I first read Gate to Women's Country 16 years ago. It left a lasting impression, so I recommended it to my book group. It's been fun to re-read it and to watch your review, Rachel. One of the important themes in the book is cultural "forgetting." How does a society manage to impart the hard lessons an older generation learned to a younger one without needing the younger generation Toledo the same mistakes and suffer the way the older generation did? This is particularly compelling now as authoritarianism, religious hate and misogyny are on the rise. You can feel the cry for war, another senseless war, when the military budget is pumped up while the social safety net is dismantled, not unlike the rations being diverted to the garrison in the book.
So glad that I saved this video until after I actually read the book. I just finished and I absolutely loved this book and yes the interludes and interplay with the past, present and the play were great. Yes, very black and white but all and all an thoroughly enjoyable read.
I read the book when it first came out, which I would guess was a few decades before you were born. In 1988, sexism was so ubiquitous and unchallenged that her heavy-handed approach was a breath of fresh air! Tepper wrote for a very different world than the one I would guess you inhabit. In 1988, the number of female authors globally was a tiny tiny fraction when compared with male writers. Science fiction and fantasy, and most other genres of fiction and non-fiction, were overflowing with toxic masculinity, and an unquestioning belief in binary gender roles and American superiority. That's the world she was trying to change. So she wrote in black and white, because shades of grey are lost on neanderthals. When you read the feminist writings of that time, try reading some of the hate-filled articles and comments that those authors had to cope with on a daily basis! The public as a whole had no clue at all what feminism was about. The reactionary dismissal of the women who stood up to the oppression was so awful and so celebrated by the mainstream that I am amazed at how calm those women were able to remain. I can understand why the heavyhandedness hasn't aged well. Many of us are so much more aware of issues that in 1988 were invisible to most people. But there really is a lot to appreciate in her writing as well.
thank you for writing this crucail insight. It is exhausting we humans are prone to forget even the most obvious in such a short time.How to pass on the experience (not just knowledge but the experience) to the next generation without the young getting overly confident of "seeming gains" .Can we say "Experience cannot be passed on from one to the other." It is a delicate issue.
My wife is a big Tipper fan and always wanted me to read her, around 2004 maybe she said here try this, and gave me Gate to Women's Country. I enjoyed the story and thought it was well written and conceived, but obviously its been a long time since I read it but what stuck with me is normally when you have a scenario like this with a society that is structured with oppression within it, you usually are left with the impression of "Yeah, that was a bad idea" like whether it is women or men at the short end of the stick, but when I go to then end of it I recall being left with the idea that Stevia's feeling was "Yes, after all that's happened here and knowing the truth... It was still the right thing to do 😛" And suffice to say my wife regretted giving me that one as exemplary of Tepper's work. In fairness my wife hadn't read it herself since it came out so when I was telling her the story she didn't remember any of the details. I do want to read it again. I will say this for it... 20 years later I still talk about it!
This book gave that thing, that gap between generations and how the responsibiltiy lies on the part of the older generation in giving out information without ruining the life experience of the younger generations. Information cannot just be read simply from a book or told by someone who is more experienced. There must be a subtle care, many levels of subtle intelligent planning. I loved the book by showing how much care should go in this careful planning by the older generation. Passing information through many generation if it is done sincerely takes so much attention and group work. In my view Ms Tepper's book is not just a feminist book . Also it is a book about how to educate children and not be insultingly heavyhanded towards them.
As always, a great kind of review Rachel. I was curious to read this already and now, after listening to you speak, I'm even more curious and interested. I also want to read Ammonite and The Left Hand of Darkness. Hopefully I'll be able to read them all quite soon.
+FinalBlowJoe You can do a 'compare/contrast' video! Really digging into the differences between Women's Country and Ammonite... or comparing Ammonite to Whileaway in The Female Man...
Thanks for sharing. I just finished reading Gate to Women's country for my book club and I see what you're talking about with presenting cultural beliefs as scientific facts. The word for using the guise or authority of science to give ideas weight, by the way, is _scientism_. I thought the general eugenics plan they had (spoiler) was another instance of that. Human behavior is a little too plastic and the nature of political violence goes well beyond biological instincts for violence so that weeding out men who have problematic characteristics is going to be less successful than is led on.
