A more inclusive con?

Stephen B: “I first noticed how unusually inclusive Nine Worlds was about two minutes after collecting my badge from the front desk. Wandering down the corridor I found myself in… a geek feminism session.

“I was greeted cheerfully and given a quick intro to what was going on, and then left to join the various groups sitting around the (very popular) room at tables and in small lively seated circles on the floor. The crowd in this room didn’t know my views or that I write for BadRep, and I’m a straight white male – generally not a famously marginalised group – but I felt immediately welcome.

“In the next room along, Bronies were playing guitar and handing out cupcakes. They also had a rave DJ. In that moment, I suspected this wasn’t going to be a typical SF convention.”

Safe space?

Viktoriya: “I went to Nine Worlds and I wasn’t groped, harassed, belittled or condescended to. I felt comfortable enough to walk around dressed in my own clothes, and not necessarily the elaborate armour of ballgowns, cosplay or similar I’d adopted when frequenting prior conventions.

“More to the point, I felt comfortable enough to go around ON MY OWN. I can’t stress this enough. I stopped going to conventions because it had become apparent to me that I was paying a great deal of money to attend an event where it was pretty much guaranteed that I would be assaulted in some way, whereas daily assault is something most women can have for free simply by walking down the street in London. Why pay for the privilege?”

“Not being groped, forcibly intoxicated, called a cocktease, an uppity feminist, a silly little girl, or asked to kiss someone for the amusement of male onlookers – it was like a whole new world.”

“Also, I managed to convince my work friend to come with me to Nine Worlds. You guys, you have no idea of the stress associated with this.

“What if someone was a dick to her? What if she was assaulted? What if she hated it? Then I would be the work friend who convinced her to spend money on the the thing that was dreadful.

“So not being groped, forcibly intoxicated, called a cocktease, an uppity feminist, a silly little girl, or asked to kiss someone for the amusement of male onlookers – it was like a whole new world.”

Stephen: “It seems that every big convention recently has had a wave of harassment and bad experiences for some attendees. NineWorlds appeared to do things right instead, with a kick-ass anti-harassment policy and some seriously great content.”

Running a content track

Hannah Chutzpah: “It was an honour and a privilege to be asked to run the creative writing track. I spent pretty much the whole run-up panicking and convinced my everything would be a huge disaster…. right up until the second session where my longtime frenemy – author Chris Farnell – gave a talk on ‘Working the Time Machine: writing time travel so it makes sense’.

“We had a packed out room, with people hanging out the doors. Then, as the crowds left and I patted Chris and myself on the back, starting to believe this whole thing might work – this toy car, sent by the Bronies (pictured) whirred through the door full of cupcakes.”

Fandom and atmosphere

Stephen: “Nine Worlds is set up to include a wide range of fandoms and geekery, and all the different fans are welcome in the same space. There was so much going on, I barely saw the other Team BadRep folks.”

“It wasn’t just ‘here’s the gay corner’, so it felt much more open to (say) the B and the T and the Q of ‘LGBTQ*’. Which – as a bi girl – I found very, very refreshing.”

Hannah: “I didn’t get out to as much of the rest of the fest as you two, but the main thing which spilled across every room, hallway, lobby, breakfast bar and so on was the extremely friendly and welcoming nature of the whole conference.

“The only other geek con I’ve been to was the SFX weekender, which wasn’t unfriendly , but I also can’t remember half as much mingling (or half as many reasons to mingle) as there were here.”

Stephen: “I’m not a convention-goer. The friendly atmosphere and lack of judging at Nine Worlds was the kind of pleasant, safe space I’d assume any good con would try for, but from everything I’ve heard in recent years this one got it unusually right.

“I saw tweets from people saying that having dedicated LGBTQ* content made such a difference to their time there. Even the Bronies didn’t seem to get the usual derision, mostly because they were just unrelentingly happy and frequently gave you cake.”

Faves?

Hannah: The two standout workshops for me, personally, were fantasy novelist Tom Pollock’s creative writing workshop on Making Monsters – which generated at least one idea I’m going to be writing into a short story.

“Also, Emma Newman ran a workshop on ‘Fear and Writing’ – drawing on her own experiences as an author.

“Two takeaway things for me were her describing procrastination as a fear-based behaviour, and
that perfectionism is fear’s favourite coat. Emma – thank you. That stuff really spoke to me. Like, more than my shrink does.”

Viktoriya: “It was wonderful to have so many different tracks, and to NOT have diversity and inclusiveness be shunted off to the side with, “oh, well, we’re covering that in X track” – rather, you had panels on inclusiveness and discrimination across all the different tracks.

Hannah: “And since it wasn’t ‘here’s the gay corner’ it felt much more open to (say) the B and the T and the Q sections. Which – as a bi girl – I found very, very refreshing.”

Stephen: “On the Friday night I went to a swordfighting workshop with Miltos Yerolemou, the actor who played Syrio Forel in Game of Thrones.

“It was a lot of fun, and at least two thirds of the attendees were women (one of whom was you, Viktoriya, and I totally clocked your expression of demonic glee when you got to swing a very large wooden sword, which suggested you enjoyed the session!).”

Viktoriya: “I loved that there was a knitting track, and a My Little Pony track, and a board games track. It stressed the diversity of interests that are brought together under the fandom and geek umbrellas in a way that cannot be present in any single-show or single-theme convention.

“The fact that the ‘celebrity guests’ were actually there for panels, activities and workshops primarily, with singing autographs very much a secondary activity, was even better. I despair of the autograph factories modern conventions have become. Queueing for eight hours is not my idea of fun.”

