The Serious Business of Science Fiction and Ladies

[helloladies]

If you put three feminists with wildly diverging interests in a room, what do you get? The classic feminist, who looks with a keen eye toward the past and relates it with a careful hand toward the future, the cultural critic feminist, who parses popular media and cultural commentary through a feminist gaze to ask tough questions that might not have answers, and the fannish feminist, who spends most of her time reading about the dudes romancing other dudes and feeling complicated and conflicted even though those stories are written by women. We're all different and come from different places with the same goal: we want stories by women, whatever those women choose to write about, to be celebrated and discussed and treasured, and we can't do those things if the stories never make it to the stage or are devalued or ignored when they do.

2011 has been an interesting year for ladies in science fiction (and fantasy, as well, as the two are often mixed in the discourse and ladies in fantasy suffer the same problems). Ladies are taking over award lists, but many are still suffering from Unknown Syndrome. Entertainment choices are everywhere but so often, the more mainstream those choices are, the less likely it is that you'll find a woman at the center of it as anything other than decoration for the male protagonist. Unconscious choice of the gentlemen, even for those of us who actively read women, can often leak into a summer full of books and movies and video games written, created, directed and performed by men just by nature of the spread of the content.

Men's stories are more culturally important, so men's stories are going to be the biggest item on the buffet menu. Over the past few months we've talked, both in our entries on reading and reading while female, about how we can request that the management please, please put out some lady-entertainment platters. It doesn't have to be 50/50; sadly, so often we settle for crumbs. And so, we wondered: what happens when we stop settling for crumbs? What happens when we demand to not be erased, a fair number of story-platters, an equal seat, a megaphone so we can be heard over the din of the dudes slicing their steaks against the dishes consuming entertainment that's catering to them?

With that in mind, we organized a week-long fest focusing on ladies in speculative fiction stories, written about by ladies who likes stories about ladies, based on our first two Lady Business tenets:

#1 - Stories by ladies about ladies.
#2 - Stories by ladies about dudes.

Over the next week we'll share our collection of content with each other. Feel free to grab a plate and slide in. Our table is open.



On Monday, Ana will bring us her thoughts about The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson.

Tuesday will be full of links with a special themed edition of Sidetracks and also a giveaway!



On Wednesday, Jodie will delve into To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis.

On Thursday, Susan will visit and share a few mini-reviews of books she's been reading lately.



Friday, Renay will revisit The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

And lastly, on Saturday Ana and Thea will be dropping by with an awesome recommendation list full of awesome lady authors and leading ladies.

Comments

[nymeth]

All I can say is: YAY

[bookgazing]

Seconded!

Oh and I don't know why the header had disappeared between edits. I was messing around in the doc Saturday and maybe did something? I didn't notice anything at the time though, but my laptop was being a little weird with Google docs that day.

[nymeth]

Not sure what happened either! I definitely give the header the thumbs up :D

[renay]

I think google docs just CONSUMED IT. You know, how it does.

[goodbyebird]

Looking forward to reading all your posts when I get home from vacay! Most likely I'll wind up reading Hunger Games while away as well, so good timing on that one.