But Enough About Me!

Science fiction is often defined as a “literature of ideas,” and many famous SF stories can be identified by the idea, or nifty concept, or “what if” speculation that lies at their heart. Is my sf novel JARAN just a rousing adventure story with a romantic element, or is there some kind of science fictional speculation involved?

Glad you asked. (Because I’ve discovered that people usually don’t ask. Too often they seem to just assume there isn’t because nothing in the book (if they’ve even read the book) fits the received and accepted definition of a sfnal “idea.”)

What if, in a low-tech, chieftain-level pastoral society in which labor remains divided along fairly traditional (by our standards) gender line, women had real authority?

Not lip service authority. Not a lot of talk about women being the repository of honor in the home, or the teachers of the next generation, or the keeper of the house in a way that specifically limits them to the house, or the biologically equipped nurturing machines whose scriptural mandate is to be mother and helpmeet, but real authority: “The right and power to command, enforce laws, exact obedience, determine, or judge.” (The American Heritage Dictionary, 1976)

As authority, that is, held over all members of society and not just over children and social inferiors. And not just some women, those who by birth or accident or exceptionalism have managed to wrest authority for themselves out of a patriarchal society by being “as good as a man,” but all women.

What would such a society look like? How might it function to grant equal dignity to women and men and yet at the same time fit realistically into a broader world and with an understanding of human nature and the needs of survival in a low-tech world with a high mortality rate?

Over the course of envisioning and revising the book, I had to ask myself a lot of questions. Am I reinforcing notions of biological determinism by splitting labor along traditional gender lines as the average USA reader knows and expects them to be observed even today but particularly in our view of the past? Yet if I can only write women as “free and powerful” by freeing them from their “traditional” roles, am I not then implicitly agreeing with unchallenged cultural assumptions that devalue women’s labor and women’s experience? How can I mediate between these two extremes?

I don’t have an answer to these questions, although I can say that over time I’ve learned how fluid division of labor by gender is from society to society. For instance, in the jaran I made men the ones who embroider, but of course embroidery is not a universal female occupation; most USAians just tend to think it is.

In any case, in JARAN and the other volumes in the sequence I explore what respect and authority mean and how they might interact through and between genders and, by doing so, shape how the culture of the jaran tribes developed in the past and continues to develop when a disruptive new force begins to alter the social fabric of the tribes.

Yet I didn’t want to create a “matriarchy” in which women rule and men submit--an inverted patriarchy. I wanted to explore the idea of a culture in which all adult roles are truly respected. So I started with an assumption: For women to maintain authority, institutions within the culture have to support that authority.

I made the tribes matrilineal, and in addition borrowed from many Native American traditions in which the right to hold certain offices and to inherit property follow down the female line.

I also made the jaran matrilocal: Under most circumstances, a new husband goes to live with his wife’s tribe. The locus of power within any given tribe centers on extended families of sisters. A woman’s relationship to her brother is considered to be the most stable female-male relationship, based on a shared mother and upbringing, and within extended families, cousins related through sisters or a sister and brother are considered like siblings (however, this is not true for cousins related through brothers).

In addition, women have possession of the tents and wagons, and they manage and distribute food and labor available to the tribe. As with the Iroquois and Cherokee, jaran etsanas (headwomen) have the power to install or depose male tribal war leaders.

These familial, economic, and political relationships give women a network of support as well as a respect and autonomy that reinforces their authority.

Another aspect I played with was the cultural norms of sexual behavior. The hoary old cliché of male sexual aggression contrasted with female sexual passivity is still with us in a multitude of forms. I chose to make jaran women the sexual initiators: They choose lovers at will when unmarried, and are free to continue to (discreetly) take lovers once they are married. To drain off a bit of the “power” implicit in sexual choice, I gave men the choice in marriage. Although in practice almost all men (at the instigation of or with the assistance of their mothers and sisters) would negotiate with the other family first, it would be possible for a man to marry a woman whom he wanted but who did not want him. This contrasting pattern assured that neither sex had complete power over the other. Even in a strongly patriarchal society that is highly restrictive toward women, women will seek avenues of balance and redress when they can, including underhanded ones. History is full of such examples. I wanted to place mine right out on the table.

I catapult my protagonist into this culture without preparing her for it. Since she comes from a future Earth where the dregs of our patriarchal past still hold some sway over her way of thinking, she often has the opportunity to misinterpret what freedom and authority mean among the jaran. And when I look back at the book now, almost two decades later, I can see ways in which my own thinking has changed, things I might have written differently but which reflect the era and attitudes in which I grew up.