Could-do-betters?

Viktoriya: “Well, OK, let me argue with myself for a little bit. I’m going to nitpick here, not out of anger but because the organisers have shown a genuine interest in learning from their mistakes and in improving the experience in coming years.

“So, accessibility. I don’t know what the experience was for those attendees with limited mobility, but I am relatively able-bodied and even I found it a bit cumbersome navigating the stairs in two hotels with only the few lifts.

“Ultimately, that’s what I’m looking for in a convention: committing to doing better next time when mistakes are made.”

“Some of the multimedia was a little difficult to engage with without risking pain – strobe lighting, very loud soundscape, and so on.

“Bringing in a general warning system (a sign on the door?) of strobe lighting for those affected by it, and doing a soundcheck before launching the sound and leaving it at whatever level, would be good.”

Stephen: “I went to the board games hotel only briefly, and there were lots of steep stairs, but then that’s the one used for loads of much bigger cons, so I’m sure they must have a solution in place?”

Viktoriya: “Well, big cons tend to have a like it or lump it policy. They have priority queuing for fans with mobility issues, but that’s about it as far as I’m aware. Individual cons may have a better provision, but I don’t know.”

“Then there’s the issue of diversity in organisers and session leads. Part of this is maybe due to the fact that it was the first Nine Worlds, but the organisers, session leads and attendees were overwhelmingly white.

“Take the panel on Problematic Issues – some odd things were said during this sessions, and it was also an entirely white panel (so discussing representations of race was rather awkward). I think it was trying to cover too many fandom issues: racism in fanfic and fandom, fetishing gay sex, writing male characters and ignoring female ones, reaffirming heteronormative norms, etc. In an hour.

“Contrast this with the Racefail 101 panel in the Books track, which brought together awesome writers of colour to focus on writing characters of colour, and seeking out writers of colour.

“Given the number of tracks and the number of organisers required, I’d suggest that the lead organisers work on diversifying the track leads.”

“With accessibility, big cons tend to have a like-it-or-lump-it policy. They have priority queuing for fans with mobility issues, but often that’s about it.”

“Finally, I disagree with Steve on the inclusiveness extended to the Bronies, mostly because in the sessions I was present at, they were frequently the butt of the joke.

“Fundamentally, I think it’s uncool to include something as a track (and therefore give implicit approval of its existence) and then spend the weekend being a bit weirded out by it. I don’t claim to be part of the MLP fandom, but I thought it was a bit harsh.”

Stephen: “I didn’t see the panels where Bronies were mocked, but I did see a lot of people commenting out loud that this was their first experience of them and they thought Bronies were awesome.”

Viktoriya: “I wonder if part of it isn’t a reflexive ‘let’s build a hierarchy’ instinct. Certainly there was that feeling at times at the fanfic panels, and some of the comments re: board gaming from attendees. The Bronies were the only ones where I heard panellists commenting on it, though, and there is some evidence that attendees felt a bit singled out.”

“What I do think is great is that the organisers of the Problematic Issues panel realised what had gone wrong, and have publically acknowledged it and committed to doing better next time.

“Ultimately, that’s what I’m looking for in a convention. There were a few tweeted mentions of positive and negative feedback (which, to their credit, the Nine Worlds twitter feed retweeted).”

Let’s wrap this up…

Hannah: “I think everyone involved understands it was a first attempt at a huge thing and the learning curve was, and will continue to be, pretty damn steep – but I couldn’t be prouder to be a part of it or more excited about next year.”

Viktoriya: “Since there’s a year until the next Nine Worlds I guess I’ll conclude with some general links on the inclusion and harassment issues – if you’re thinking of going to a convention and are concerned about safety, or if you have been harassed at a convention and want to know how to report it, have a look at these resources:

• Elise Mathesen’s experience of reporting sexual harassment here, including a contact and resource list for reporting it here.
• Carrie Cuinn’s experiences and guide for reporting are here and here
• Finally, the odious Ted Beale was recently finally expelled from SFWA. NK Jemisin has written a blisteringy on-point post on racism and misogyny in SFF, Beale’s expulsion, and the behaviour which led to it.

“Most of all, I loved the fact that I enjoyed Nine Worlds so much, I have already decided I’m going next year. No uncertainty, no hmm-maybe and oh-yes-perhaps. I’m going next year because it was wonderful. How can you argue with that?”

In the dim and distant past, I edited an original anthology of horror stories called Skin of the Soul. Most of the stories were new (there were two reprints) and all of the contributors were women. What sparked my decision to do it was an all-male horror anthology published a couple of years earlier to much acclaim: Prime Evil, edited by Douglas E. Winter, was a showcase for “the masters of modern horror”, and Winter’s introduction was dedicated to the argument that horror is not a genre but an emotion, to be found throughout all literature,from high to low.

I agree; I don’t care much for generic “horror”, even if I prefer it to generic “romance”, and although I’ve written a lot of horror stories, and most of my novels have some element of horror in them (one, Lost Futures, published as horror in the US, was nominated for a science fiction award in Britain) I’m not that comfortable identifying myself as a “horror writer”.

The writers Winter invited to contribute to his anthology included nearly all the big names of the time (Stephen King, Peter Straub, Clive Barker) but also lesser-known writers (Jack Cady and Paul Hazel). Even the introduction, pointing to the many sources of horror in the mainstream, gave a name-check to just one woman writer throughout literary history.

