Sexism Visible

I am a science fiction fan, and I am a mystery fan, and I am also a fan of book deals, so I subscribe to the Amazon Kindle Daily Deals list.  When books are two or three bucks, you tend to be open to trying new things.

Or old ones.  I've had a tendency to purchase books by classic science fiction and mystery authors whose titles I remember seeing on the shelves of the used bookstore I worked at in Boston. Stuff that was popular in the 70s and 80s. The series about the rabbi detective; the series about the journalist with a cat; the wizard in spite of himself, and so on. Some of them are remarkably decent.  Certainly I was pleasantly surprised by the Dorothy Sayers mystery series and Agatha Christie.

Lately I have found, though, that any narrative pleasure is severely diminished by the rampant sexism in these old genre stories--even those written by women! Maybe it is the Me Too movement, or maybe I am just getting old(er) and (more) curmudgeonly.  I no longer have patience for characters who judge women by the attractiveness of their bare knees (or more erogenous features).

I am aware of the recent hullabaloo in the fantasy/science fiction fan universe over the increasing popularity and success of feminist, gender- and race-inclusive, and politically concerned work.  Such work has always been among my favorite (I'm thinking of Ursula K. LeGuin, here, but there are certainly others) and I am glad that more of it is being recognized now.

As for series like The Cat Who... and The Warlock in Spite of Himself, I'm just done.  I guess that stuff used to be invisible to me.  Maybe the impact of Me Too is that none of it is invisible anymore.

Boys Only

Victor and I were talking to a colleague this evening, and she mentioned that her family sells fireworks in Indiana and Ohio. It turns out that her brother, cousins, uncle, and father are all in the business.

She is an environmental scientist. Her sister is getting a PhD in biology at Brown. “Funny how the girls didn’t go into it,” Victor said.

She shrugged. “If I’d shown any interest when I was 11, I’m sure they would have welcomed me.”

Her family’s fireworks business extends beyond sales. Her brother and cousins design and execute public fireworks displays for municipalities and institutions. Does that sound fun, or what? She just shrugs.

Maybe pyromania is a guy thing. I think of how Victor gets so excited by fireworks—the prospect of them and then the detonation of them. To me they’re pretty enough, but typically my aversion to crowds is enough to keep me home or at the movies on July 4th. I’m not crazy about the noise, either. And lately I’ve started to think about how odd it is that we celebrate important occasions with the sights and sounds of conventional warfare.

Her father, retired, now travels to China with her uncle yearly to inspect plant practices and foster relationships with fireworks manufacturers. (Isn’t it funny that we’re buying fireworks from the folks who invented them more than a thousand years ago?) He asked her if she wanted him to bring anything back for her.

“I want to go to China,” she said.

“It’s good to want things,” he said.

Filed in: Gender