement and influencing what many called Second-wave feminism. Other activists, such as Gloria Steinem and Angela Davis, either organized, influenced, or educated many of a younger generation of women to endorse and expand feminist thought. Feminism gained further currency within the protest movements of the late 1960s, as women in movements such as Students for a Democratic Society rebelled against the "support" role they had been consigned to within the male-dominated New Left, as well as against manifestations and statements of sexism within some radical groups. The 1970 pamphlet "Women and Their Bodies", soon expanded into the 1971 book "Our Bodies, Ourselves", was particularly influential in bringing about the new feminist consciousness.
Feminist science fiction
Feminist science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction (abbreviated "SF") focused on theories that include feminist themes including but not limited to gender inequality, sexuality, race, economics, and reproduction. 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.
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.