No, it's the same book. Sex, Morality and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale was the subheading. (Is that the right word?)
It's very cool that you've read it!
I think, in fairness, that the majority of shows/books/movies that avoid obvious gender stereotypes still indulge in other, subtler ones. It's hard to avoid, especially since more professional writers are men than are women, and since certain assumptions about the roles of men and women are still so entrenched in our society that most of us never bother to consider that they might be anything other than Just The Way Things Are.
Once I read a feminist criticism of that Neil Gaiman short story, How to Talk to Girls At Parties , where these fifteen-year-old boys crash a party in the hopes of scoring some hot older chicks, but all the girls at the party turn out to be visiting space aliens from various other planets, and the boys are so intent on trying to play it suave that they completely fail to notice this. The criticism bashed it for being divisive, perpetuating the stereotype that males and females are so different they might as well literally belong to separate worlds, othering women, ect. While, after reading the article, I could understand the author's point, it would never have occurred to me to look at the story that way on my own, and I'm still not convinced that her interpretation wasn't missing the point a little. I mean, when I read the story it's very clear to me that any fault is with the boys, who are trying so hard to seem cool and to put the moves on the girls that they completely fail to understand anything the girls are saying. For me, it's less a commentary on how "alien" women ostensibly are than it is a commentary on how people's self-absorbtion and failure to really see other people can lead to a lack of communication.
Then again, I'm a weirdo who identified with one of the fictional alien girls so strongly that her story made me have to put the book down and regain my emotional composure. I really doubt that's either what the author was aiming for or a common experience amongst female readers of that story. I suppose maybe the "othering" aspect bothered me less because I feel like a freak most of the time anyway? (Not always in a bad way, you understand.)
Interestingly, I think my favorite X-Files episode I've seen so far is Beyond the Sea , where Mulder and Scully temporarily switch roles (he's the skeptic and she's, if not exactly a believer, open-minded about the possibility that the guy who claims to be psychic isn't faking).
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ninetydegrees
in which my comments are overly long
on 2009-07-21 05:37 pm (UTC)No, it's the same book. Sex, Morality and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale was the subheading. (Is that the right word?)
It's very cool that you've read it!
I think, in fairness, that the majority of shows/books/movies that avoid obvious gender stereotypes still indulge in other, subtler ones. It's hard to avoid, especially since more professional writers are men than are women, and since certain assumptions about the roles of men and women are still so entrenched in our society that most of us never bother to consider that they might be anything other than Just The Way Things Are.
Once I read a feminist criticism of that Neil Gaiman short story, How to Talk to Girls At Parties , where these fifteen-year-old boys crash a party in the hopes of scoring some hot older chicks, but all the girls at the party turn out to be visiting space aliens from various other planets, and the boys are so intent on trying to play it suave that they completely fail to notice this. The criticism bashed it for being divisive, perpetuating the stereotype that males and females are so different they might as well literally belong to separate worlds, othering women, ect. While, after reading the article, I could understand the author's point, it would never have occurred to me to look at the story that way on my own, and I'm still not convinced that her interpretation wasn't missing the point a little. I mean, when I read the story it's very clear to me that any fault is with the boys, who are trying so hard to seem cool and to put the moves on the girls that they completely fail to understand anything the girls are saying. For me, it's less a commentary on how "alien" women ostensibly are than it is a commentary on how people's self-absorbtion and failure to really see other people can lead to a lack of communication.
Then again, I'm a weirdo who identified with one of the fictional alien girls so strongly that her story made me have to put the book down and regain my emotional composure. I really doubt that's either what the author was aiming for or a common experience amongst female readers of that story. I suppose maybe the "othering" aspect bothered me less because I feel like a freak most of the time anyway? (Not always in a bad way, you understand.)
Interestingly, I think my favorite X-Files episode I've seen so far is Beyond the Sea , where Mulder and Scully temporarily switch roles (he's the skeptic and she's, if not exactly a believer, open-minded about the possibility that the guy who claims to be psychic isn't faking).