Newsletter Week of 10 July 2020
- A Voice in Every Wind (new trade paperback edition)
- The Rule of Five Quarterly #15
- The Rule of Five episode 2.22 now available for Patreon supporters
Since I began writing science fiction in the 1970s, I've struggled with gendered language. Here I'm not talking about languages like Spanish and French, in which every noun is either male or female. No, my concern is the way gender occurs so often in English, mostly in words that refer to people.
Some examples are easy. I was taught that "he/him/his" were the proper English impersonal pronouns. Words like "chairman," "actress," "aviatrix," "fireman," and hundreds of others that change depending on the gender of the person described, and with which the masculine form becomes the default. Forms of address like "Mr./Mrs./Ms." or "Sir/Ma'am."
In these cases, good solutions are simple to find or invent. We're already getting used to "they/them/their" as impersonal pronouns (a usage that dates at least to Shakespeare, by the way). For an upcoming project, I'm considering ditching "he/she"and using "tey/ter/tem" as the sole pronoun for people.
Professions with an "-or" ending aren't generally considered gendered; An actor or aviator can be a man or a woman. "Fireman" gets replaced by the more accurate "firefighter," after a brief clumsy detour into "chairperson," we settled on replacing "chairman" with "chair." We still haven't settled on a good non-gendered form of address, which gives sf writers freedom to innovate. In my Scattered Worlds stories, "Sayyid" is the preferred honorific; in the PsiScouts universe it's "de'" (example: de' Smith). In the Rule of Five series, Melissa and I settled on "Sen."
Far more interesting are formations that don't admit to easy replacement. Job titles that end in "-er" pose a particular problem, since it's usually a male-gendered term. "Waiter" is still in flux: I've seen "waitron" (which is just ugly), "server" (which still has the -er problem), and "attendant."
One case I'm particularly fond of is "henchman." After casting widely for an alternative, I ran into "henchling," which is brilliant. Thomas and I, in connection with the Shore Leave Masquerade, sought a different title for the traditional awards for "workmanship"—we settled on "handiwork."
Recently we've been struggling with a term for people who sew. The traditional term is "seamstress." The first alternative that springs to mind, "seamer," is both ambiguous (it might describe a welder) and too specific (sewing involves more than just seams). "Seamster," the male form of "seamstress," suffers the same disadvantages. One can't simply add "-er" to "sew" because "sewer" is a completely different word; "sewor" is unworkable. About the best alternative seems to be "sewist," which while awkward is at least clear and unambiguous.
Recently, in referring to blood sugar from a diabetic standpoint, I had to come up with an expression to replace "bitch goddess." That's a tall order indeed. I settled on "trickster deity"...it doesn't say exactly the same thing, but comes close enough without perpetuating harmful stereotypes.
- Survived & recovered from a corrupted iMac startup disc
- Scanned 12 more books
- Ripped 2 more DVDs to mp4
- Legion of Super-Heroes website: Started cataloging 1998 comics
- Added 600 words to my memoir
- More work on the next gay erotic short story
- Wrote 500 words on Hunt for the Dymalon Cygnet
Fresh-picked raspberries from our yard.
GraphicConverter (software) - Not a day goes by that I don't use GraphicConverter. Excellent & powerful image editor.
I hope you'll take a moment to check out Helen Lewis's article from The Atlantic. (if you don't have a subscription, Tha Atlantic allows you to read a limited number of articles per month.)
Lewis has some welcome reflections on the question of works by "problematic" creators. In this specific case she's talking about fan rejection of author J.K. Rowling in the wake of her recent negative comments about transgender individuals.
Lewis says, "Fans are discovering that someone they once treated as omniscient, someone they loved with a ferocious, possessive, childish love, is an entirely different person, with different values from their own."
In my opinion, this hits the nail precisely on the head. Lewis continues, "The difficulty of adulting also includes the acknowledgment that people are fallible, and the world is complicated. Parents, and heroes, have feet of clay. Call it a loss of youthful idealism, or call it pragmatism, it is what allows us to survive in the adult world."
Creators are human beings, with all the problematic inconsistencies of our species. To be shocked and hurt by the revelation that the creator of a beloved work has feet of clay, is a young person's reaction. To most mature adults, this shattering disillusionment is a thing of the past—in many ways, understanding that the world is complex and contradictory is the sine qua non of maturity. And attempting to punish the clay-footed person, while an understandable reaction, is essentially the same as getting angry at the stove because it burned your finger.
As an old proverb advises, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."