Flasher est mortuus ; porro ago Utopia

Dr. Sparks referred our class to a chapter from Joanna Russ' "To Write Like a Woman: Essays on Feminism and Science Fiction." This chapter, entitled 'Amor Vincit Foeminam: The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction," provides a good grounding to understand James Tiptree's writings, but also to situate the collection of writings that make up the RCID Topias reading list.

I will point out a few things that I found particularly interesting in this piece, along with my reflections and responses.

Firstly, Russ points out that, in much of early science fiction treatments of the battle of the sexes, the situations in such works resulted from a "role reversal" in which the men's "Sacred Objects" (yes, in almost all cases these objects are conflated with the phallus) were commandeered by, or surrendered to, women. Russ sees this approach as "predictable."

Also seen as "predictable" in these works is the resulting dysfunction of women's control of these objects. The lesson, Russ holds, is that "women cannot handle power, ought not to have it, and cannot keep it. This is the natural order of things." (42) These two ideas serve to perpetuate a hegemonic zeitgeist of SciFi plot production.

It is against this hegemony that many of the authors on our list are responding/reacting/answering. It is against this hegemony that Russ particularly alludes to the work of James Tiptree (aka Alice Sheldon) as one which approaches the battle of the sexes differently, "both inverting some of its elements and commenting critically on others." (56) This work by Russ does serve to frame Tiptree for out readings, but also situates the work of our other authors.

Two works which are, in Russ' opinion, decidedly bad, benefit greatly from her scathing criticism. "The Battle against the Yukks," is supposed to be funny, Russ tells us, as if this would take away the appeal. It doesn't. Russ' explanation of the "perpetual blushing at the idea of Strange Thoughts" - and Mother's discovery that the frozen sperm supply had run out - almost beg for a reading. The criticism, in its denunciation, serves to entice - I mean, can it really be this ridiculous?

But Russ' comments on "Yukks" entices far less than her description of "Ecce Feminal." Women bikers juicing? (E9 - not 'roids.) And the leader is "Ripper Jack?" This sounds too bad to be missed! (If you explain movies like "Billy Jack" or "Smokey and the Bandit" well enough, even the most sophisticated film snob will be unable to resist such disasters.)

But - in Russ' criticism of "Ecce Feminal," she overlooks a possible subversion of the previously mentioned hegemony of SciFi writing convention. In this story, the man-killing, castrating, biker Ripper Jack falls in love and becomes a mother. But Russ never mentions any reversion of the Sacred Object to the Milquetoast man who fathers her child. (Unless Russ conflates, without laying any groundwork, either heterosexuality or "flowerprint blouse" with a re-subjugation of Jack as oppressed victim.)

Yes, these two works seem to be so bad as to be irresistible. Almost like a book that had such deliciously bad phrases of polemic overkill as "the only pure test case is a vagina acknowledging a godlike phallus." Oops, never mind, that was Russ herself. My bad.

But my notice of such a broad-brush statement may resonate with comments by Lewis Call in his "This Wondrous Death: Erotic Power in the Science Fiction of James Tiptree, Jr." Call notes that Russ may less than entirely comfortable with "Mama Come Home" because "it does not fit neatly into the theoretical framework of sex war feminism." (65) Hence my notice of the broad-brush treatment and tone of Russ may reflect a totalizing binary that Call hints at in his comments on Russ' either/or categorizations: "She observes that Tiptree's story divides women into two camps... and puts these two camps against one another." (65)

In his more nuanced treatment, Call allows for a complexity of reading (by the reader - and the characters,as well,) that supersedes set categorizations of either/or.