(no subject)

[forestofglory]

I've been reading a lot of Cherryh's Union/Alliance books lately (just finished Rimrunners) but I'm still not sure if I like them. I defiantly like the complex world building that she is doing. However one thing that bothers me is the sexism -- not the author's sexism exactly but the societies she writes about are fairly sexist -- pretty much in line with sexism at the time of writing. Cherryh makes it feel really creepy and unjust(eg the treatment of the male and female researchers in Forty Thousand in Gehenna) while kind of just expecting that's what life will be like for women in the future.

Comments

[forestofglory]

It bothers me in that I feel gross a icky reading about it. I don't Cherryh has a problem (well maybe excessive pessimism) but I'm also not sure if she aware of how she is incorporating real world sexism into her books.

[cleverthylacine]

I guess what I want to say is that this is an emotional reaction, and there's no way I'm going to argue with that. You feel the way you feel and there's no right or wrong way TO feel.

But I don't feel that way.

I don't believe that authors have an obligation to fix the problems of the real world if they want to write about the future, or that not doing so means they believe the world will always be the way it is now. :/

[forestofglory]

This totally an emotionality reaction. The way Cherryh writes about sexism in the books I've read gave me an icky crawling feeling. Because sexism is icky, and the sexism she writes about seems very insidious. I don't think she is a bad person for writing about sexism in her future world. I don't think she has any obligation to write books that don't have creepy sexism in them. And I don't think you are ought to have the same emotional reactions I do. (In fact it would be creepy if you did.)

[cleverthylacine]

Hmmm okay. I was getting a different impression at first, I thought maybe you were wanting to discuss the books as politically problematic, which I don't think they are because they're about a creepy society generally, the creepiness of which they totally acknowledge. The whole azi slavery thing is beyond creeptastic.

So I don't extrapolate from this that she's unaware of sexism or that she necessarily believes sexism will always be with us (which is where I initially thought you might be going here); I think she created a creepy society totally on purpose.

I happen to like a certain kind of creepy book quite a bit, though my favourite series of hers is the Foreigner series, which I don't find creepy at all. I'm not sure if you would like them, because the interpersonal male-female relations among humans seem very much like they are in our own world. (We see little societal/institutional gender stuff because there are very few human characters, but one of the human characters is the main male character's ex and involved with his brother.) Most of the time we're dealing with only one or two human characters living among aliens, and the alien male-female relations seem to be far more equitable.