Ultimately, looking back, I wish that discussing my speculative ideas behind the jaran society weren’t still timely. To quote sff writer N. K. Jemisin in her recent and really excellent post on “The Limitations of Womanhood in Fantasy,” “Here’s the problem with this wholesale rejection of both societally-imposed and self-chosen “typical” women’s behaviors — in the end, it amounts to a rejection of nearly all things feminine. And that’s definitely not good for women.”

That’s the idea I was trying to explore, back then. We’re still struggling with it now.





*** This post was adapted out of the introduction I wrote to the 2002 edition of JARAN, published by DAW Books.

I'm not really entering the nihilistic fantasy discussion because its originator post strikes me as more political than literary, and that includes the fact that the original post does not mention a single female writer, an elision I consider relevant to the larger points. Some of these "older" notions of honor and morality are, shall we say, ones that either confine or elide women, so they are in that sense rarely "universals" except in a narrow range of defining what is to be considered universal which becomes universal often through measures of exclusion.

Now, I have my own issues with times I have come across people who seem to be saying that depictions of human cruelty and/or treachery, say, are "more authentic" than depictions of human kindness and honor, say. Both cruelty and kindness (expand these dualities as you wish) exist within the human condition. I'm not going to go into what reservations I may have on that here at the moment either (although they can be tackled in the comments).

Also, be aware that I do not have a single view of things. I tend to have nuanced and sometimes even contradictory views of things (although not always; sometimes I'm very simplistic). So what I say below is ONE comment I have on "the new gritty" -- not the totality of my thoughts on it or supposed nihilism, or the death of morality, or whatever.

But. It does occur to me that a reason -- one possible reason -- for the rise of the new gritty may be not the death of morality but the death of belief in the stories that we were told to believe were the truest measure of what is foundational.

When I look, for instance, at the amazing demonstrations in the Arab world right now, I see them being driven by young people who perceive the old institutions, both physical and symbolic, as corrupt and oppressive and as layered with a gilded veneer of putative truth over a pit of lies, greed, and force. And I don't say that specifically about the Arab world. I mean that in the greater sense of a significant shift as the 20th century lurches onward into the 21st and a new generation calls for transparency, equality, and honesty, a generation that may have reason to doubt they have been well served environmentally and economically (just to name two axes) by the institutions and economies and mindsets currently in power.


So I am not surprised to see some of the writers of today writing skeptically or critically or even cynically about the institutions and "sentiments" that we have societally been raised to valorize even and maybe especially in the fiction we tell ourselves to try to describe what I might call "deeper truths" about culture and society and our place in it. So maybe those people write in ways that are uncomfortable, unpleasant, or downright ugly.

As a reader, I may or may not want to read such works. In fact, I think such works themselves are too individual in tone and outlook to be usefully lumped together as if they are all the same. But on this axis of inquiry at least I have a sense of where some of them may be coming from.

(okay, not so brief)

ETA: And while I'm at it, I want to highly recommend this post by Foz Meadows on epic fantasy, the female gaze, the new gritty, and nihilism: all in one fabulously thoughtful package.

Oh voracious readers.

Can you please mention (and perhaps briefly describe the basic story Without Spoilers) book titles for books that

1) fall clearly into the YA category

2) with preferably some kind of supernatural or fantastic element (major or minor)

3) either set in this world or a secondary world (I don't care)

4) possibly written post-Twilight (2005) but I'll take earlier if it's a good example of a book that is still being read

5) in which the teen protagonist(s) has (have) consensual and non regretted sex that does not involve getting married first (as it does in Twilight).

ETA: It can involve True Love, or not, that doesn't matter. It can suggest that the pair may get married in the future, but they are not waiting for marriage. Equally, if there is no talk of marriage or if marriage is not in the cards now or ever, that's good, too (I'm almost more interested in this, but I'm looking for both.)

5a) heterosexual, homosexual, some other variety of sexuality that I don't know how to properly name, serial partners, whatever, anything (ETA: including "brought to orgasm without consummation" sex). The key is that it is what I would call "healthy" sex: that is, consensual, respectful, and not personally shameful to the individuals involved (whether or not there is a shame element culturally that the individual ignores is a different issue). It doesn't have to be explicit (although it can be) but it has to be clear that it happens. A universe-shattering kiss does not count.

Thanks in advance.


P.S. You can mention your own book because I'm looking for titles, and you would know better than anyone! Just to be clear, I'm looking for published titles, not ones being written or contemplated.