_Mote in God’s Eye_ by Niven/Pournell. They are often criticized for rampent sexism for this book. The book history includes a disease that wipes out a large portion of the femal population, and there is a sort of weird chivalry where women don’t participate in much at all to keep them safe — as a method of ensuring humanity’s survival. This highlights a potential danger when using non-”PC” gender roles not just in Fantasy, but in SF. People will confuse your opinions of what SHOULD BE with what you establish as a part of your setting.

Another is Heinlein’s _Starship Troopers_. There’s no inherent inequality of status in this book, but in it, women are, almost universally (at least in the military), starship pilots while men are ground pounders. The argument being (if I remember correctly) that their mental reaction times and dexterity are inherently better than a man’s. Soem sort of biological difference anyway. As far as I’ve seen, this feature is not a commonly criticized one.

As a final example (less “high canon”) is the writings of John Scalzi (I’ll ignore Brandon’s righteous wrath at the mention of his “rival” ). In _The Android’s Dream_ there’s a character whose gender is NEVER SPECIFIED. Yeah, it’s a minor character. I functioned the whole time assuming it was a man, partially because I believe I misread a single line of dialog referring to this character with a male pronoun, even though in my world view my basic assumption for the character would be that it was a woman — not because the character has no power — (s)he does in her own organization — but because (s)he’s in a romance with a character who is male. He successfully built a setting where I didn’t make any hetero-normative assumptions and where sexual orientation didn’t seem to be an issue for even the characters I would assume would have that sort of prejudice. Gender was, essentitally, a non issue anywhere except as it specifically regarded reproduction. He also “non-issues” this in his _Old Man’s War_ and it’s sequels. Other than the fact that the protag/narrator of the first book is hetero (he does have homosexual companions but nothing is made of it) and therefore attracted to women, gender doesn’t play any other role in the book — any given role in the military (any branch) and any rank just happens to have someone, who might or might not be a man. It’s a very interesting case of removing any wonder about gender roles. And in a setting with a fully gender-integrated military, I’m impressed by that. He doesn’t avoid the issue per se, he manages to make it non-important.

Derby

Not revealing their gender until later is setting up a rather flat form of “mystery”. It’s more fun when you set up mysteries while leaving all the information there that the reader needs to figure it out, and then leading them towards several bad conclusions.

Call me Derby.

Most of the little I have written is political commentary. You will find it (if interested) at http://www.derbysblog.com. But I really want to write fiction. Perhaps, later a political novel.

My first story is the reason I chose to leave a comment here now. It involves a person named Dale. Dale is a gender neutral name and that is why I chose it. In the story I never reveal Dale’s gender. Dale has a love interest, Blair. Another gender neutral name. Blair’s gender is also not revealed. Although my intent was for a heterosexual relationship, I suppose it could be interpreted differently.

Last night, before hearing this podcast, I was pondering rewriting without the gender mystery. Those who have read the story did not even realize I had not identified the genders and had made there own assumptions. I do not believe I write the female voice very well and that may have influenced the assumptions made (right or wrong).

BTW: the story is told in the first person. Also, I am not sure what genre it is or what audience it would appeal to. It is current times in the US. No Sci-Fi, no Fantasy and no Horror. Although it has some romance in it, it is not meant to be a romance. I’m not quite ready to make it available online but might do so soon.

I guess the reason for the post is because I would like opinions on whether the original premise of not revealing the genders of the two protagonists is a good idea or a bad one.

The podcasts are great. I am a poor student but still have learned a lot. Much more to learn, though.

They’re good. And funny!

And I deliberately waited until after I’d written them before reading these comments. I didn’t want to be second-guessing my writing based on a few strong, well-expressed comments.

January 22nd and 23rd of 2010. Be there, and yell at me then. I’ll have moved on to telling February’s jokes, and it will be too late for me to go back and edit.

Also, apologies to Matthew for not sharing your definition of political correctness. We thought it would be a fun way of saying “we’re going to discuss social issues in this one,” and in fact Howard chose the title specifically because he knew it would piss people off.

No need to apologise, I just found it weird, not offensive, and it doesn’t piss me off. I know that in many conservative circles that’s what people mean by “political correctness”, but that’s always seemed off to me.

I think controversial issues actually generally become less contentious if you stop trying to label them as contentious things, but I could be wrong here. Most of the discussion has seemed pretty intelligent since. I especially like both the points that Rachel and Jasyn made.

For example, we have two sisters in Warbreaker. Siri reacts how you’d first guess someone would react to being thrown into a marriage with an evil God-King. I feel for her, but the reaction itself isn’t interesting (Brandon gives us plot and cool setting to be interested in, instead). Then there’s Vivenna. You’d think she’d be happy her engagement to the man she loathes is ended…but she’s furious. That anger is easily accessible to the reader because Vivenna’s loyalty, long-studying, and love of her sister and country (things I can appreciate) are well-characterized. I found it easy to empathize with Vivenna, and I found her POV exciting precisely because she didn’t act or think exactly like ten thousand other female protagonists I’ve read.

Vin didn’t feel anachronistic either, because she was responding to the world around her. She was strong as a skaa, concentrating on staying alive…not on letting the rest of the crew know that the world they lived in wasn’t fair, and sulking about a general lack of feminism. She had realistic problems with trust joining Kelsier’s team, and she focused on that. I always felt like she was acting the way she did because that’s who she was, not because the author was trying to make a statement or be politically correct.

So, yes, I’m a modern woman buying these books…but I don’t want to read about the same person over and over. I want to be able to empathize, but I don’t need a lecture on women’s rights: I’m a woman. I already know women aren’t dumb. And I like books where every reaction isn’t the first that pops to mind. Unintuitive reactions (like Vivenna’s) don’t feel foreign if the character and world are well-built — and they enrich both the character, the world, and my reading enjoyment.

I liked what Rachel said about celebrating women in the roles they’re in. When a girl only gets to be important to a story because she has a magical ability, and all other women in the world are as useful as cattle…I think that’s anything but respectful to women. Being a farmgirl or a housewife, a princess or a skaa, doesn’t make a person weak or brave or clever. Those are just roles various weak, brave, and clever people fill.