(urth) 'King Rat' and the abuse of women in Gene Wolfe's stories
Gerry Quinn
gerryq at indigo.ie
Wed Mar 9 09:19:04 PST 2011
From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <danldo at gmail.com>
> Lane Haygood wrote:
> > I tend to write (almost exclusively) male protagonists and narrators.
> > Because I am male. I don't have any direct, subjective experience of
> > being
> > female.
> But SF is all about writing the Other. If you can't write a female
> character, how can you write an alien?
Aliens are easy compared to those inscrutable women!
But seriously, I guess the answer is that aliens will probably not be
reading your books just yet, but women might be. An author's depictions of
the opposite gender will be held to a higher standard, because some of that
gender will be reading it. And indeed, even those of the same gender will
be more familiar with the opposite gender than with aliens, robots, talking
cats or whatever. So you can get away with much less in the way of
infelicities.
- Gerry Quinn
More information about the Urth
mailing list