May 4th, 2009
by
Liz Henry
Here are some observations on gender and sexism in Anathem by Neal Stephenson. I noticed his attempt to have female characters who weren’t full of fail. Yet I was constantly jolted out of my enjoyment of this great, great book by what I think is unnecessary sexism. I’m going to write this without referring back to the book (in part because I read it on the iPhone Kindle app, and I didn’t start bookmarking Annoying Sexist Moments until part of the way through, and can’t easily search for words or phrases.)
It has many female characters who have power in the Saecular world and the Mathic world. They even have conversations with each other and not always about men. Woo, passes the Bechdel test.
Sort of.
So, most of what the women do that is powerful or that shows them in a thought process or a conversation occurs offstage; off the page.
For example, Ala and Tulia are described as having intense conversations all the time. But those conversations are not represented other than through Erasmus’ description of the rest of the Concent making fun of them and being annoyed by their long explanations to each other. Erasmus, Jesry, Lio, and Arsibalt as well as Orolo and Jad all have long conversations with each other that are represented “on camera”. Their relationships with each other are foregrounded.
So while it is good that Ala and Tulia’s trivialized conversations and off-the-page activities end up to be similar in result to the boys’ conversations — that result is a surprise and how they got it is a mystery.
Summary of the rest of this post with the spoilers out
- men and women’s conversations don’t happen much either, men just talk to men
- female characters’ strengths undermined by claims of instinct, by rape culture, by objectification
- condescension of male characters to female
- hideously pointless untrue-ringing romance plots
- fat girl remarked on as weirdly confident as if she thought she were a thin pretty girl
- Professions and class status assumed to be for men. “The truckers and their wives” etc.
- If it’s all about the menz, it’s just a coincidence OR IS IT?
- Umm the fertility stuff and I won’t spoil anything but, *eyeroll*
I shouldn’t have to say this, but I will: I love the book, I think it’s fabulous, I wallowed in it and couldn’t stop reading it. I want to be a monk and have a cord and a bolt and sphere and hang around winding clocks, gardening my hills of corn and tomatoes, and talking about philosophy and math, epistemology and multiple universes, all day long. I would even sing stupid songs based on mathematical theorems. So I mean this as a loving critique. Also, I am *AWARE* that Stephenson wrote a book with a kick ass heroine, you are… the 8 millionth person to tell me that; I read the book 15 years ago, barely remember mildly liking it, didn’t think the heroine was all that, AND I’m talking about this book not that book. Disclaimer over!
- – - – WARNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- – - AFTER HERE THERE BE SPOILERS – - -
Erasmus’ relationship with Ala also has a curiously off-camera aspect. He writes her letters, he feels some feelings, but they don’t have any substantial conversations. The closest they get to one is Ala yelling at Erasmus that he’s self centered and doesn’t get anything that goes on in her mind and that he thinks of her like a doll he is dressing up. (Which seems rather true.) Cord and Yel’s conversations aren’t shown either The “relating” parts of their relationship don’t happen where we can see them.
I ended up feeling like Stephenson had made special effort to include women in the book, but the book is still about men’s relationships to each other. It rings false to write a book that includes a bunch of women without actually showing the women’s conversations and relationships. It’s just WEIRD.
The strong female characters are undermined in various ways; by casual insistence on sexual objectification, rape culture, heteronormativity, body size and image, gender inequalities in the larger society and in the Math, by romantic relationships, and by the condescension of male characters. Erasmus constantly evaluates the sexual attractiveness of the young women around him and gets crushes on all of them, even his own sister; fine, he’s a teenager, but in combination with the other ways of undermining of the female characters’ agency, it is annoying.
Cord, a totally great character, gets pointlessly paired with the geology Mountain Man dude, another fine character but it is remarkable that she spends about 2 minutes in the book without having a boyfriend. Even worse, the boyfriend promises her brother that he’ll protect her. Okay. Was that necessary? Her competent actions and her high intelligence are frequently described in ways that make them sound like the result of instinct, a common way that women’s brains and skill is devalued. This is not true every time she does something, but it happened several times. Cord’s job as an engineer is apparently unusual in the Saecular world, as she mentions being the only woman in her workplace and having difficulties because of it. (Again – I liked this character a lot – and her vests and tools and her impatience with Erasmus, but there are such problems!)