Who was this paragon? You might guess Mary Shelley, Emily Bronte, Christina Rossetti, Edith Wharton, Patricia Highsmith, Shirley Jackson, Anne Rice, Joyce Carol Oates… but no, the solitary example the editor chose was “…the best-selling novels of V.C. Andrews.” (I did wonder if he knew her first name was Virginia rather than, say, Victor.)

So I was horrified – not in a good way – by this compilation of horrors, and daydreamed about selling my own anthology, inviting a list of excellent writers to contribute, writing my own erudite introduction about great horror fiction of the past. If anyone pointed out that all of those writers were women, I’d act surprised, pretend it was just the luck of the draw, these were the best stories submitted and naturally the examples I chose were my personal favourites.

I certainly did not set out to deliberately exclude men; there were lots of good male writers, but now that I came to think about it, not many of them wrote horror. I mean real horror, genuinely well-written and original, not that childish gross-out stuff, not those tired generic clichés, not dreary old male fantasies, but the kind of thing I wanted to read, because, after all, it only counts as horror in my book if it fits my definition… and I reserve the right to change the rules whenever I like.

Over years of going to conventions, and reading and writing and reviewing (even teaching classes) in the fields of science fiction, fantasy and horror, I’ve noticed how much time is devoted to definitions of genre. Any genre. Once you start putting labels on books, you must justify the inclusion of one and the exclusion of another. This is science fiction, of which I approve, while that is merely fantasy. (I remember Charles Platt defending his choice of interviewees for his first Who Writes Science Fiction? – Kate Wilhelm was the only woman, and she was interviewed in tandem with her husband – but, he explained, Ursula LeGuin had refused his request, and he couldn’t think of any other woman who wrote what he considered to be proper science fiction.)

“Literary” authors are given a pass time and again, not tarred with the genre brush (it’s “magic realism” or “speculative fiction”) and it pops up in discussions and reader reviews all the time: “I don’t call this horror.” “This is all about atmosphere and character and not scary at all.” “Maybe works as literature, but not as horror fiction.” “Vampires wouldn’t do that.” Etc.

Critics may praise authors who “push the boundaries” or subvert expectations, but these are the very actions that can make the dedicated genre fan feel cheated, and respond angrily, as if when they ordered chocolate ice cream, they’d been served a bowl of extra-hot chilli.

When, more than twenty years after the publication of Skin of the Soul (“which proves indisputably that horror fiction is not a male preserve”, or so said Clive Barker in 1990) , I find that women are still fighting that old battle, still having their contributions to horror ignored or forgotten, I wonder if this isn’t – at least partly – something to do with definitions and expectations of genre. And with who is defining it, and why.

Myself, I’ve never limited my reading to one type of fiction, and I don’t write novels that fall neatly into a narrowly defined slot, either. (Maybe this is my problem!) There are some readers for whom genre fiction is comfort food, and they don’t want any nasty surprises when they’ve snuggled down to read – even in a genre celebrated as the purveyor of nasty surprises. Maybe, for some readers, it doesn’t count as horror unless the author plays by certain rules, unless the story is purveyed via the male gaze, and the name on the title page does nothing to break the illusion that we’re all boys together in this clubhouse.

• Lisa Tuttle is an acclaimed author whose achievements include winning the International Horror Guild Award, a BSFA Award, and most recently the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire.
• The novel The Silver Bough is just out in a new paperback edition from Jo Fletcher Books.
• www.lisatuttle.co.uk

Last week, Paul Cornell (comics, TV and novel writer) stated that, in a bid to get more equal gender representation on Science Fiction and Fantasy convention panels, he was going to stand down from any panel that wasn’t 50/50 or near as and invite a woman to take his place.

Cue an awesome shitstorm of vitriol and support. The main thrust of some feminists’ arguments I’ve heard against this, and in some cases against Paul personally, is that this was ego boosting, man-on-a-white-horse, mansplaining wank and we don’t need it.

Sorry, sisters, but we do. Let’s take a look at the arguments.

1. ‘This looks like it’s a man to the rescue of women, showing us in a submissive and passive light, needing us to be thrust into the spotlight by a man with agency.’

Um, yes. You know why? Because sexism has been so ingrained in SFF over the years, back when it was a male-dominated genre, this is actually our starting point. Editors get fewer submissions from women regarding horror, fantasy and hard SF, the subgenres that are often most applauded by critics (also mostly male). Publishers put fewer women forward for convention guest spots, and female authors themselves look at the gender make-up of panels and step back. I think women haven’t stood up en masse to rectify this because it became the norm. We told ourselves ‘SFF is sexist, so they don’t notice women’ and forgot that arguably – especially when you take account of urban fantasy and paranormal romance – there are more of us in the genre, and hey, we sell more copies. We have as much right to be at those cons, doing those signings, making our voices heard, as the feted men do. SFF convention organisers have shoved women on all-women panels, told us to talk about ‘women in SFF’ and then told us that’s the debate and equality will shake out of that. It won’t. I think, somewhere along the way, we forgot to band together and tell SFF and con organisers to go shove their sexism. Maybe this will help.

2. ‘We don’t need no man sorting this out for us.’

See above. We do. It sucks. That’s the frikkin’ point. SFF wasn’t listening when we were raising our voices. I wish, I fervently wish, that when a woman makes a point about gender inequality, it wasn’t explained away as being a ‘women’s issue’ and therefore marginal and easy to ignore. It shouldn’t be. This is about equality – which affects you, regardless of gender. Yes, it sucks that the world takes notice when a man does something. No, it shouldn’t be this way. But it is. And maybe, just maybe, if we join hands and do this thing together without drawing gender lines ourselves, in a few years, it won’t be this way anymore.

