Women and such
Feb. 9th, 2010 06:33 pmThis was going to be a post about how female characters are presented in SF/F, expanding on an idea I had while reading a comment in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cassiphone 's journal. But I thought about it some more and what I wanted to then write was based on assumption about people's assumptions based on comments I've seen in other places. Which might be a good enough basis for my argument or it might not.
Then I thought about asking readers of this post what their assumptions are, but those who are most likely to comment are not the target of the question. And anyway, I couldn't think of a way to put it that was elicit useful responses.
The sort of thing I'm thinking of... I've mentioned before but no doubt to a different audience of how, when I was younger and used to read family history magazines, there was invariably an article or letter from someone about an female ancestor who had done this and this while raising a dozen kids and was obviously strong willed, independent and superior to her peers. Given that everyone seems to have at least one such ancestor, I did wonder who their peers were :) I think the assumption behind these "discoveries" is that women who are "just" housekeepers and "just" mothers are inferior to women who go out and work. If you extend that to a era when most women stayed at home and raised kids*, then it become easy to assume that modern women are inherently superior to women of the past. I would like to think I'm wrong, but the more I read and take part in discussions, the more common this attitude seems.
There's another common attitude that comes into play of course: our current society is the best that has ever been, and society is improving all the time. Therefore we are inherently superior to anyone who's been before? If you do believe that, how many people do you know that work more than a 40 hour week? And that's a step forward? Obviously there are things about our society that are better or are perceived by us to be better than (pick some time past). Medicine for starters :) But if you take the attitude that our "modern views" are superior and all enlightened people in the past and the future will share them, well, you might be able to guess what my original post was going to be about (or maybe not, because my thought was about the why, not the what).
But that's not supposed to be content of this post. I am interested in how we do view women's roles historically. I don't suppose any one wants to contribute their opinion?
*We'll overlook for a moment that many of those women were working on the farm, helping run the family business or bringing outside work home to supplement the income.
cassiphone 's journal. But I thought about it some more and what I wanted to then write was based on assumption about people's assumptions based on comments I've seen in other places. Which might be a good enough basis for my argument or it might not.Then I thought about asking readers of this post what their assumptions are, but those who are most likely to comment are not the target of the question. And anyway, I couldn't think of a way to put it that was elicit useful responses.
The sort of thing I'm thinking of... I've mentioned before but no doubt to a different audience of how, when I was younger and used to read family history magazines, there was invariably an article or letter from someone about an female ancestor who had done this and this while raising a dozen kids and was obviously strong willed, independent and superior to her peers. Given that everyone seems to have at least one such ancestor, I did wonder who their peers were :) I think the assumption behind these "discoveries" is that women who are "just" housekeepers and "just" mothers are inferior to women who go out and work. If you extend that to a era when most women stayed at home and raised kids*, then it become easy to assume that modern women are inherently superior to women of the past. I would like to think I'm wrong, but the more I read and take part in discussions, the more common this attitude seems.
There's another common attitude that comes into play of course: our current society is the best that has ever been, and society is improving all the time. Therefore we are inherently superior to anyone who's been before? If you do believe that, how many people do you know that work more than a 40 hour week? And that's a step forward? Obviously there are things about our society that are better or are perceived by us to be better than (pick some time past). Medicine for starters :) But if you take the attitude that our "modern views" are superior and all enlightened people in the past and the future will share them, well, you might be able to guess what my original post was going to be about (or maybe not, because my thought was about the why, not the what).
But that's not supposed to be content of this post. I am interested in how we do view women's roles historically. I don't suppose any one wants to contribute their opinion?
*We'll overlook for a moment that many of those women were working on the farm, helping run the family business or bringing outside work home to supplement the income.
