Sharona Ben-Tov quotes Brian Aldiss as saying that women's science fiction is an escape from "'the Ghetto of Retarded Boyhood'" (136). Indeed.
One of the best aspects of feminist science fiction is that it allows its readers the opportunity to conceptualize "woman-as-human, that unselfconscious being who goes about life the way she wants or has to, neither particularly because she is a woman nor in spite of it" (Ben-Tov 136). While there are certainly more examples of feminist science fiction, two stories exemplify the way in which women can use the science fiction genre to critique present inequities and to claim space in the future. James Tiptree, Jr.'s "The Women Men Don't See" and Joanna Russ' "A Few Things I Know About Whileaway" (excerpted from her book, The Female Man) examine the ways in which patriarchal domination reduces women to non-humans or aliens.
James Tiptree, Jr. (a.k.a. Alice Sheldon) foregrounds the issue of female visibility in "The Women Men Don't See." The word "men" has a double meaning in this title; "men" literally means male human, but it also means the generalized term for people, inclusive of both males and females (Barr 60). This linguistic signifier packs more political ammunition than many might believe because it is indicative of the way in which women are denied proper recognition of their individual, autonomous personhood. Tiptree's story begins with the narrator speaking to a "double female blur," two women on a flight to Cozumel Island in Mexico (255). When he encounters the women later on a connecting flight to Chetumal, he immediately makes assumptions about their relationship (mother/daughter) and sizes them up in terms of their sexual attractiveness. Tiptree suggests that in order for a woman to be seen, she must be sexy; otherwise, men see women as a blur, not as defined individuals (Barr 60). Through the male narrator's account of events, the way in which men attempt to reduce women becomes obvious. When the woman, later revealed as Ruth Parsons, declines to give the narrator Don any information about her private life, he assumes she must be a "Mrs. Parsons" (and he continues to refer to her in that manner even after she tells him she has never been married). He also privately calls her "Mother Hen," suggesting that her primary value and function as a human being (because she has a daughter) is to behave in stereotypically mothering ways. In fact, Ruth Parsons and her daughter Althea consistently annoy the narrator because they do not behave as he expects females always do; for example, after the plane crash lands and they realize they will have to survive in the wilderness until help arrives, Don says, "But something is irritating me. The damn women haven't complained once, you understand. Not a peep, not a quaver..." (259). Don and Captain Esteban are condescendingly bemused when Ruth and Althea state their preference for sleeping outdoors; Don can only dismiss their independence as "a private insanity" (260). Don also attempts to fence Ruth in professionally when she tells him she is a librarian; rather than allow her to be simply "Ruth Parsons, a librarian," she becomes, in his mind, one of many typical Ruth Parson-esque librarians, a general type, not an individual (260). Don consistently objectifies Ruth sexually throughout the story. When they are stranded alone together after attempting to find fresh water, Don projects his juvenile sexual desire onto her: "The woman doesn't mean one thing to me, but...the defiance of her little rump eight inches from my fly--for two pesos I'd have those shorts down and introduce myself" (263). Her lack of desire or interest in him is only a minor nagging obstacle, one that he is certain he will overcome through most of the story. When Ruth shows her ease and facility with "roughing it" outdoors, Don patronizingly calls her "such a decent ordinary little woman, a good Girl Scout" (268). Similarly, he sees Althea as a child, asking Ruth if she is still in college; Ruth "gives that sighing little laugh," no doubt used to the way in which women are infantilized, as responds that Althea is a working woman (266). Finally, Don sees both Ruth and Althea as great mysteries, never conceding that there may be perfectly valid explanations for their behavior. He is mystified that Ruth and Althea not only willingly fly away with aliens, but that they would beg the aliens to take them. "'For Christ's sake, Ruth, they're aliens!'" he shouts. "'I'm used to it,' she says absently" (276). Although Don has defined Ruth and Althea as alien presences in his objectification of them throughout the story, they suddenly become members of mankind who must stick together against otherworldly invaders. For Ruth and Althea, however, the aliens are not necessarily enemies, as they are all-too-aware of what it is like to be aliens on earth (Barr 99). Don is left to wonder "do all of Mrs. Parsons' friends hold themselves in readiness for any eventuality, including leaving Earth?" (279). He cannot understand the action Ruth and Althea take because what he ironically calls "her home, her world" is really his home, his world, and as Ruth says, the best women can "'do is survive. We live by ones and twos in the chinks of your world-machine'" (271).
Joanna Russ' "A Few Things I Know About Whileaway" gives an idea of what might happen if women like Ruth and Althea board spaceships in large numbers and inhabit their own all-female planet. The women of Whileaway take surnames resembling the earthly Icelandic style, affixing "daughter" to the first name of the mother (i.e., "Janet Evasdaughter"). No men have lived on Whileaway for nine centuries, a phenomenon that earthlings find incomprehensible because they cannot imagine a successful society without men (Barr 61). The women of Whileaway continue to have families, make livings, make love, and exists satisfactorally without males; they are fiercely independent, capable, and they have little use for distinctions like masculine and feminine. Russ explodes myths right and left; The Old Whileawayan Philosopher laughs at her disciples when they attempt to project mystical creativity and power onto her, saying, "'Exercise your projective imaginations on something that can't fight back'" (348). Later, the narrator says, "Do not tell me that enchanted frogs turn into princes, that frogesses under a spell turn into princesses. Why slander frogs? Princes and princesses are fools" (348). Frogs are what they are-- "they experience rapturous, metaphysical joy...How many princes or princesses can say as much?" (348) For the women of Whileaway, men are aliens. Women are people.
Marleen Barr finds it problematic that both "The Women Men Don't See" and "A Few Things I Know About Whileaway" suggest that women live better without men (64). Barr points out that there are other ways to go about writing feminist science fiction besides creating a feminist utopia, ones that often do little to subvert the very oppressive dualities they long to escape. Barr recommends Marge Piercy's Women On the Edge of Time and Thomas Berger's Regiment of Women as examples of science fiction that speak of an end to masculinity, that imagine a change in men and not just a separation of the sexes, and that show the ill effects of masculinist thinking on men as well as women (71-72).
Ben-Tov, Sharona. The Artificial Paradise. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1995.
Russ, Joanna. "A Few Things I Know About Whileaway." In The Norton Book of Science Fiction. Eds. Ursula K. LeGuin and Brian Attebery. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993. 337-349.
Tiptree, James, Jr. "The Women Men Don't See." In The Norton Book of Science Fiction. 255-279.