Feminist SF Wiki - User contributions [en]

Orangemike

2006-04-28T03:17:44Z

Orangemike: Orangemike moved to User:Orangemike: It's a user article; should be properly titled.

#REDIRECT [[User:Orangemike]]

User:Orangemike

2006-04-28T03:17:43Z

Orangemike: Orangemike moved to User:Orangemike: It's a user article; should be properly titled.

'''Orange Mike''' is a nickname and frequent screen name for Michael J. Lowrey, a feminist SF fan in Milwaukee; husband of C.Kay "Cicatrice du Veritas" Hinchliffe; father of Kelly J.A. Lowrey.

Member of [[Science fiction fandom| fandom]] since 1975; Fan GoH at ICON 25 and one Chattacon.

Freelance writer/researcher; editor of the intermittent fanzine ''Vojo de Vivo''; "Editor-in-Chief" of a freelance book reviewers' group called ''Sunrise Book Reviews''.

Member of the N.O.W., Emily's List, etc.; enthusiastic participant in [[WisCon]] since WisCon 2.

"I'm the son of a woman, the brother of women, the husband of a woman, the daddy of a woman; how can I ''not'' be a feminist?"

Index of themes

2006-04-27T20:49:55Z

Orangemike:

: Gender Role Reversal
: Elimination or Minimization of a Gender
: Dystopia
: [[Utopia]]

: [[Body-swapping, Sex Change, Passing]]
: Sexuality, Reproduction, Family Arrangements

: Retold Fairy-Tales, Myths, Folk-Tales

: The Super-Heroic Woman
: Reclaiming the Every-Day Heroic Women

: The Body

: Women and ...

: Sotto Voce Feminism: Assuming without Examining

: Women and Nature, the Wild, Animals

: Language & Sexism (see, e.g., [[per]])

Talk:Mary Sue

2006-04-27T20:46:57Z

Orangemike:

Here's my Grand Unified Theory of the Mary Sue as Cuckoo, which I've been working on for three years. [[User:Ide Cyan|Ide Cyan]] 10:41, 27 April 2006 (PDT)
So maybe I'm just a clueless guy, but I don't see sexism as central to the hatred of the Mary Sue. A true Mary Sue or Gary Stu is a self-indulgent insertion of one's idealized self into canon. Similar narcissicistic selves are common in all amateur fiction, from fanfic to porno to self-published novels from vanity presses. While certainly there is sexism in one heck of a lot of attacks upon fanfic, I don't perceive the centrality of sexism in the attack upon the Mary Sue.--[[User:Orangemike|Orangemike]] 13:46, 27 April 2006 (PDT)

Mary Sue

2006-04-27T20:42:48Z

Orangemike: /* Descriptive Definition */ Mary Sues are by definition NOT indigenous to canon

'''Mary Sue''' is a nickname given to a certain type of character within [[fan fiction]], and, by extension, to the type of fiction that contains a Mary Sue. The name comes from [[Paula Smith]]'s story, "[[A Trekkie's Tale]]", which appeared in [[1974]] in the [[fanzine]] ''Menagerie #2''.

The term is higly pejorative. Its usage has spread widely over the internet, in conjunction with the accessibility in self-publishing the medium affords to new and ever more numerous [[fan fiction]] writers.

=== Descriptive Definition ===

The use of the term as a negative and its rapid gain in popularity have contributed to a dilution of its meaning; some fans apply it to characters not indigenous to [[canon]], and/or to any badly-written character, and the stigma of the "Mary Sue" label has been held up as an insult and a threat to new writers.

The qualities attributed to Mary Sues are numerous. Online fans have created several Mary Sue Litmus Tests designed to detect the Mary Sueness of a character or story within a certain fandom. Bad writing, self-insertion, and blatant wish-fulfilment cover the main categories of a Mary Sue's characteristics.

=== Political Analysis ===

Bad writing, self-insertion, and wish-fulfilment are overlapping characteristics and striking ones found in Mary Sue fanfics, but they are insufficiently restrictive to define the phenomenon itself or discern its origin.

The defining characteristic of a Mary Sue is illegitimacy. This is the link between its other characteristics, and it is at the heart of the backlash again the phenomenon.

Fandom, as a community, is the product of the common interests among members of an audience who share a relationship to a certain performance. This relationship entails loyalty.

