Angry Women and Their Books (1)

James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon)

I must begin this discussion with Alice Bradley Sheldon, who wrote under the pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr. In particular, I recognized her anger in 2 of her stories --- Your Haploid Heart (1969) and The Screwfly Solution (1977). (Note: Spoilers of both stories below.)

Your Haploid Heart is the first Tiptree story I read. It puzzled me and tormented my mind. I knew the central conflict between the Esthaans and the Flenni, two manifestations of one species on the alien plant, is meant to refer to certain human qualities. I could feel it, but I could not figure out what it was.

All science fictions are allegories. All aliens are humans in disguise. Yes, even Arthur Clarke's gods.

In their misguided pursuit of becoming more human and more civilized, the Esthaans attempt to commit genocide of the Flenni, which is not really a genocide but rather "parricide, filicide ... perhaps suicide ..."

It was only after I read an article about the life and work of Alice Sheldon did I begin to understand. You see, she camouflaged her gender-related theme with descriptions of both "male" and "female" organisms in the strong and stocky Esthaans (the diploids) as well as the frail and beautiful Flenni (the haploids). Their codependence is established in that the Esthaans produce the Flenni in an asexual manner (while suggesting a certain disgust and fear of reproduction), and two Flenni (gametes) combine to give birth to Esthaans (but sex means death to them). Therefore, reading this story alone without context, it would be difficult to see that she was really talking about the perhaps-suicidal urge for men to destroy women.

But ...

Eight years later, after her male cover was blow, she unleashed her concerns of men killing women in The Screwfly Solution, under a female pseudonym Raccoona Sheldon. It is perhaps the most gruesome story I have ever read, even though the violence occurs off-stage. The cause of this massacre might be bizarre and alien, but the ideology used to justify it (i.e., purifying humanity from the corrupting effects of women's seductive power) is eerily familiar.

I think most every woman who has walked this earth can feel a shiver down her spine when she reads this story, because the threat of death is both literal and figurative.

Women are killed by men since the dawn of human society through today. It's not science fiction, it's reality. It's so common that we don't even talk about it. At least, nobody talks about it with any visible anger or shame.

Sure, women kill men too, at a fraction of the prevalence. And perhaps we can argue that men kill men the most, which is also true, although I don't know how that helps.

Figuratively, it is the dominance of male thought as the default, human thought, while female thought as "the other" and the aberrant and deviant.

Nevertheless ...

What Alice Sheldon wanted to point out is that men killing women is a form of human self-destruction.

This reminds me of a real exchange I read about between Cixin Liu and a history professor. Cixin Liu is a Chinese science fiction writer who won the 2015 Hugo Award for his novel "The Three-Body Problem" and has a massive following among Chinese (mostly male) science fiction readers. In 2007, at some public event, Liu and Professor Xiaoyuan Jiang had a debate about culture and cannibalism. Liu pointed to a young woman who was hosting this event and said, if the 3 of us were the last ones left to carry on human civilization, and we have to eat someone to survive, would you eat her? (Note that he went straight to the question "Would you eat HER?") Jiang replied, of course not. Liu said, we live in an indifferent universe (an idea he no doubt "learned" from Clarke). If you don't eat her and survive, you would be responsible for losing all of this glorious culture, think Shakespeare, Goethe, Einstein ... You think I'm cruel, but I'm only rational.

I'll leave you to ponder the irony of Mr. Liu's rationality.