"The Singularity Needs Women!"

5:00 pm F "The Singularity Needs Women!" - a ReaderCon 2007 panel

Elizabeth Bear, Kathryn Cramer, Louise Marley, Victoria McManus (L), James Morrow.

At Readercon 14 (2002), GoH Octavia Butler said "As the only woman up here, this may be a strange question, but I can't help wondering how much of this speculation about a post-human future has to do with men's desire to control reproduction." We sadly can't ask Octavia exactly what she meant, but we want to pursue this striking statement. Does the post-humanist ideal of freedom from bodily constraints clash fundamentally with the ideal of freedom for the more than half of the population with female bodies? Or might the Singularity actually be a means to the freedoms sought by feminism? Has anyone written fiction about how these ideals interact, and if not, is this an opportunity?