3. ‘This casts the woman who is invited to speak as an also-ran, putting her immediately as a runner-up to the man stepping down for her.’

Yes, it does. And I think this does mean that Paul may have to change his approach, perhaps so that he and other people (male or female, it’s 50/50 for all) ask the con organisers to disclose the gender balance of the panels they are being invited on, and then, if it’s out of whack, suggest another male (or female) author to readdress the balance. This way, your fans still get to see you on a balanced panel elsewhere at the convention, and there doesn’t have to be any theatre or drawing of attention to an act of substitution.

But, and I want to be really clear about this, just because Paul suggested something that isn’t 100% ideal for women, doesn’t mean we have to throw out the entire idea. The theory is good; we just have to look at the best way of putting it into practice. We don’t need to get into an uproar because the first suggestion wasn’t the best approach – it’s not carved in stone.

My point is: this is a starting point. We’re gonna have to be big girls and suck up some of the stuff we don’t like to help make a change that we desperately want. We have to be pragmatic and proactive, because the status quo wasn’t changing with us doing nothing or shouting about it in forums and on blogs. We shouldn’t be jumping on this suggestion and saying it’s all tosh because it can be seen as patronising – can we please get past that and look at how the entire situation that this is trying to fight against is worse?

Paul’s proposal may not be perfect. But out of it is growing a 50/50 movement that a lot of women and men are getting behind. We’re asking people to talk to cons to check out their gender balance before they say yes. We’re asking women to promote themselves more. We’re asking readers to look at their shelves and see if they read mostly female or male authors, and to try adding a different gender to the shopping cart next time they buy books. I’m hoping that feminists can look at the big picture here and see that we are struggling to bring visible equality to SFF – and that along the way, we’re going to need equal input from all genders to do it.

• Lizzie is the publicity officer for the British Fantasy Society but considers herself ‘rogue’ when it comes to the 50/50 campaign, so content is her own and not the BFS’s. She prefers fantasy books and science fiction TV, and believes that books are a viable form of currency.

1. I made that one up, but it’s a valid question. Why?

The big issue appears to be around whether or not “LARP is sexist”, which is difficult to deal with because that’s a lot of games and a lot of players to tar with the same brush, whichever way you paint them. It is also, as one commentator pointed out, a little bit hard to seperate LARP and LARPers from the real world (where we all live), which IS sexist. Some of those sexist values are going to seep in, no matter how hard we try. And people do try. I talk to a lot of gamers and game designers about things I think they’re doing which might be seen as sexist, and a lot of the time those (rare) occurances are not being done on purpose. This doesn’t excuse it, but it does rather empower people who give a shit to improve things by talking about it more, and raising problems where they find them.

I think it’s really important to separate the design of a game (what it was intended to do) from the experience of playing it (how it feels to do it). This way, we can look at where and how a game may or may not succeed on being Not Sexist; after all, there’s a difference between a game being inherently sexist and those who play it sometimes behaving in ways which are sexist. I would argue that most LARP games are not desgined to be sexist, but that there can be sexist elements that occur within gameplay and that it is the responsibility of the player base as a whole – men and women – to root this out and set it on fire with extreme prejudice, as follows:

Get your fucking sexism out of my hobby. Now.

*Ahem*. Now, to business.

Live Action Games: an Action-Drama Love Affair

The subtitle for this is “why my cupboards are full of kit, costume and rubber swords for various pretend people”.

My own personal experience of playing has been very positive. LARP, for me, is about storytelling, play-acting, and a permission to explore different personas and world-views which I don’t normally get access to. I can also wear cool costumes, have magic powers and fight Epic Battles. That fact that I am a woman does not bar me from any of those things, although I would be lying if I said it didn’t colour my gaming experience.

I’ve played sexist characters, such as a matriarchal tribal leader in Maelstrom who assumed that anyone of importance was female. I’ve played characters who were victims of terrible, awful sexism; I’ve played downtrodden and abused prostitutes. I’ve also played characters who used their looks and feminine charms to their advantage. Conversely, I’ve played characters who would consider such actions ridiculous and to whom a sword or a well-placed word was the correct tool to use. I’ve even played characters whose gender and sexuality was, for the purposes of the gameworld, almost entirely absent, such as a human slave in a world where humans are uniformly seen as cattle to their orcish, elvish and dwarvish overlords – my gender was as important to the other characters as the gender of a table.

In short, I’ve played around a lot with gender and sexuality, and LARP has been a big enabler in exploring those roles. My one “bad” LARP experience revolved entirely around the race of my character, rather than her gender, and in fact the person who delivered that bad experience was female. In my experience, men who LARP tend to be more concerned with not being sexist than men in day-to-day. Perhaps because the man who leers at me whilst I’m at a bus stop does not fear me striking him down with a fireball. Or perhaps – optimistically, but possibly, maybe – the chap who LARPs has a much broader experience of women being in charge than men in real life.

So, what does LARP have to offer women? First, a bit of a health warning.  “Women” is a broad category which we at BadRep Towers want to avoid using in a way that assumes all women want the same things. They don’t. Fortunately, in LARP, as in life, there are options. Even more fortunately, there are often more options in LARP than there are either in life or in most fantasy and science fictions. One of my major complaints about the FSF genre is that we create these amazing make-believe worlds but then populate them mostly with men. All too often women characters are whores, witches or princesses – prizes to be won or challenges to be overcome. Check out the piece fantasy author Juliet McKenna wrote for us on the subject. LARP lets you, the player, take control of these stereotypes and challenge, subvert or even explore them. You can become your own hero in a fantasy world. Which means you get to tell your own story how you want.