Many of the profession/jobs or descriptions of class status overtly express sexism, either Arbrean sexism or Stephenson’s. For example burghers “and their wives” are mentioned. Truckers “and their wives”. And so on – there are more examples.
There is another annoying bit where Erasmus is describing his history with Ala to his sister Cord, who then exclaims super knowingly about it all as if she knows exactly what is happening and the male characters then joke about how women have a strange telepathic connection. Um…. dumb? Why did there have to be a “girls are weiiiiirrrrd” moment? Was this meant to be a big representative moment of How Women Really Are? Like the description of Ala and Tulia’s constant communication habits, talking to each other so much the boys describe them as the “Two Backed Creature” – (which i read as a tasteless out of character sexual joke on ‘beast with two backs’ about these two teenage girls’ friendship) (Which was also especially stupid since the guys constantly talk to each other too, as does everyone there, since Dialogue is part of the *point of being in the Math*)
In Tredgarth, Tris, in the kitchen with Erasmus and several others, speaks up interestingly with observations of the conversation happening at the dinner parties. Erasmus describes her then as being “podgy” and as being confident and acting as if she were a much more attractive girl. Despite being raised in a vaguely egalitarian philosophers’ school cut off from mainstream society for the last 10 years of his life, he completely accepts that an average looking “podgy” girl should behave in a particular manner not attracting of attention, and a pretty, thin girl would and should be more assertive and will be more privileged and furthermore that this is natural and deserved. Perhaps it was meant to remind the reader again that Erasmus is kind of a jerky teenage boy.
I understand that Arbre is not a perfect utopian world (duh) and it has sexism in it and so why not show it. Fine… But in a world where people are sitting around thinking about philosophy they could not possibly fail to remark on gender and power relationships and since everything is non normative in the maths there must be something going on there. Like, it was someone’s idea to Collect women as well and they seem to be powerful in the hierarchy.
I note that the women don’t seem to have birth control. Instead something is “put in the food” for the men in the Maths to make them infertile. Birth control is never mentioned in the Saecular world. I’m just saying… try and name me some examples of SF by women that don’t mention reproductive control being important for women? It’s jarring and feels unrealistic.
I enjoyed all the bits that felt influenced by Gene Wolfe… And am still reading the notes and proofs and diagrams and links to philosophical computing papers…. all very cool. But speaking of Wolfe. What’s the deal with science fiction monks? Would anyone care to compile a list of sf monasteries? Thoughts on the relation of science/academia to monastic homosocial culture?
The idea behind “Sconic thought” was kind of good – it was from the scones that a woman (whose name I have forgotten) used to bake for her Salons on empiricism that ran for many decades; she wrote lots of books, but her name was only mentioned once – instead the school of thought is named after her baking. I thought this was mildly amusing and a nice hat tip to the many women of intellectual and literary salons yet it was annoying for her name to be left out of the name of the school of thought. I might remember her name, then.
There were some interesting female characters at the symposiums at Tredgardth. The Lorite one was funny and informative and assertive though her role seemed not to be to think and critique or do anything but to report when ideas are mentioned, basically, “someone’s already thought of that.” There was also a Saecular politician who was powerful & witty. She is kind of wrapped up later as a package with her brother and powerful family. But I appreciated all the female characters in the dinner party scenes. I just wanted more from them, and more of them elsewhere in the book. As with Ala’s brilliant skills as a general, women’s genius only seems to happen when Stephenson’s camera isn’t recording. They can be competent, brave, witty… but not geniuses who have inspiring relationships with others.
A general complaint, not directed in particular at Stephenson. I don’t ask that every book be all things. But this book tries to be so much, and it fails so notably at this thing which to me seems so simple. Just make women characters as human as the male characters. Why is that so hard? How can anyone so smart and cool write something that fails to do that simple thing? Why do we as female readers and geeks so often get left behind and disappointed in this way by male writers? I am haunted by these questions in general while reading science fiction. Men, and heterosexual ones who claim to love and appreciate women and who in their daily lives surely do just that, fail to be able to write STORIES where women have full human agency and are important in any way other than romantic symbols or sadly cardboard sops to “strong female hero”.
