I have some experience with revolutions, partly because Portugal never believes a thing worth doing is worth doing only once. I get PTSD at the sound of Green Acres because Porto had one reel in its local broadcast station. Green Acres. When Lisbon got cut off, they played it back to back. This meant that someone had taken over the main broadcasting station in Lisbon.
(Okay, here I should explain that Portugal had two broadcast stations. Yes, I had a deprived childhood. [Yes. I spelled that right. I’m quite sure it’s an I.] Only one of them broadcast during the day at all, and that limited hours. So usually my experience was come home from school and watch something on lunch break and… ack… Green Acres. I wonder who is in now.)
For those who wonder why I’m “obsessive about my Portuguese background” – I’m not, but this kind of childhood experiences mark a person. I think this is why I’ve always been fascinated by revolutions. The ones that go right. The ones that go wrong. And the ones that go very wrong.
I read obsessively about the French revolution, the American revolution, the Russian revolution, and other, less obvious, revolutions. Like… The industrial revolution, or even the agricultural revolution.
Societies don’t change easily. People don’t change easily. Societies are worse than that. They’re slow to change like dinosaurs whose signal has to travel from head to tail and if it’s in full careen, it’s going to take a while to stop, let alone turn around.
One of the things I’ve noticed, in recent times, is that revolutions have another issue, particularly social revolutions of the non-bloody kind. Knowing you’ve won. Knowing it’s now, not thirty or fifty or seventy years ago.
Often when I’m talking to people, particularly people of an academic bend, I find myself wondering what world they’re talking about. It’s the silly little things, like “Oh, a woman would never dare say/do that,” when I saw women do it just that morning. Or “the neighborhood will get upset if there’s a non married couple” – what, like that one, that one and, oh, yeah, that one?
I will grant you that every once in a while, one comes across a person or persons who seem to be a blast from the stereotypical past, but my kids schools’ have more trouble with unwanted pregnancies than with girls being sent home to put on a longer skirt.
One of these effects of “delayed realization you won” keeps annoying me. Lately there have been any number of women writers complaining that they’re not proportionally represented as science fiction writers. They’re not being taken seriously and this is because they have vaginas. Etc. etc. etc.
Now, I’ve been this field for ten years as a published author. First of all let me get out of the way that there are some prejudices in this field, usually evinced by people you wouldn’t expect. For instance, I was pushed rather strongly fantasyward, in part because I had the v word. (Yes, verve.) And a friend of mine who is a physicist, was told that she should write fantasy, not science fiction, because she was a woman and therefore had the heart of a fantasy writer. (To which Rebecca Lickiss answered that yes, but it was in a locked drawer, and besides the statute of limitations had expired.)
There are other, more subtle prejudices. Some people told me they never read women writers, because they can’t write action. Weirdly, when they read me, they have no problems. I don’t worry about it. I just wait till they come around.
And btw, any male writing in romance or a romance-germane field, like certain forms of urban fantasy gets the opposite pressure, I’m sure. It’s all part of no one having a perfect life, and other people having certain expectations. My husband, for instance, had trouble placing his space opera (still hasn’t) because it’s character development oriented. (Yes, he actually got rejected by someone who told him it read too much like Bujold. No, I’m not joking.)
However, claims that women are discriminated against in fantasy always make me laugh. And claims that women as writers are discriminated against make me laugh even harder. And then there’s the post at MGC (http://madgeniusclub.com/2011/09/13/gender-that-elephant-in-the-room )two days ago, and the comments – my Lord, the comments. Part of what got to me was seeing my friend Dave Freer getting attacked for making a perfectly reasonable and polite comment. Well, I was brought up to think part of my job was to give voice to those who didn’t have one, whether they be battered women in Portugal or silenced and demonized males in the US.
First let me establish there was a time I called myself a feminist. This is because I believed in the equality of women. I still do.