Making LARP Work For Women?

I have also written, crewed and managed live action games. A quick rundown includes Odyssey, Winter in the Willows, Victoriana and some local systems, so I’ve got experience behind the curtain, as it were. I have noticed that I am in the minority. The vast majority of games are written and run by men – it’s much the same with anything nerd-based. I’m never quite sure why this is the case with LARP, given that young girls are almost magnetically attracted to games of Let’s Pretend and Dressing Up Boxes. I think that these little girls end up doing drama and the few boys that like dress-up (who often can’t do drama on account of it being seen as “girly”) created LARP to allow them to run away to a field, where no-one else could see them, and play dress-up. This is backed up by the fact that I often see young teenage boys at LARP events, but rarely young teenage girls. Any, even slightly more, scientific study into this would be appreciated.

With all due credit to the guys behind the Games Operations Desk (GOD – geddit?), there is absolutely a perception of the hobby as being profoundly white and male. This is not their fault. Let me repeat this: this is not their fault. What absolutely is their fault is any time when a game feels lacking in opportunities for women to enjoy it, and connect with the game as much as men. The absolute best way to work this out is to look at some game websites and then play the games.  Here’s what to look out for:

• Game Background – This is the blurb that tells you about the game and the gameworld. It’s like the back cover of a book or DVD. Gender-aware games should include both male and female example characters in their background documents so women players can see that there are parts for them to play. Pronouns are your friend – there should be instances of “he” and “she” – or my personal favourite, “they” and “their” – I like pronouns that include everybody. Game blurbs often include artwork and photographs, which should have a good selection of all kinds of characters; male, female and sometimes neutral. If the blurb doesn’t, or if anything makes you feel “put off” because of how they have described themselves, then don’t play that game. If you’re feeling brave, email the game designers and tell them why: I’ve done this and the response was very positive, including instances where I’ve received follow up emails from other game designers going “are we gender-aware enough, can you help?”
• Character creation – this is the way in which you pick what sort of a person you will play, and it is almost always the same for men as it is for women. There are rarely, except in games which have a specific built-in sexism (few and far between), situtations in which a woman cannot play a certain type of character. Unlike me, aged 6, trying to participate in a game of cops and robbers with the boys who lived next door, being “a girl” does not stop you from picking up a gun. Refeshingly, I have never seen a character creation form with a section for “gender” which then negatively impacts my options if I select female. Women are fighters as much as they are wizards, healers, leaders and politicians. I’ve also played in lots of games where women have chosen to play male characters, and vice versa.
• There are all kinds of games; try several. There are big games and little games, games in fields for the weekend and games in a room above a pub for an afternoon. There are high fantasy games with magic, and gritty, realistic games with guns. Games for ten people and games for a thousand. There are games about fighting, games about battles of wits, games with long, complicated rules and systems, and games where you turn up and improvise your way along. LARP is becoming more and more a space to try out new ideas and new ways of playing around, many of which have their backgrounds more in theatre and performance than Games Workshop. There will probably be something that suits you.
• Ask Other Women Who Play. There are, when you get into it, a surprising number of women who LARP. The common perception is absolutely still that it’s ‘a male hobby’, but the reality is different. There are also a large number of women, like myself, who are very active and vocal in the hobby, and equally active and vocal about getting other women into the hobby. Ask us which games you might like.

Sarah writes about designing and creating games and live performance over at sarahcook.net and is unapologetic for this shameless plug.

Photos by disturbing.org.uk.

Wobbly Utopia

Let’s be honest, Star Trek has had some bad press over the years. Its gender politics were sometimes a bit wonky. Its racial politics also wobbled a bit. Its view of homosexuality was that it didn’t exist, and if it did, only aliens were gay (and if they were hot, semi-naked female aliens, so much the better). Most people in the Western world have seen at least one episode of the original series, and if they saw it at any point other than the ’60s, they may have formed some negative views. There were probably Forehead Aliens involved, and the sets probably wobbled a bit. Captain Kirk spoke… with many… pauses… and… gestures. Spock raised an eyebrow. McCoy said, “He’s dead, Jim,” and at least one redshirt died to prove it was serious. And maybe it was interesting at the time, and had some interesting ideas, but then ten million spin-offs followed, and then there was a film, and Zoe Saldana ran around in a miniskirt while Chris Pine fought Zachary Quinto in an erotically-charged episode of fisticuffs on the bridge.

This is all true, and the less said about the debacle of Enterprise, the better. But the thing is, none of this detracts from the achievements of the original series. I’ll start with this cast photo…

Original Trek, second season cast. Image (c) Paramount

You’ll notice several things immediately:

1) everyone is wearing implausible outfits and has magical levitating hair;

2) the women are in miniskirts; and

3) the Russian guy is definitely wearing a wig.

But look a bit closer. This is a second season cast photo, so that places it in 1967/8, in a show marketed as “Wagon Train to the Stars”. There are people of different ethnicities and backgrounds, and there are also two women. Neither are secretaries.

I could talk at length about what Star Trek has done in promoting a vision of a multicultural, utopian future. The crew included a Russian crewmember at a time when the Cold War was going strong; it included a Japanese crewmember not so very long after WWII and not in a chop socky or waiter role. It featured the first interracial kiss on American television, when Kirk and Uhura are forced to embrace in the otherwise execrable episode, Plato’s Stepchildren. (In fact, the actors ensured that the actual kiss, rather than a simulated one, was shown, by pulling faces in all subsequent retakes.) The Federation itself is a multicultural utopia, where member nations hate each other and violently disagree on everything, and yet will work together for the common good just the same.

