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ROLES

Soft Roles vs Hard Roles? 

                                           This was Elizabeth Hand, 
                                           "Distant Fingers" column 
Someone in S.F. EYE                        "Women Visionaries for        
once again revives the                      the _Fin-de-Millenaire_"     
familar complaint: Too                      _Science Fiction Eye #8_
many female characters 
are poorly translated 
male characters.  "Men                                                  
with tits."  Just like                 Does the converse problem           
male characters except                 ever occur? "Women with dicks"?
for names, appearence.  
                    
But this is the unisexual 
ideal in play, right? 
All gender differences 
are cultural.  And if we        Why? Because some people    Any characteristic
strive to eliminate them,       find them restrictive,      presumed universal
any mildly utopian              oppressive.                 oppresses the 
future must presume                                         exceptions. 
a move in that direction. 
                          
                          
To write otherwise                                          WEIRD 
presumes an               
alternative theory        
about what men and        
women are, and about 
why they are that    
way, and a guess     
about how these      
things might change.                                              
                                                                  
This is a possibility:                                                      
                                       Pick some other theories to look at.
Begin with this idea I lifted                                              
from Anthropology 101: sex             How about the Camile Paglia notion  
roles are universal, but               of women as the font of the         
their precise meanings are             irrational, whose natural province   
not.  In a few cultures, the           is all things not scientific.  Woman
things we call feminine are            as intuitive.                       
associated with men, and the                                               
"masculine" with women.  But           Where does that lead?               
everyone makes _a_                                                         
distinction, just not always                           PAGLITE             
_our_ distinction.                                                         
                               
To me this suggests the          This is a severely           
postulate that there is          offensive idea to            
an inbuilt need for              a 70s style feminist.        
gender differentiated            I had one compare            
social roles.                    me to the Nazis since 
                                 they also used "anthropology" 
                                 to back up their racial 
                                 theories.                                  
Is there a positive way                                       
to deal with this?  
Consider transvestites...                                             
                                                              
What if anyone was free                                       
to choose either role
regardless of physical      TRANS 
gender?                                                       
                                                              
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