The meta observations on non-sexism by Erasmus during the car journey were extremely annoying. It read to me like an in joke – that perhaps Stephenson had asked friends for feedback and someone said “Hey, how come 12 people just went off to do the main storyline, and 11 of them are men and one is Erasmus’ sister?” In character, Erasmus ponders the question and he concludes that maybe women just are less attracted to doing what they are doing (disobeying orders and going to look for ex-Fraa Orolo instead of going to Tredgardth.) This came off like an annoying little poke at possible feminist criticism of the scene as well as criticism of the book as a whole.
Then… the magical fertility and marriage chapter at the end. Why, why, why?
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Filed under Books & Literature | Comments (13)
“Just make women characters as human as the male characters. Why is that so hard? ”
To do that, you have to *think* of women as being as human as men, as being *people*, as opposed to objects to move the plot. You have to write as if you aren’t waiting for the woman to shut up so you can get on with your part of the conversation. You have to write as if the protagonist is actually interested in what women do and think.
Stephenson is particularly bad about this. Don’t get me started on *The Diamond Age*. Just don’t.
Stephenson seemed to frequently fall back on gender stereotypes in describing his characters. Those instances really stood out to me because he made such a point of describing the culture in the maths as gender neutral, or at least less sexist than the outside culture. The biggest disappointment to me was that he showed most of the women characters excelling as organizers and historians and nurturers, rather than as scientists.
And then there were the annoying bits where Stephenson seems to have simply fallen back on tired gender stereotypes. In addition to the bits you point out, there is a scene where the boys set up tables (I think) while the girls pick flowers. And another where Erasmus is out in the world and makes a comment about women loving shoes, despite the fact he has grown up in a math where everyone goes shoeless.
In character, Erasmus ponders the question and he concludes that maybe women just are less attracted to doing what they are doing (disobeying orders and going to look for ex-Fraa Orolo instead of going to Tredgardth.)
The women chose not to join the adventure. Of course it’s not sexist if they had a “choice”. Sigh.
Thanks for writing this. I confess to an occasional curiosity about Neal Stephenson’s books–and now I don’t have to read this one! There were two turning-point moments in reading Stephenson for me: in Zodiac, a book which actually did a lot to politicize me, he describes the woman spokesman for the radical environmental organization as small and pretty instead of big and ugly and butch like you’d expect; then, in Snowcrash he gives YT that stupid dentata thing–like it’s so helpful to have a guy pass out right after he rapes you, perhaps leaving his friends (if they’re present) angry and flipped out and definitely leaving you already raped. Exactly the type of thing a fraud like Stephenson would think a woman would want. I have no patience with writers (whether for paper or TV) who think that it’s okay to have a strong woman character provided that she’s hot and performs whatever actions male viewers/readers want to watch. This is one reason why I don’t like Joss Whatsisname, actually, and why I’m creeped out by Dollhouse.
Have you seen the review of Anathem on Eve’s Alexandria blog? It makes some of the same points you do about sexism in the book.
I hadn’t read Nic’s review on Eve’s Alexandria! But now I have. Nic’s summary makes me realize that a lot of the bits I liked were because it is a boarding school story!
Peggy, I do remember the bits about the flower picking and picnic table manhandling – and the shoes! Thanks for adding them in!
But back to what Nic said – I was very interested that they were annoyed by some of the same things, like the glaringly pointless bit about the “podgy” girl in the kitchen’s self esteem, and … the “romance”…. (WHY would that girl marry him… Arrrgh.) And the way that only men (And Cord, the honorary boy) get in the Plot Truck, because they’re hunter gatherers, and so on. So well described.