This doesn’t mean that women should be exactly the same as men. Or that they should behave exactly the same way. In fact, any such notions were pretty much dispelled by the time I came of age in the seventies. The average man and the average woman are very different creatures. And I strenuously object to such things as the fire fighters tests being rewritten so that you don’t need to do a fireman carry to pass. OTOH I heavily endorse any woman who is able to pass non “rewritten” tests being a fire fighter if she so wishes. And that’s because the median of anything is not the only person – there’s also the extremes. For instance, bad as I am at spacial reasoning (sad that) I am miles better than some males (okay, none that I’ve met, but I’m sure there are some. Maybe they were hit really hard on the head.) In fact I pretty much occupy the far outlier extremes of a bunch of categories (and I’m not saying which extreme.) As such, I am sympathetic with outliers. And I think letting people do what best suits them, without judgement, censure or barriers is best for everyone.
I believe in equality before the law, not equality of results.
I still believe the same things, but I’m not calling myself a feminist, partly because the word has gotten corrupted. A lot of people seem to think the only way to elevate women is to degrade men. Others seem to be on a permanent hunt for offense, including attacking perfectly innocent words – no, history does NOT mean his-story. Please, study some linguistics.
This is many flavors of wrong, for many reasons, but the main reason is that it leads to a sort of permanent revolution. This reminds me of when the French revolution had got rid of every aristocrat either through beheading or immigration and had started attacking as aristos people who could read. Or people who dressed better than the others. Or people who used the word “roi.”
This is the sign of a revolution that has become its own reason to exist, and which will consume its own partisans, until it all ends in a sea of blood or until it’s stopped at last by a “strong man” of some sort, and suppressed for good. And at that point no one complains, because, frankly, it’s a relief.
Part of what disturbs me about this is that the justification for the “permanent revolution” is that we “could lose all the gains tomorrow.” You know, like if we don’t jump behind the latest harebrained “offense” campaign, next thing you know we’ll end woman suffrage (and good riddance, women have suffered enough! – Yes, yes, it’s a joke. And yes, I’m aware there is no joking in feminism. Another reason I no longer use that word.)
But the advances are fragile in another way. Much as I hate to say this, women’s gains rest on two things – one of them is safe contraceptives. The other is a stable western civilization. (No, I’m not even going to argue that. You want to live anywhere else in the world, be my guest. I wouldn’t, though.) And both of them can be lost more easily than you think.
Western civilization can be demoralized and subverted from within by a contingent of males who feel like women exist to punish them. Males who have been treated as criminals or morons or both from kindergarten on. Males whose education and employment figures, if reversed (i.e. if women had the same stats men have in the US today) would be a real offense and a call for investigations and remedies. Males who, btw, have never discriminated against anyone (most of them, at least) and whose fathers and, for that matter probably grandfathers, never discriminated against anyone.
These males can very easily see how women are treated in the rest of the world and, if pushed enough, form a concerted effort to subvert the current rules of behavior. (And no they haven’t done it yet. They haven’t even THOUGHT of doing it, yet. Again, don’t get me started. I lived in a country that is Western but only just. I know what discrimination is better than most people my age or even slightly older.)
I love the women who say it’s just the way the pendulum is swinging and that it’s right for it to go to far in the direction of privileging women. Let me enlighten you – if this is a pendulum, it’s one that has men as its favorites. Men are physically stronger and more aggressive. Any devolution from civilization to barbarism, or even any prolonged disruption in the economy that, oh, say, interrupts the production of contraceptives, and men will have to be very, very good not to be in charge. And if you’ve been pushing your little pendulum with glee and joy, don’t be surprised if they push it as far as they can the other way, till you’re in a world out of your worst nightmares.
You’ve won the revolution. Do you know what the mark of a GOOD revolutionary is? He knows when to put down his musket and go back to his farm. He knows when to shake hands with his neighbor who was on the other side. He knows when to make his rule so just, so fair that no one would contemplate returning to the former rule.
And he does not look for counter revolutionaries under ever bush and hallucinate that the war is still ongoing. Because then they just lock him up and beg the old regime to take over once more. Or start looking around for a Bonaparte.
Since I and my sons and my potential grandsons and maybe even granddaughters have to live in this world too, I beg you to come to your senses.
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdT9oq7VBDA
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Don?t bang your head!
