Sexism in Science Fiction and Fantasy

I love Science fiction and fantasy. It has always been an escape for me. Now that I have become much more aware of inequality and sexism, compared to say when I was a boy in my teens, I am noticing more and more that fantasy and sci-fi novels seem to swing from incredibly sexist to more ideal worlds where there is no sexism.

Often in older sci-fi and fantasy the sexism is there because it reflects the society of the writer at the time of writing. I try to be tolerant of that. But even so I am finding sexism in fiction a total turn-off for what would otherwise be incredibly enjoyable reads.

I just read one of Alan Dean fosters Flinx novels, The Tar-Aiym Krang. It is funny the Commonwealth government featured in the book is described as a progressive, well-intentioned liberal democracy when the level of sexism is rather appalling. Admittedly it was published in the early 70’s and I guess I can forgive it for that reason. It still makes for awkward reading. There are five ‘key’ female characters in the book (next to several male characters who are all equally heroic) – One is a concubine from a race of women who essentially are gold digging prostitutes. She throws tantrums and gets her shapely behind spanked. One is ‘affectionately’ called Mother Mastiff and she is called that despite understandably not liking being called a dog. There is an evil merchant with too much plastic surgery (ewwwww evil!!!) and her inept niece who has a bit part. Admittedly the merchant has a muscle bound male sex slave of small brain but their relationship is described as rather more unflattering than the guy and his concubine. The last is a pilot. The pilots only defining feature is that she is in love with the guy who has the concubine. The piolet and the concubine therefore share a strong cat like enmity of each other. They end up having a fight involving a lot of scratching and hair pulling and they manage to almost completely rip each other’s clothing off!! Phoar!

I think historical sexism in sci-fi and fantasy has created a lot of baggage for geek culture today. Sexism is still alive and kicking despite the fact that sci-fi and fantasy has often been used to push the boundaries of sexual and racial inequality e.g. Star Trek. Perhaps most blatant is the immerse worlds of computer gaming, particularly social gaming. 

The anonymity of the internet creates a forum for sexism to flourish with no consequence. Girl gamers get harassed in many different ways and games are often designed with male dominated worlds and women with overly sexualised bodies (the same goes for comics). In many games you still can only play them as a male character. It is easy to see how young men who spend a lot of time gaming on-line, who have comparatively little ‘real life social contact’, who are being fed a diet of women as objects for male gratification and women as not having the same power as men, are getting the wrong idea. As a result there is an on-line gamer communities which are actively hostile towards women. 

I think there is still a place for sexism in science fiction and fantasy, particularly if it is used as social commentary. Sexism is about power imbalance. My question now is can you have gender roles without power imbalance? Would gender roles exist if there was no power imbalance? I’m not sure they would. 

One example which might fit the bill is Game of Thrones where the women and men have rather strong gender roles. While the males tend to inherit overt power it is the women who seem to be the movers and shakers behind the scenes. Many of the characters transgress their roles. We have a mix of strong warrior women like Briana and soft pretty men like Little finger. But even so the gender roles in the books are based on the premise that women are there to make babies while the men hold all the power. This is one of those medieval fantasy tropes.