Not to be hopelessly off-topic, but what is it about the boarding-school story and sci-fi/fantasy being such a common combination? I didn’t think I’d read that much boarding school fiction until I met Harry Potter, when all of a sudden I recognized it as a boarding-school story. Apparently I’d imbibed a lot of them the way you did Anathem without realizing it.
Liz: Thank you, and the same in return – it’s a relief to read that someone else reacted in the same way to moments like Erasmas’ description of Tris, or the broader plot functions of the likes of Ala. As you say, it’s not just that it’s abominably sexist – although it is – it’s that the sentiment doesn’t even make sense in terms of the world and the character Stephenson has created!
Why is that so hard? How can anyone so smart and cool write something that fails to do that simple thing? Why do we as female readers and geeks so often get left behind and disappointed in this way by male writers?
So much yes.
Frowner:
I have no patience with writers (whether for paper or TV) who think that it’s okay to have a strong woman character provided that she’s hot and performs whatever actions male viewers/readers want to watch. This is one reason why I don’t like Joss Whatsisname, actually, and why I’m creeped out by Dollhouse.
I’ve been struck, watching Dollhouse, by how much of the empowerment that Whedon’s female characters experience is about a) kicking ass in low-cut tops and/or tight trousers, or being a vessel for magic, b) often because they’ve been externally altered, c) to be superhuman – as opposed to real women who make themselves awesome with their brains and their courage. And sometimes guns.
In other words, give me Sarah Connor over Echo/Caroline any day. :-)
Um… I think it’s important to distingish between what comes from the character and what comes Stephenson, especially when the book is a first person narrative. That is, you need to distingish how Erasmas sees the woman around him (a function of the character) and how those characters actually [i]are[/i] (a function of plot, and hence the authors fault).
For example, constantly evaluating the appearance of random women within his line of sight is a pretty typical teenage boy thing. The peripheral, off-camera role of women in the story – also featured in the otherwise excellent Cryptonomicon – is a geniune problem with the author, however, since he structures the story to leave most of the important female characters off screen for, what, 75% of the book?
Stephenson will tend to write either an official Strong Women™ (Y.T., Eliza, Nell) as a main character, or you get characters like Ala or Amy from Cryptonomicon who are shown to be smart and capable, but their only actual impact upon the story is the effect they have on the Main Nerd Guy (Amy/Randy in Cryptonomicon is actually a far better example of this unfortunate tendancy than anything in Anathem, since Ala, Tulia & Cord actually do important things plot-wise, and Amy is the only female character in Crypto with any significant page-time at all). Since Stephenson [i]always[/i] writes from his focus character’s perspective even when he’s not writing in the first person you can put at least some of it down to him just portraying the attitudes towards women of his almost always male techie characters but unless he’s writing about a specific female lead he always seems to end up structuring his novels to marginalise female characters.
Ironically, this was the guy who wrote the line in Snow Crash about the “particularly virulant form of sexism espoused by male techies who sincerely believe they’re too smart to be sexists”.
Don’t get me wrong, I really like Stephenson but I conceed he usually does a poor job at writing women. It doesn’t really help that, in common with many SF authors, characters aren’t exactly his strong point. Though for some reason he’s much better at it the stuff he wrote as Stephen Bury.
Love the essay; a friend forwarded it to me after he wasn’t able to finish the book, which I’d recommended in a 50% rant, 50% rave kind of way.
I once tried to write a novel with a fully-realized woman as the protagonist, and while it was a very useful exercise in many ways it was ultimately unsuccessful as fiction. Since then I’ve been interested in which male authors, SF or no, are regarded as good at “writing a woman’s life.” Any thoughts?
and it’s difficult to do so successfully, even with _Writing a Woman’s Life_ by Carolyn Heilbrun and _The Robber Bride_ by mar
Oops. Please ignore phantom deletion at the end of my previous post.
Trollope is an absolute genius at writing a woman’s POV. Try The Eustace Diamonds. A friend of mine suggests that because Trollope himself was an outsider to British society, he was better able to consider the outsider/alien POV.
[...] years or so, so have you. I’m a fan, and I liked this book, though I’ll admit there are some issues. I’ll still continue to like the book, but I’m forced to recognize that there are some [...]
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