What attributes the character may have are variable; what causes annoyance is the introduction of a cuckoo into the canon's nest, some bigger, brighter, louder character who steals the limelight from the characters the reader chose to read about, the intrusion that distorts the text.

The Mary Sue arrives as a wedge between a group's loyalty to a certain performance, and an individual's relationship to that performance as expressed in fiction, when the interests of the group and of the individual enter into conflict. The infinite number of ways in which loyalties can clash accounts for the nebulousness of Mary Sue's profile.

However, [[sexism]] does play a central role in the phenomenon, because the performances towards which fans show loyalty are products of a sexist culture. The typical Mary Sue is female, because of the marginalisation of women in the texts and performances from which most fandom derives. The laws of canon are largely patriarchal, and female fen therefore find their position at odds with their loyalty to the fandom in a way that male fen do not.

The backlash against Mary Sues only exacerbates this underlying sexism, because the hatred felt against intruding female characters intersects with and reinforces, to a degree, the misogynist tropes that provoke it. Infighting and seeking conformity to the source texts cannot change this political condition: only the production of new canon and a shift in loyalties may lessen the stigma of illegitimacy by transforming the law.

Male Mary Sues often require an inflected term for clarity, and have been referred to as "Gary Stu" or "Marty Stu".

== External Links ==
* [http://www.subreality.com/marysue/explain.htm Mary Sue: An Explanation] at The Mary Sue Society
* [http://ide-cyan.livejournal.com/901181.html Mary Sue Dialectics, a LiveJournal entry by a FSF wiki contributor]

User:Orangemike

2006-04-27T20:40:01Z

Orangemike: User bio

Utopia

2006-04-27T16:51:39Z

Orangemike:

'''Utopia''' (from the 1516 novel by Thomas More usually known by that name) designates a culture depicted in fiction or non-fiction, which is presented by the creator as being or approaching an ideal of human organization. (Some critics will use the term "utopian" to disparage an allegedly excessively idealistic concept or project.)

[[Science fiction]] and [[fantasy]], for obvious reasons, are ideal media in which to present [[utopia]]s.

Per

2006-04-27T16:45:21Z

Orangemike: minor format change; changed "utopic" to "utopian" as adjectival form

'''Per''' is a gender-neutral [[pronoun]] invented by [[Marge Piercy]] in the novel ''[[Woman on the Edge of Time]]'' ([[1976]]), and used therein by the [[utopia|utopian]] egalitarian community of [[Mattapoisett]].

In its subjective case it is short for "person". It also serves for the objective case, and the reflexive form for it is '''perself'''.

Fan

2006-04-27T16:33:41Z

Orangemike: /* Fandom and Gender */

'''Fan''', short for "fanatic" or "fancier", is a term used to refer to enthusiasts or admirers of a person, performance, phenomenon or object, especially within science fiction and other genre circles. Two plural forms for the word exist: '''fans''' and '''fen'''.

The derivative, '''fandom''', denotes at once the performance towards which fans find enthusiasm, the relationship between the audience members and the performer, or performance, as well as the activity generated by this audience in the pursuit of its hobby, and the realm of global '''fannish''' interactions in and of itself.

=== Fandom and Gender ===

The word '''fan''' is often inflected according to gender as '''fangirl''' or '''fanboy''' (these usages being more common in media-related fandoms). Although fans are themselves mocked by the [[mundane]] (non-fans), this inflection may carry a more pejorative quality by assigning sex-linked (and youth-linked) characteristics derived from stereotypes. But it can also be a mode of self-identification on the part of the fan [[per]]-self. Traditional, text-oriented fandom once used the term "femmefan" to designate a female fan, but the term is archaic, having gone out of date during the simultaneous rise of second-wave feminism and influx of female fans into fandom.

=== Sexism in Fandom ===

Since the phenomenon of gendering carries into fandom, as it does into all aspects of a society informed by the division of labour into hierarchical sex classes, there is sexism in fandom.

In the first place, the performances for which fans are united in common admiration are themselves the product of such societies, and thus fannish relationships to those performances must perforce reckon their sexism.

Some manifestations of this sexism include the [[sexual objectification]] of female characters, the suppression of women's input, [[sexual harassment]], and the marginalisation of female fen.

The [[Mary Sue]] phenomenon is also linked to sexism in fandom.