Living in the Future

I could focus instead on the technological impact. I could talk about classic Trek ‘inventing’ a cornucopia of future tech, from mobile phones to warp drive to transporters. Sure, warp drive remains an impossibility, and thus far transporters have only managed to send bits of plastic from one transporter to another, more akin to The Prestige than true teleportation, but how many people were thinking about it at all before Trek dreamed it up? Someone always has to dream up the idea before it can be invented. Sure, Trek only invented their Feinbergers because they didn’t have enough money and had to make do from scrounging through the waste bins of other shows, but that’s the beauty of it. Other people’s rubbish – when painted purple and hung on the wall – was enough to inspire people. Now that’s impressive.

Fandom

Or I could discuss the creation of slash fiction, of how it came about in the 1970s in response to the cancellation of Trek. Of how fans – primarily female and in their 20s and 30s – loved the characters and missed them so much that they got together and wrote stories for them. Many of them got published and ended up on the New York Times bestseller list – AC Crispin’s Yesterday’s Son was a fanzine before it was a book, for instance. I could talk about how they took the names Kirk and Spock and made them into Kirk/Spock, the slash in the middle indicating a homoerotic relationship. I’ve read the early slash efforts, and frankly, they’re not terribly good: it’s primarily people writing about sex they’re not having, in plots that aren’t convincing, with art that is a bit lacking. But the thing is, it’s astonishing that those early fanzines existed at all, that communities sprung up with such fervour and dedication to focus on one little show, long-cancelled. These days, ‘slash’ means an m/m story, irrespective of fandom. Many young fans have no idea of the origin of the term and, influenced in equal measure by anime yaoi naming conventions, will mark the pairing with an x (eg. KirkxSpock), yet still refer to the relationship as ‘slash’. The name endures.

That’s not all that Trek decided online. When the internet started up, the Trek groups had a tricky problem: both classic and TNG‘s main characters shared letters. This was a disaster at a time when Usenet was the main source of contact, and subject lines were limited to a small number of characters. Naming and pairing conventions quickly sprang up, with the order of the letters indicating the pairing. American film rating systems were brought into use. [FIC] TOS: New Dawn, K/S, Mc, NC-17 (1/1) was instantly decipherable as a post title. Trek fandom has had a massive impact on fandom in general, its conventions and rules seeping through a multitude of others.

Making History

Then there are the people that Trek has influenced. How about Rev. Martin Luther King, for example? In a candid conversation with Nichelle Nichols, he expressed his admiration for her work as Uhura, and urged her to remain on the show at a time when she was considering quitting. Or maybe Dr Mae Jamison, the first African American woman in space. She, too, watched the show as a child and was inspired by the example that Nichelle Nichols’ Uhura set.

“I’ll protect you, fair maiden.”

“Sorry, neither!”

– Sulu tries to ‘rescue’ Uhura, but she’s having none of it in the first season episode, The Naked Time.

Mae Jamison, being awesome.

How can you NOT love a show that gives you this much awesomeness?

“Ah,” I hear you cry, “but you’ve only talked about the impact of the show, not the show itself! I distinctly recall some dodgy gender politics at work…”

A Handy Viewing Guide for the New Recruit

Yes. OK, I admit it. Star Trek, like many shows at the time, had its writing farmed out to a pool of writers that took story outlines and turned them into scripts. Maybe they knew and loved the show and its characters, maybe they didn’t know them from Adam. Sometimes you had Harlan Ellison delivering City on the Edge of Forever, and sometimes you had Arthur Heinemann’s The Way to Eden, where space hippies sing songs and the viewer writhes in agony. So what? No show out there can claim to have 100% hit rate, and when Trek got it right, they really got it right. So here are a few episodes to check out, mostly from Season 1, but a couple from the later seasons:

1. Where No Man Has Gone Before: where two members of the crew develop god-like powers and the inevitable happens. There is gratuitous eye-candy, in the shape of Kirk’s bared chest. Meanwhile the lead female character is dressed in exactly the same uniform as everyone else, down to the ridiculous bell-bottoms. She’s the ship’s psychiatrist, and ends up saving the day… sort of.
2. Charlie X: where a young boy with god-like powers… yes, OK. But this is a creepy, scary little episode, with eye candy provided by the semi-naked Kirk wrestling for no apparent reason. More disturbing is Charlie’s attempted rape of a crewwoman, his reactions coarse and demanding and selfish, and hers grown-up and mature. He may be the one using violence, but she never once relinquishes her control.

“There’s no right way to hit a woman.”

– James Kirk to Charlie X, after the latter slaps Yeoman Rand’s bottom, Charlie X.

