Annoying Teenage Heroines Redux

[mrissa]

I just finished the Stars anthology, and I want to say right here and now: Orson Scott Card's attempts at female psychology make me want to hurl. Some of his previous stuff was laughable: the idea that little girls weren't generally ruthless enough to be in Battle School, for example, made me just about fall out of my chair laughing. If there's anything more ruthless than a 9-year-old girl, I certainly haven't met it in the rest of my life to date. But this story, this just turned my stomach.

(And maybe if I was otherwise fine with a story, I'd buy that teenaged Jewish girls insisted on being called "Jewesses." Probably not, though; I am not an authoress, and I know no poetesses, and neither of those was extensively used in propaganda efforts in the last century. Am I wrong on this one? Do any of you know Jewish women who not only don't mind being called "Jewesses" but insist on it? Are any of you Jewish women of that description?)

Maybe it's just me; maybe I'm no longer giving Card a fair shake because his views are so extremely repugnant to me. (I mean, this is a man who is willing to say that my Onie (my grandma's older sister) is not part of my family just so he can deny gay people their families. Because "everybody knows" that a family is a mother, a father, and their children, and it "always has been" that way...except that it almost never has been that way, but never mind that, apparently.) But it seems like he's sliming all over more and more of his work. I liked Pastwatch unexpectedly, and I was more interested in the Bean books than in anything he's done since it became clear that the Alvin Maker books were all about Card's Mormonism. But I'm beginning to think I just shouldn't bother reading anything else he writes, because I'm going to feel slimy and sick afterwards.

I think I need some good honest death and deceit to wash my brain off after this. Ew.

Comments

Girls aren't really ruthless

[(Anonymous)]

Girls are ruthless when crushing other people's feelings. Boys are ruthless when crushing other people's skulls. I think Battle School was for the latter.

-
Yore

Re: Girls aren't really ruthless

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm going to have to disagree with you on both counts, Yore. A few young psychopaths aside, boys aren't ruthless when crushing other people's skulls. Boys learn rules of physical confrontations pretty darned early, and most of them don't exceed what's locally considered acceptable.

Girls learn that they get more power if they avoid physical violence except for key strategic moments. That doesn't mean they're less ruthless. It means they're socially quicker. If little girls got more power from beating the crap out of each other, they'd do it.

If the events of the last year have taught us nothing else, they certainly should have taught us that women can be just as physically unpleasant as men. But we shouldn't have had to see the pictures from Abu Ghraib to know that.

Re: Girls aren't really ruthless

[(Anonymous)]

I agree Abu Gharib was bad, but posing with a bunch of naked prisoners isn't very ruthless. The MPs that unleashed the guard dogs were worse.

There are many male examples of ruthlessness - Stalin, Mengele, Osama, Saddam, Uday, Pinoche, Pol Pot.

In general I think women are more compassionate than men. That is what keeps them from being the "ultimate" in ruthlessness.

Re: Girls aren't really ruthless

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yore, I think you are wrong and being unreasonably sexist. The fact that the sexism comes out in my favor doesn't really help. And if you think posing for the camera is the only thing Sabrina Harmon and Lynndie England did at Abu Ghraib, well, I don't really know what to say to that.

Diminished opportunity for cruelty doesn't mean diminished capacity for cruelty. No matter how ruthless she was, a woman could not have risen to Stalin's position in the USSR at that time. Could not have. The same actions would not have produced the same results.

Where they have had opportunities -- largely within their own families -- women have been just as vicious, just as destructive, and just as ruthless as men. Now that we're seeing the opportunities expand, we're seeing the scope of the damage expand, too.

Re: Girls aren't really ruthless

[fitzcamel.livejournal.com]

I think you may be underestimating the importance of psychology in the Battle School a bit...