Cyan's comments made me recall "The Women Men Don't See," the profoundly classic story by James Tiptree, Jr. I originally recalled it as compared to Joanna Russ' "Souls." Told in the voice of Don Fenton, a spook on a Yucatan fishing trip that's gone very wrong, "The Women Men Don't See" is my favorite of Tiptree's stories. Right now. I think. I've read it several times over the years. This callow, shallow individual somehow read past this comment of Ruth Parsons to Don, after they'd been trapped for two or three days, separated from her daughter and the Mayan pilot:
Women have no rights, Don, except what men allow us. Men are more aggressive and powerful, and they run the world. When the next real crisis upsets them, our so-called rights will vanish like—like that smoke. We'll be back where we always were: property. And whatever has gone wrong will be blamed on our freedom, like the fall of Rome was. You'll see.
I have another older Asimov-edited anthology in which he waxes poetic about what a great writer James Tiptree was and makes it crystal-clear that his correspondent, whom he has never met in-person, is a "he" and a pretty grand one at that, with such knowledge of spycraft and manly Bondlike legerdemain.
That comment is only the whole point of the story, digested down to a brief paragraph, and Fenton, who I had previously read as a sort of a semi-horny, suspicious fishing trip spy, I now read as a guy who's been shown that there is ever so much more out there. The trip did rock his world, and the world really will never be the same for him again. He is also the only one who knows, and he can't possibly tell anyone. Therefore, a bit of revenge from Ruth Parsons to the self-satisfied Fenton: as she describes women living alone in ones and twos throughout the world, Fenton is now the same. He can never be a part of the brotherhood of men again - not really.
The reason that, for all of its passion and skill, "Souls" seems a less-satisfying story is that its aliens are a far different sort of salvation than the aliens in "The Women Men Don't See."
In telling the story from Fenton's point of view, Tiptree makes the entire story possible. Not only in practical terms, for Fenton is the one left behind to tell the story, but also in context. One of the profound truths of the story is its position that men (or people in general) assume that the world is a certain way, and they base their entire lives and natures on those assumptions. The story is pointing up that it is in fact, a very different world from the one that most perceive, and the shattering events of the story lift the veil on Fenton's vision.
It is the very veil that Fenton wears that ensured that Asimov and Tiptree's other male correspondents of the time had no inkling that he was a she. It's easy for me to say today, with 20-20 hindsight, that a person would have to be far less perceptive than Fenton, who at least "gets" that something is going on far beyond their seemingly accidental plane crash and struggle to survive in the Yucatan, in order to think that anybody who could write "The Women Men Don't See" was male. Not that Fenton is not an unrealistic male narrator or character -- he's pretty realistic, and the only fault in voice I see is really a strength, because rhetorically, he needs to be the way he is, and he needs to tell the story the way he does and actually "not see" a certain sort of woman - i.e. the Misses Parsons elder and younger.
Every time I start to think that science fiction is a sort of loser literature that has nothing to do with the core truths of humanity, something draws me back. "The Women Men Don't See" is one of the seminal stories of 20th Century literature. But as Ruth Parsons pointed out with bitter truth, much like the women living in ones and twos between the monoliths that are the men of the world, so too, does Tiptree now, with all of her accolades and all of her fame and her brilliant recent biography. Because Tiptree "came out." Imagine where she would be today, had she not. Just imagine.
* * * * * * * *
Quote of the day, via Ashley McConnell:
"Without me the literary industry would not exist: the publishers, the agents, the sub-agents, the sub-sub agents, the accountants, the libel lawyers, the departments of literature, the professors, the theses, the books of criticism, the reviewers, the book pages – all this vast and proliferating edifice is because of this small, patronised, put-down and underpaid person.
– Doris Lessing (1919 - )
British novelist, 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature
* * * * * * * *
And I want to link to a reprint of an article by Jean Gomoll that refers to women, fandom and SF, and to commentary by Joanna Russ on the many ways of silencing female authors in the field - this would refer to US SF, of the traditional fannish nature. I believe I just wrote a quote from the UK, Nobel Prize recipent Doris Lessing. This is not what one would call a genuine worldwide trend.