3. The Menagerie: where the original pilot is reworked. Trek does loyalty, captivity, mind-control and extreme measures.
4. Balance of Terror: the Cold War episode, where Kirk informs a crewmember that bigotry has no place on his bridge.
5. Devil in the Dark: where the crew learn not to make assumptions about appearances.
6. City on the Edge of Forever: where Harlan Ellison disavows all knowledge of this rather excellent episode. Kirk, Spock and McCoy end up in 1930s Earth, where Kirk meets Joan Collins, a peace activist who runs a homeless shelter. She’s strong and independent and a visionary, and is unmistakably the love of his life. (Therefore, according to the requirements of drama, she must die.)
7. Mirror Mirror: Where Uhura wears an even more revealing uniform, and evil!Spock mind-invades McCoy.
8. The Enterprise Incident: where the opposing Romulan commander is female, and is tricked in the expected way. What isn’t expected is her dignity throughout. Kirk and Spock treat her throughout as their equal.
9. Is There In Truth No Beauty?: Where Trek had a blind character, and had her as the lead guest character for the episode.
10. Turnabout Intruder: where Kirk and an old flame – who has a grudge – trade bodies. This episode, for all its flaws, is fascinating. Janice Lester was a contemporary of Kirk’s, and they were briefly involved. However, she never got command, something she attributed to her gender. In Trek-world, she has no argument: her gender is irrelevant. In 1960s America, this is something so obvious that it was rarely mentioned: of course her gender stopped her from getting command, no woman could possibly be a military commander! Lester’s fury is so intently realised that you can’t help feeling sorry for her, for all her insanity… and rooting for her, just a little.

“Your world of starship captains doesn’t admit women.”

– Janice Lester, Turnabout Intruder

Trek and Me

Valentina Tereshkova, by Phillip Bond, 2009

So, there it is: my deepest, darkest secret. I studied maths and music as a child because of Trek. I got into fandom because of Trek, trying to navigate newsgroups in a cybercafe at age 13 when an Amstrad was the height of luxury. I have the DVDs, and a few of the books, and many of the friends. And above it all, when people ask what I want to do when I grow up, my immediate, unspoken reaction is, “I want to be an astronaut.”

Tell me that’s a bad thing.

I think I want it on my bedroom wall, maybe a metre or two high.

'What Science Fiction Means' - copyright Egypt Urnash

Fantastic artist Egypt Urnash drew this for free, as a “t-shirt design for a college SF club”. It was then linked to by Major Internet Deity Warren Ellis, who knows groovy stuff when he sees it, and subsequently the design is now selling as framed art prints and t-shirts.

Why do I love this so much?

Possibly because it could have been titled “What I want to be when I grow up” (and still apply to me and most of Team BadRep now, if we’re honest). It has a shark with a frickin’ laser on its head, which is always good for +10 points, but it’s got to be the sheer joy on the girl’s face. I think I just have an innate love of anything which could legitimately have the caption “YEAH BABY, YEAH!”

At a time when women seem to be shockingly under-represented in Sci-fi (way beyond the ratio of actual female authors to male) and hearty debate on whether that’s because of sexism or other factors, I’m delighted at anything which tells young women they have a central place in SF. (The first link references Joanna Russ’ “How to suppress women’s writing”, which we mentioned ourselves recently.)

Women of all ages should be holding the rayguns and riding the space-sharks, dammit. After all, WisCon (‘the World’s leading feminist science fiction convention’) has just finished, and once again shows the potential of the genre not only to excite and speak to everyone, but to be a blank slate where current prejudices don’t have to be brought along. SF could be a feminist’s best friend.

Egypt’s site here contains the full-size original, as well as other Awesome Art which you should go and look at.

• Found Feminism: an ongoing series of images, videos, photos, comics, posters or excerpts – anything really, which shows feminist ideas at work in the everyday world. What’s brightened your day? Share it here – send your finds to [email protected]!

Katee Sackhoff as Starbuck

Anyhow, on to finer things.

Now, I particularly love Katee Sackhoff as Starbuck in the revamped Battlestar Galatica. And that in itself would be a Found Feminism, if it weren’t already enormously obvious, especially after everyone (well, some bloke) got their knickers in a twist over Starbuck being played by a woman.

For reference, a good interview with Ron Moore, the director, on that decision is here.

We can rejoice in that decision, and also now in the existence of (new) Starbuck as an internet meme.

Which brings me rather meanderingly to the actual Found Feminism. This hashtag: #thingsstarbuckwouldntsay, started off on Twitter by Katee herself.

Personal favourites, hand picked by fellow Bad Repper and Sci Fi nerd, Steve:

Does this flightsuit clash with my highlights?

I’m sure you’re all going the right way, … men always have a better sense of direction.

How many calories are in this drink?

I can’t go yet. I’m finishing my makeup!

Could Things Starbuck Wouldn’t Say be a Skippy’s List for Found Feminism?

So say we all.

• Found Feminism: an ongoing series of images, videos, photos, comics, posters or excerpts – anything really, which shows feminist ideas at work in the everyday world. What’s brightened your day? Share it here – send your finds to [email protected]!

What’s the story?

Copyright Yukito Kushiro, 1996

Genderfun

Yes, I know she has a gun in this one. She just doesn't use them *all the time*, ok? Copyright Yukito Kushiro 1996

In the last few books her key relationships are with women – her Tipharean ‘operator’ Lou and 13 year old professional gambler Kokomi. At the start Lou is everything Alita isn’t – silly, chatty, timid – but she is inspired to a tremendous act of rebellion to save her friend’s life. Kokomi is also inspired by Alita, and though they end up fighting on different sides she is similarly independent, brave and rebellious.

Another thing I love about Alita is that although she is a powerful and inspiring female character there is nothing maternal about her impulse to protect others. Her power is not rooted in her female identity because her ‘femaleness’ is superficial. And in my opinion the real triumph is that she is not like a man either. She has masculine and feminine qualities, but neither is she purely androgynous.

Cyborg Feminism

Whether or not Alita fits the bill as a feminist hero, cyborgs and feminism go way back. In 1985 Donna Haraway wrote her ironic Cyborg Manifesto, which pointed a way forward for feminism which didn’t rely on the artificial unity of ‘femaleness’:

There is nothing about teeing ‘female’ that naturally binds women. There is not even such a state as ‘being’ female, itself a highly complex category constructed in contested sexual scientific discourses and other social practices. Gender, race, or class consciousness is an achievement forced on us by the terrible historical experience of the contradictory social realities of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism.

