'King Rat' and the abuse of women in Gene Wolfe's stories

Gerry Quinn · 09 Mar 2011, 17:19 · from 2011-March.txt.gz

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From: gerryq at indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2011 17:19:04 -0000
Subject: (urth) 'King Rat' and the abuse of women in Gene Wolfe's stories
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Message-ID: <AFE1212D5C93435ABE0D6DB6CF38B16B@jill>

From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <danldo at gmail.com>
> Lane Haygood wrote:
> > I tend to write (almost exclusively) male protagonists and narrators.
> > Because I am male. I don't have any direct, subjective experience of 
> > being
> > female.

> But SF is all about writing the Other. If you can't write a female
> character, how can you write an alien?

Aliens are easy compared to those inscrutable women!

But seriously, I guess the answer is that aliens will probably not be 
reading your books just yet, but women might be. An author's depictions of 
the opposite gender will be held to a higher standard, because some of that 
gender will be reading it.  And indeed, even those of the same gender will 
be more familiar with the opposite gender than with aliens, robots, talking 
cats or whatever.  So you can get away with much less in the way of 
infelicities.

- Gerry Quinn

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