Fan

2006-04-27T16:33:19Z

Orangemike: /* Fandom and Gender */ expanded

'''Fan''', short for "fanatic" or "fancier", is a term used to refer to enthusiasts or admirers of a person, performance, phenomenon or object, especially within science fiction and other genre circles. Two plural forms for the word exist: '''fans''' and '''fen'''.

The derivative, '''fandom''', denotes at once the performance towards which fans find enthusiasm, the relationship between the audience members and the performer, or performance, as well as the activity generated by this audience in the pursuit of its hobby, and the realm of global '''fannish''' interactions in and of itself.

=== Fandom and Gender ===

The word '''fan''' is often inflected according to gender as '''fangirl''' or '''fanboy''' (these usages being more common in media-related fandoms). Although fans are themselves mocked by the [[mundane]] (non-fans), this inflection may carry a more pejorative quality by assigning sex-linked (and youth-linked) characteristics derived from steretypes. But it can also be a mode of self-identification on the part of the fan [[per]]-self. Traditional, text-oriented fandom once used the term "femmefan" to designate a female fan, but the term is archaic, having gone out of date during the simultaneous rise of second-wave feminism and influx of female fans into fandom.

=== Sexism in Fandom ===

Since the phenomenon of gendering carries into fandom, as it does into all aspects of a society informed by the division of labour into hierarchical sex classes, there is sexism in fandom.

In the first place, the performances for which fans are united in common admiration are themselves the product of such societies, and thus fannish relationships to those performances must perforce reckon their sexism.

Some manifestations of this sexism include the [[sexual objectification]] of female characters, the suppression of women's input, [[sexual harassment]], and the marginalisation of female fen.

The [[Mary Sue]] phenomenon is also linked to sexism in fandom.

Wiscon

2006-04-27T16:28:45Z

Orangemike: Wiscon moved to WisCon: correction

#REDIRECT [[WisCon]]

WisCon

2006-04-27T16:28:45Z

Orangemike: Wiscon moved to WisCon: correction

'''WisCon''', the Wisconsin [[Science Fiction]] Convention, is generally acknowledged as the world's only [[feminism|feminist]]-oriented [[science fiction convention]] and conference. It is held annually throughout the four day weekend of Memorial Day, in Madison, Wisconsin. Sponsored by the Society for the Furtherance and Study of Fantasy and Science Fiction or ''(SF)³'', WisCon gathers together women and men: [[science fiction fandom|fans]], writers, editors, publishers, scholars and artists from around the world to discuss science fiction and fantasy, with emphasis on issues of [[feminism]], [[gender identity|gender]], [[race]] and [[social class|class]].

Guests of Honor have included [[Ursula K. Le Guin]], [[Katherine Maclean]], [[Vonda McIntyre]], Susan Wood, [[Suzy McKee Charnas]], [[John Varley (author)|John Varley]], [[Joan D. Vinge]], David Hartwell, Beverly DeWeese, [[Octavia Butler]], [[Chelsea Quinn Yarbro]], [[Donald A. Wollheim|Don]] & Elsie Wollheim, Buck & Juanita Coulson, [[Terry Carr]], [[Suzette Haden Elgin]], [[Elizabeth A. Lynn]], Jessica Amanda Salmonson, [[Connie Willis]], [[Esther Friesner]], [[Samuel R. Delany]], Avedon Carol, R. A. MacAvoy, [[George R. R. Martin]], [[Howard Waldrop]], Stu Shiffman, [[Iain M. Banks]], Emma Bull, [[Pat Murphy]], [[Pamela Sargent]], Trina Robbins, [[Eleanor Arnason]], [[Lois McMaster Bujold]], [[Maureen McHugh]], [[Karen Joy Fowler]], [[Barbara Hambly]], [[Nancy Kress]], [[Nicola Griffith]], Judith Merril, [[Sheri S. Tepper]], [[Charles de Lint]], Jeanne Gomoll, Elisabeth Vonarburg, [[Nalo Hopkinson]], [[China Miéville]], [[Carol Emshwiller]], [[Patricia A. McKillip]], [[Mary Doria Russell]], [[Gardner Dozois]], [[Pat Cadigan]], [[Terri Windling]], and Melissa Scott.