The cyborg is an interesting political metaphor for Haraway, allowing for the possibility of connection but resisting the reductive tendencies of identity politics.  ‘Woman’ (like ‘Black’ or ‘disabled’ or ‘working class’) is never a whole identity but a partial one – individual identities are made of myriad aspects and intersecting experiences, part natural-biological and part social-cultural construct. Haraway sees a way through this old problem of collective action by suggesting a cyborg feminism which finds its common ground in a desire to resist and subvert a patriarchal system and not in a shared female identity.

Haraway famously concludes her Manifesto with the words “I’d rather be a cyborg than a goddess.” I have nothing against goddesses (on the contrary, they rawk) but linking women’s power to nature or to their bodies is a dangerous game.

Alita is radically free from biological determinism in the way that only a cyborg can be. Every part of her is completely remade or regenerated in the course of the series, only her consciousness remains continuous. She is not her body, she is not even her brain. Alita is her memories and her relationships, her actions and her choices.

SF authors: Not clones. - photo by David Kitchenham, taken from morguefile.com

There’s been a lot of controversy in the world of Sci-fi books recently, over attitudes to both women and minorities.

A blogger for Apex Books called Gustavo Bondoni wrote this piece of trolling, misogynist racefail horseshit, ranting against positive discrimination and the “PC” police, etc. He was referring to those people who voiced an opinion on The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF being a mammoth book of only white male authors. No women, no minorities… all white, all men.

One of the people he’s complaining about is the glorious Catherynne M Valente, a fantasy and sci-fi author and editor, whose writing I love a whole lot. (I’ll get the recs out of the way: her World Fantasy Award nominated, Mythopoeic Award winning The Orphan’s Tales and Hugo nominated Palimpsest for starters). The small snag here being that Apex is the company she edits a magazine for, so people asked her opinions of his blogpost.

Now, there’s the old argument that if you’re pulling from the Golden Age of sci-fi, most authors WERE men. But this book isn’t only about that period, and the list of superb female SFF authors is long and mighty. CL Moore, Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ, Octavia Butler, Marge Piercy… (believe me, I could add 20 more names here with no effort). Much more if you include Fantasy as a genre alongside it. There are 3 female SF Grandmasters, and truly great female SF writing goes back a long way (it’s traditional to cite Mary Shelley for Frankenstein).

Besides, you shouldn’t mess with sci-fi nerds, they know math: one commenter on the Mammoth book post worked out that even if 3 out of 4 authors were white males, and the other 1 in 4 category contained *everyone* else, there was still only a 0.2% chance of all 21 stories being written by white guys. This wasn’t a case of “but it’s representative of there being genuinely no minorities in SF writing”. The chance of that being true is something like 0.2% depending on the actual ratios (you have to get up to 95% white males before it even hits 50/50).

So Bondoni wrote his deliberately baiting blogpost, trying to raise some controversy, and Cat Valente posted what she thought of it.

It turns out she’s tired and bored, but with more swearing:

I’m not saying “ignore the bully and he’ll go away.” Nope. Shred away. It’s what he wants, so he can continue to feel persecuted, and very likely keep believing that the mythical PC harpies are why he’s not a star of page and screen. It’s fun to feel persecuted – if you’re persecuted, it usually means you’re right, and at the mercy of wicked souls. It’s not actually fun to be persecuted, but if you can get that feeling while sitting at home with no one oppressing you? Profit.

He’s using us – because he knows he can’t get the internet crowds to look at him any other way, he simply calls us playground names. And that’s what the phrase PC is these days – name calling. No one who actually believes in not intentionally hurting other humans uses that phrase anymore. It’s pretty much solely used to insist that mobs of people who don’t look like the user are constantly beating down his door to force him to be nice. Poor f***ing baby. My heart bleeds for you, sweetheart.

I just wanted to give a little cheer, because I think her whole post is excellent.

Next time, Mr Bondoni, don’t pick a fight with the woman who responded to Elizabeth Moon’s astonishing anti-Muslim rant by dedicating the entire next issue of Apex magazine to only contain stories from Arab and Muslim writers. (That issue comes out soon, and I can’t wait).

Now, we could say that picking arguments over statistics and always demanding equal representation is too aggressive a behaviour, that it doesn’t help feminism or that we’d be better off just leaving losers like Bondoni alone. Cat’s point is that we’re all tired of it, we’ve all seen it before, and the arguments against positive discrimination (if that even applied here, which I don’t think it does) will keep coming from the poor oppressed traditional majority.

But when the comments to the original announcement of the ‘Mammoth book…’ themselves prove precisely why the fight isn’t over yet, I think I can find the energy to keep opposing.

Sci-fi should be a field where we can leave prejudices behind, especially those based on tradition and culture. It is the greatest genre for wiping away the assumptions that the ratio of power between genders should be the same as in the modern day, or that race or religion (or even money) have to divide people the way they do. I love sci-fi for this.

But it also contains its share of famously right-wing intolerant viewpoints, and that’s a reminder that even in this free and imaginative literary space we can’t stop pushing to improve things. I think Cat is right: hearing Bondoni’s arguments yet again is boring, and providing him with the drama he wants is pointless… but taking a stance against his views isn’t. We still hear people complaining about things being “too PC” daily, that fight is a long way from over yet.