# Old school SF sexism



## Nerds_feather (Jun 14, 2013)

Yes, we have progressed from this place (I'm looking at you, Mr. Isaac Asimov at age 18).


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## Victoria Silverwolf (Jun 14, 2013)

The Bad Old Days indeed.

I can also recall a similar debate among several folks in the SF communiy back in the 1970's when Joanna Russ made a plea for some kind of balance between male and female characters in SF, and no less than Poul Anderson (a fine writer, and probably not aware of any sexism in his attitude at the time) in an essay under the revealing title "Reply to a Lady" defended the relative lack of female characters in SF by saying that SF was a literature of ideas, and that therefore they were not needed.  The implication being that female characters in fiction exist only for love/sex interest.


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## David Evil Overlord (Aug 13, 2013)

Don't remember the title or author, but many years ago I read an SF story set in a space station/hospital. At one point, the male doctor told one of the female nurses not to worry her pretty little head, and to leave all that thinkin' stuff to the menfolk...


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## Vertigo (Aug 14, 2013)

Victoria, don't forget that in amongst Poul Anderson's fine works like Tau Zero, he also wrote those misogynistic Flandry masterpieces.... I might have enjoyed them thirty or forty years ago as a teen but I tried them a few years ago and they seriously stuck in my throat.


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## clovis-man (Aug 15, 2013)

I'm just starting to explore his output, but I get the idea that James H. Schmitz was something of an exception to the sexist times he wrote in.


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## J Riff (Aug 16, 2013)

I disagree with the whole premise. Primarily they were adventure stories for young males. Girls had Trixie Belden or whoever, hardly any guy stuff in there. Nothing has changed, in fact the quality of writing seems to be down overall, and is a bit prissy if ya ask me. - J (HeMan) Riff


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## jastius (Oct 19, 2013)

so todays equivalent would be my little pony and pokemon?


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## Aleph (Nov 5, 2013)

I can buy female-free SF plots in environments where there physically aren't any, like a monastery cut off from the world, or an Arctic station. 

I disagree immensely with "Trixie Belden Had No Boys", Trixie's almost-twin brother had a large part in the books, and there were other menfolk (I can't remember, but it was certainly not a nunnery). And the adventures were just as life threatening, even though they were written in contemporary USA. 

But in some of these old SF stories you would struggle to find a named female character. STRUGGLE. I can guarantee that in some kind of world-wide destruction scenario, 51% of the population aren't sitting at home knitting. ;-P


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## Teresa Edgerton (Nov 6, 2013)

Aleph said:


> I disagree immensely with "Trixie Belden Had No Boys"



Yes, I had to laugh when I read that.  There were her brothers Mart and Brian who played a large part in the stories, and their neighbor Jim.  Not to mention a lot of supporting characters.

Nancy Drew and some of the others would have been a better example of books written for girls where the boys and young men were hardly there except as a romantic interest.

However, none of these were SF, so I don't see the relevance, since SF is (allegedly) supposed to be more forward thinking.


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## Stephen Palmer (Nov 6, 2013)

I suspect SF is more technologically "forward thinking" than socially (alas).


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## farntfar (Nov 6, 2013)

I have to mention what is my opinion a fairy extreme example of this (and quite possibly the example alluded to by Overlord above), which is the entire Lensmen series of E.E. Doc Smith.
The books are riddled with women who spend their time falling over backwards to make sure that everythings hunky dory for the men, when they come back from the real work of fighting the boskonians.
The only examples of effective women occur in the first and the last books. Otherwise, they are important to the plot as gene carriers, but their chief contibution otherwise is to maintain a stiff upper lip in the face of the bad guys, not to scream TOO much, and to hold the heros' coats and give him a REAL reason to fight. (oh and a bit of exemplary secretarial work of course) 
A few exceptional scientific advances are made by women, but only under the guidance of a male.


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## David Evil Overlord (Nov 29, 2013)

I've just googled, and I think the book I was thinking of was Hospital Station by James White. Wikipedia says the book is a collection of short stories from 1957 to 1960.


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## chrispenycate (Nov 29, 2013)

David Evil Overlord said:


> I've just googled, and I think the book I was thinking of was Hospital Station by James White. Wikipedia says the book is a collection of short stories from 1957 to 1960.



I do not remember Nurse ¿Murchinson? being that submissive, but maybe I'm judging by later Sector General collections (there were lots).

But, while it was true that females in SF were there to look decorative and scream winningly ('reeling, writhing and fainting in coils' as the Mock Turtle might put it; and, before Philip José Farmer, reproducing orally.) wasn't this true for science in general at this point? (I remember the depressing percentage of females in my science college at university). If they weren't 'barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen' any more, it was only because the war had forced industry to accept the possibility they could actually do a 'man's job' as well as its previous incumbent, and plenty of traditionalists were attempting to turn the clock back.

And you can't even really blame science; religion had pushed them into the position (and hasn't entirely given up the combat even now). Hierarchical organisations prefer properly subjugated underclasses; they make them feel more secure. And 'protect the weak' is a very deeply ingrained social law; SF merely continued the tradition when, in its preconception-buster rôle it should have been exploring different paths.


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## Verse (Nov 29, 2013)

SFF authors have been forward thinking, even in these matters.

Herland, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, published in 1915.


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## David Evil Overlord (Nov 29, 2013)

chrispenycate said:


> I do not remember Nurse ¿Murchinson? being that submissive, but maybe I'm judging by later Sector General collections (there were lots).



Don't remember the name of the story, but the main character (male) was faced with some sort of accident that meant he was the most senior medical person functioning. In order to save lives, he had to use a machine that downloaded medical knowledge from various alien races straight into his brain. The challenge was to hold onto sanity while also holding the memories of various alien doctors in his head.

I think the nurse in question queried his ability to do that, since he wasn't considered qualified for downloading yet. He replied that she shouldn't worry her pretty little head about it.

And if it was written from 57 - 60, then it came out at the same time that  Heinlein had starship troopers flown between the stars by female pilots, because they were better pilots than men.


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## jastius (Nov 30, 2013)

and now the whole genre has done a one eighty where its the females running around shooting people. .. personally i don't know if that is good or bad.. are we being politically correct? is this representative of actual change or is it an updated version of the fake female mechanics perched on the hood of a car in short shorts, only now the car is a plasma drive interstellar vehicle (rocketship).

(trixie beldin was the prototype career woman.. can't do any of the traditional skill sets)


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## Keri Ford (Nov 30, 2013)

That was a great article. I thought it was great to see such excellent letters, form women in one of those old mags. It makes me feel grateful that they took up the fight. But yes, Asimov's letters are a shocker to modern eyes, I certainly hope he revised his opinions. 

Good comments from Jastius. I am sure people from the future looking back at our time will find much in our games, movies, stories that are shockers to them.


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## JoanDrake (Dec 1, 2013)

I read the Asimov letter and I'm pretty sure he was trying to be satiric rather than sexist. Unfortunately a lot of 18 year olds, even very talented ones, can't quite pull off really subtle comedy and might even be taken seriously. I really don't think the man who made Dr Susan Calvin, world's leading positronics engineer, the heroine of several books written at a time when SF women still wore skin tight spacesuits, actually had the attitude of Andrew Dice Clay.

As for the rest of SF, what the hey. Writers can and should treat women as fully realized, human and three dimensional characters. Writers will, however, also continue to sometimes use them as sex objects. Ask most teenagers why they so like Game of Thrones and I'll lay money that the word "boobies" will come up long before, plot, character, or dialogue.


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