{"id":531,"date":"2012-10-27T17:36:23","date_gmt":"2012-10-27T15:36:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=531"},"modified":"2012-10-27T17:36:23","modified_gmt":"2012-10-27T15:36:23","slug":"two-thought-experiments-on-gender-ammonite-and-ethan-of-athos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2012\/10\/27\/two-thought-experiments-on-gender-ammonite-and-ethan-of-athos\/","title":{"rendered":"TWO THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS ON GENDER: AMMONITE<\/em> AND ETHAN OF ATHOS<\/em><\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

I read back-to-back Nicola Griffith\u2019s acclaimed Ammonite<\/em> (1993), just re-issued as an SF Masterwork, and Lois McMaster Bujold\u2019s Ethan of Athos<\/em> (1986), as part of my current search for sf novels with interesting ideas about gender. Back in January I was wondering here whether I\u2019d eventually write a paper on another one of them, David Brin\u2019s Glory Season<\/em>, and, well, it\u2019s done: I emailed the final version 2 days ago. In the end, that \u2018average\u2019 novel, as I called it, has ended up inspiring a very complex chain of thought about my misgivings about certain kinds of separatist sf feminist fiction. <\/p>\n

Brin lost the James Tiptree jr award for best sf fiction focused on gender issues to Griffith, and I really needed to check in which ways her work is superior. My conclusion is that it is not. Also, that humour does benefit this kind of speculative fiction.<\/p>\n

Ammonite<\/em> is so close to Ursula K. LeGuin\u2019s classic The Left Hand of Darkness<\/em> (1968) that I even wondered whether Griffith had the book at hand as she wrote, as a reference. In both cases, an anthropologist, risks his or her life to understand what is going on in a distant planet in which something quite odd connected with gender is happening. As any sf fan knows, LeGuin\u2019s male explorer, Genli Ai, is completely baffled by the fact that Gethenians are genderless until they enter \u2018kemmer\u2019 and become either male or female, depending on the sex their erotic partner triggers. I used to love LeGuin\u2019s book until I realised that she never contemplates same-sex unions. Maybe Griffith had the same problem, I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

The question is that her female anthropologist, Marghe Taishan, is sent to test in her own body a vaccine against the virus that has killed off all<\/em> the men (… and 20% of the women). Logically, she finds a new Herlandia, peopled only by women. It\u2019s true that Griffith\u2019s planet has a much larger variety of women characters than Charlotte Gilman Perkins\u2019s classic Herland (from her 1915 novel), and that she\u2019s very open about their lesbianism. It\u2019s also quite true that her women are all convincing in the tasks they carry out: I didn\u2019t miss male characters at all. What I totally disliked was that Griffith doesn\u2019t bother to explain why her sexist virus has killed all the men \u2013I found that narrative resource plain androphobic. I also disliked her \u2018magical\u2019 approach to reproduction. Genetic variety is achieved when the women fall into a mystic, visionary state in which they can manipulate the embryos in their partner\u2019s body, without surgery or lab work. Deep sigh… at the technophobic silliness of feminist pastoral sf.<\/p>\n

From what I\u2019ve read, Ethan of Athos<\/em> is possibly one of the worst novels by Lois McMaster Bujold, which is great, for that was my introduction to her work and I loved it. She exports the idea of the misogynistic monastery on mount Athos in Greece to an all-male planet, in which men can choose between celibacy or homosexuality. In this society men accumulate credits to be allowed to become fathers of sons gestated in artificial uteri. This patriarchal lifestyle depends, however, on the availability of ovaries on the interplanetary bio-market and is deeply threatened when someone tampers with Athos\u2019s most recent purchase. Ethan, a doctor in charge of one of the reproduction centres, is sent to find out what happened and to buy replacement ovaries. What follows is a highly entertaining, humorous adventure, as Ethan adapts to the fact that a woman (eeks!), and a mercenary to boot, has become his main aid in that mad quest for artificial reproduction. <\/p>\n

An Amazon reader wonders whether Bujold is homophobic in making her all-male planet misogynistic. I don\u2019t think so, although it\u2019s true that Ethan doesn\u2019t meet any other gay men outside Athos. I think that her target is, rather, gender separatism, as it leads to absurdly one-sided societies. Ethan himself realises that, after all, Athos is going to be conditioned for generations to come by the genes he\u2019s chosen for its new baby boys, as it has been already conditioned by those of the first woman who helped to start the experiment. In contrast, in Griffith\u2019s tale the erasure of men\u2019s genetic imprint and even presence is total. Neither planet, of course, can be a utopia for heterosexual women like myself.<\/p>\n

Possibly, what I enjoyed best in Bujold\u2019s tale is that she lets Athos be, and even gives Ethan an unexpected new lover. A more radical feminist \u2013and I have no doubt that she is a feminist indeed, considering her mercenary Elli Quinn\u2013 would have dismissed Athos altogether, but my impression is that Bujold\u2019s universe is big enough to encompass all kinds of gender choices, even a utopian patriarchal celibate\/gay world. Only this explains her heroine\u2019s own choices, ironic as they may be. In contrast, Griffith\u2019s world is completely humourless, as she takes the premise too seriously to consider its glaring faults, both as a lesbian paradise and as an androphobic hell.<\/p>\n

Now you choose… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I read back-to-back Nicola Griffith\u2019s acclaimed Ammonite (1993), just re-issued as an SF Masterwork, and Lois McMaster Bujold\u2019s Ethan of Athos (1986), as part of my current search for sf novels with interesting ideas about gender. Back in January I was wondering here whether I\u2019d eventually write a paper on another one of them, David […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[212],"class_list":["post-531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-fiction","tag-gender-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}