The [[Tiptree Award|James Tiptree, Jr. Award]], an annual literary prize for science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender, originated in a discussion at a prior WisCon, and the Tiptree Ceremony is often held at WisCon. [[Broad Universe]], an organization with the primary goal of promoting science fiction, fantasy, and horror written by women, also originated in a discussion at a prior WisCon; as did the [[Carl Brandon Society]], which is dedicated to addressing the representation of people of color in science fiction, fantasy and horror.

==External links==
* [http://www.sf3.org/wiscon WisCon website]
* [http://www.sf3.org (SF)³ website]
* [http://www.tiptree.org Tiptree Award website]
* [http://www.broaduniverse.org/ Broad Universe website]
* [http://www.carlbrandon.org/ Carl Brandon Society website]

Talk:James Tiptree, Jr. Award

2006-04-27T16:28:03Z

Orangemike:

Why does the "WisCon" link on this page not go to the "WisCon" article?--[[User:Orangemike|Orangemike]] 09:28, 27 April 2006 (PDT)

James Tiptree, Jr. Award

2006-04-27T16:24:40Z

Orangemike: based on the Wikipedia entry; please modify as needed

The '''James Tiptree, Jr. Award''' is an annual literary prize for works of [[science fiction]] or [[fantasy]] that expand or explore our understanding of [[gender|gender]]. It was initiated in February of 1991 by authors [[Pat Murphy]] and [[Karen Joy Fowler]], subsequent to a discussion at [[WisCon]] (the world's only [[feminism|feminist]]-oriented [[science fiction convention]]).

The award is named for [[James Tiptree, Jr.|Alice B. Sheldon]], who wrote under the pseudonym [[James Tiptree, Jr.]] By choosing a masculine ''nom de plume,'' having her stories accepted under that name and winning awards with them, Sheldon helped demonstrate that the division between male and female SF writing was illusory. Years after "Tiptree" first published SF, Sheldon wrote some work under the female pen name "Raccoona Sheldon"; later, the SF world discovered that "Tiptree" had been female all along. According to the Tiptree Award council, this discovery led to widespread discussion over which aspects of writing, if any, have an intrinsic gender. To remind audiences of the complicated role gender plays in both reading and writing, the award was named in Sheldon's honor.

Fundraising efforts for the Tiptree have included publications and feminist bake sales.

== Winners ==
*2005: ''Air'' by [[Geoff Ryman]]
*2004: ''[[Camouflage (book)|Camouflage]]'' by [[Joe Haldeman]] and ''Not Before Sundown'' by [[Johanna Sinisalo]]
*2003: ''Set This House In Order: A Romance Of Souls'' by [[Matt Ruff]]
*2002: ''Light'' by [[M. John Harrison]] and "Stories for Men" by [[John Kessel]]
*2001: ''The Kappa Child'' by [[Hiromi Goto]]
*2000: ''Wild Life'' by [[Molly Gloss]]
*1999: ''The Conqueror's Child'' by [[Suzy McKee Charnas]]
*1998: "Congenital Agenesis of Gender Ideation" by [[Raphael Carter]]
*1997: ''Black Wine'' by [[Candas Jane Dorsey]] and "Travels With The Snow Queen" by [[Kelly Link]]
*1996: "Mountain Ways" by [[Ursula K. Le Guin]], and ''[[The Sparrow]]'' by [[Mary Doria Russell]]
*1995: ''Waking The Moon'' by [[Elizabeth Hand]] and ''The Memoirs Of Elizabeth Frankenstein'' by [[Theodore Roszak]]
*1994: "The Matter of Seggri" by [[Ursula K. Le Guin]] and ''Larque on the Wing'' by [[Nancy Springer]]
*1993: ''[[Ammonite (novel)|Ammonite]]'' by [[Nicola Griffith]]
*1992: ''[[China Mountain Zhang]]'' by [[Maureen F. McHugh]]
*1991: ''[[A Woman of the Iron People]]'' by [[Eleanor Arnason]], and ''White Queen'' by [[Gwyneth Jones]]

== See also ==
* [[Gender role]]
* [[Gender and sexuality studies]]
* [[Sex in science fiction]]
* [[Women in science fiction]]
* [[Women science fiction authors]]

== External links ==
* [http://www.tiptree.org/ James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award Council]
* [http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue22/tiptree.html "On James Tiptree, Alice Sheldon and bake sales", by Karen Joy Fowler]

WisCon

2006-04-27T16:20:10Z

Orangemike: Created this one based on the one I created for Wikipedia