Casual Sexism: Eifelheim

I recently finished reading Michael Flynn's Eifelheim for book club, and generally really enjoyed it.  By which I mostly mean: I will forgive a great deal of a book that manages to present religion in a respectful way, and I have a particular soft spot for medieval philosophical debates because ridiculously amusing.  (Aside, did you know that there were very real & worrisome questions about how the resurrection of the body would work if you ended up in a river eaten by a fish that someone else later caught and ate because then the same particles would end up in two people and that would be confusing when God raised everyone?)  (Second aside - did you know that on Twitter Ta-Nehisi Coates inspired a bit of a discussion about body/spirit theology because football? Start here.)

Point being: while Eifelheim may or may not be "good" to the extent that that's relevant, it pushes a lot of nice buttons for me.  And until recently, no real downsides.  But this time, I noticed that in the "present" timeline, our protagonist Tom had been a bit of a man-about-town until he finally finally fell in with his girlfriend Sharon.  Sharon is a physicist who's settling Tom down, but not particularly exciting, so he gets to meet librarian Judy: "a fine-featured woman, decked with a long print dress and adorned by large, plain glasses. Her hair met behind her in a tight bun."
"Lieber Gott, Tom thought. An archetype!"

Well yes, but as we'll soon see, not only in the way Flynn meant.  Judy is introduced as a fine-featured woman, and she flushes when Tom speaks to her.

A paragraph later: "That was the nexus. A lonely librarian wanted a human conversation, and a lonely cliologist needed a break from his fruitless hunt".  Coupled with the fact that Tom's just been thrown out of his apartment by his girlfriend, the archetype Flynn's setting up has all sorts of sexual connotations, and every time we return to the present, there's some reference to Judy the librarian increasingly intruding on Tom's time which his girlfriend resents.

It's all perfectly innocent of course.  Tom and Sharon are An Item, and there's no hint that either Tom or Judy wants to start an affair.  It's just that the present timeline needs a bit of spice, and a lonely, fine-featured librarian to introduce a bit of jealousy is the perfect ingredient.

Tom's girlfriend has a research aide.  He's male.  We never really learn much about his physical appearance, and there are no hints of sparks, jealousy, or anything else, of course.

The sexism in Eifelheim is casual and unconsidered.  It's the sort of thing that I either didn't notice on previous readings, or maybe grinned at a bit.  It's not overt to the point it intrudes on the story, just quietly there.  And now, it detracts from the novel.  Because safe spaces and scaly llamas.  Because for some readers, it's going to reinforce negative views and for others it's going to be actively unpleasant (like being punched in the face at a restaurant) and there's no reason they should have to have that experience while reading Eifelheim.

I can't consume media the same way I used to anymore.  I'm a lot more sensitive to casual racism & sexism than I used to be. I suspect a lot still flies by me (and there is plenty of other writing that's insensitive & insulting to other communities like the disabled, LGBT, and others that I mostly miss).  Sometimes when I notice this, I get a bit sad, because I'd love to read Eifelheim without having the sexism detract from it.  Except, the author could do that to.  The author could write a more inclusive book that's not casually insulting, and then I wouldn't have this problem.  And loads of other people who aren't represented in fiction could also enjoy it.  That would be great.  I guess I'm saying #weneeddiversebooks ?  Also, authors: do better.  I'll reward you by buying your books, because there are fewer and fewer that don't bug me as I'm reading them.

Texts in conversation: Dawn, The Martian, and Cold Equations

I first encountered Cold Equations (the short story) in college, and it rocked my world.  I remember sitting in the laundry room shattered as I hoped that somehow the stowaway could survive.  Of course, she did not, and the inexorable reality of the physical laws of the universe settled around me.

It's been a while since I read the Cold Equations (and my goodness, stay far away from the short story collection of the same name.  Pick it up in something like The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Volume 1), but I came across a tweet recently that pointed out at least one hole in the short story: put a bit more fuel on the supply ship and all of a sudden the cold equations become a bit warmer.  Death in the Cold Equations is not due to the inevitability of physical laws, but rather the decision by the people who outfitted the supply ship not to build in a margin of error.

Not long after coming across this tweet, I read The Martian (not a big fan) and heard a discussion on the Three Hoarsemen podcast characterizing The Martian as a spiritual response to the Cold Equations. Stranded on the surface of mars, the reality of physical laws and chosen supplies will lead inevitably to the death of astronaut Mark Watney long before any rescue could reach him.  And yet (spoilers!) Watney manages to repurpose some of his equipment in order to extend his stay.  (My brief criticism - the vast majority of problems Watney attempts to solve are mostly of the "two trains start out 300 miles apart, one traveling 20 miles an hour, the other 30 miles an hour, when will they meet?" form)  Where Cold Equations ignores the decisions made in packing the shuttle in order to focus strictly on the inflexibility of physical laws, The Martian looks at the abilities of human ingenuity to overcome the limitations of these laws.

Most recently, I finished Octavia Butler's Dawn, which I highly recommend.  In Dawn, Lilith finds herself imprisoned on an alien space station after a world war has destroyed humanity.  The aliens are physically repulsive, implacable traders, and determined to exact a price for saving humanity.  Where Cold Equations focuses on physical laws, Lilith finds herself oppressed and manipulated instead by the powerful aliens who control every aspect of the environment she lives in.  The laws of Lilith's world, however, are no less implacable than the physical realities of Cold Equations.  Humanity will only be brought back to earth on the aliens' terms.

Dawn is significantly more horrific than Cold Equations.  Lilith is subjected to aggressive actions from the aliens over and over again (from juveniles essentially wanting to play with their new pet all the way to sexual assault), and finds herself nearly helpless in an environment not designed with allowances for humans in any ways.

In a lot of ways, my encounters with Cold Equations and Dawn have a lot to do with my evolving understanding of privilege.  I grew up with pretty much all of the available privileges (straight, white, cis male, also with social and class privilege), so I was (somewhat consciously) aware that many rules and laws outside of physical realities were unlikely to have real consequences for me.  The great horror of Cold Equations was that laws and consequences would apply fully.  While I didn't have the language of privilege to express this at the time, it's clear in retrospect that my reaction to Cold Equations was the growing realization that these serious consequences (death) would indeed apply to the stowaway, a result that was far out of my experience.

Dawn is, in many ways, a novel about living with fewer privileges.  Lilith is surrounded by a hostile and aggressive environment.  Assault (physical, emotional, and sexual) is always present.  Even when other humans are introduced, she is marked out as separate.  If Cold Equations is about someone with privilege learning that that privilege does not apply everywhere (with drastic consequences), Dawn is about living without privilege in a hostile world.  I hadn't expected to be linking these two stories (and briefly The Martian, blissfully unaware of privilege and consequences), but the more I reflect on Dawn, the more appropriate the connection seems.

I'd recommend Dawn with only a few reservations - it does include scenes with sexual assault and I suspect that when I was a younger and less experienced reader I would have missed a lot.  I haven't re-read Cold Equations in quite a while, but I think that even with the weaknesses I'm now more conscious of it's still worth a read.  I finished The Martian mostly to get it done and counting towards my Goodreads challenge, but my sense from a number of reviews I've seen is that this puts me in the minority.