I think you hit the nail on the head here about black and white cast. I am reading grass right now, shrugging to read it and I want to DNF. Nice review!
Grass is really not worth the effort, in my opinion, but the sequel called Raising the Stones is awesome! I loved that book. I don't think it's even that necessary to read Grass before hand.
It's not a feminist sci novel though is it. The society in WC is actually quite conservative. It has feminist aspects but I would argue it is a bit more similar to a conservative Islamic society. This being said the more progressive or "feminist" aspects of WC compliment the more traditional aspects of it rather nicely I think and we really should have something more like that in the present day - gender segregation and annual Carnival when? For all of humanity's sake, I do genuinely believe that this is something we really need and that we should really implement it at once.
+Brian Marshall There are so many more I don't have! But I do have most of the SF Masterworks by women. I have to get them from BookDepository, with the occasional rare find in a used bookstore.
The servitors are the ideal masculine to Tepper. They are still very masculine!!! It's the men who choose to be violent that are held outside of society. There is nuance.
Loved your review. I'm a huge Tepper fan, but you're right on the money- she simplifies everything down until there are absolutely no shades of grey. Men are either evil bastards or servile housepets- there are no other options in her work. At least she didn't have the Heroine run off to have sex with an alien horse, the way she did in Grass. :) If you haven't read it yet, find a copy of the Mavin Manyshaped novels.
I'm not going to rush for this one, but I will keep an eye out for it. And save it for a day when I can control my temper over the sexism. But I'll put Ammonite first. XD
+tarabyt3 I probably over-stated the sexist feel of the book - I just had a hard time figuring out what it was that bothered me so much! It's interesting because I think it's much, much more unfair to men than women. But yeah, get Ammonite! :-) I am 99% sure you will love that one!
+ElleKayEm The only good bit is that clearly the women are just as flawed as men, but you almost feel like the author is sympathizing so much more with the women... I can't talk too much about that without giving away the ending! I probably make the sexist and gender essentialist parts more exaggerated when I talked about it. But it irritates me still to think about how subtly it's handing you that black-and-white version of the world.
+Jill Munro I probably do a disservice to Tepper by broadly painting her novels as black and white, but that's certainly how I felt about the dominant issues by the end. I'll be reading her fantasy novel Beauty soon, and third time will either be a charm - or a final verdict.... :-)
I first read Gate to Women's Country 16 years ago. It left a lasting impression, so I recommended it to my book group. It's been fun to re-read it and to watch your review, Rachel. One of the important themes in the book is cultural "forgetting." How does a society manage to impart the hard lessons an older generation learned to a younger one without needing the younger generation Toledo the same mistakes and suffer the way the older generation did? This is particularly compelling now as authoritarianism, religious hate and misogyny are on the rise. You can feel the cry for war, another senseless war, when the military budget is pumped up while the social safety net is dismantled, not unlike the rations being diverted to the garrison in the book.
So glad that I saved this video until after I actually read the book. I just finished and I absolutely loved this book and yes the interludes and interplay with the past, present and the play were great. Yes, very black and white but all and all an thoroughly enjoyable read.
I read the book when it first came out, which I would guess was a few decades before you were born.
In 1988, sexism was so ubiquitous and unchallenged that her heavy-handed approach was a breath of fresh air! Tepper wrote for a very different world than the one I would guess you inhabit. In 1988, the number of female authors globally was a tiny tiny fraction when compared with male writers. Science fiction and fantasy, and most other genres of fiction and non-fiction, were overflowing with toxic masculinity, and an unquestioning belief in binary gender roles and American superiority. That's the world she was trying to change. So she wrote in black and white, because shades of grey are lost on neanderthals.
When you read the feminist writings of that time, try reading some of the hate-filled articles and comments that those authors had to cope with on a daily basis! The public as a whole had no clue at all what feminism was about. The reactionary dismissal of the women who stood up to the oppression was so awful and so celebrated by the mainstream that I am amazed at how calm those women were able to remain.
I can understand why the heavyhandedness hasn't aged well. Many of us are so much more aware of issues that in 1988 were invisible to most people.
But there really is a lot to appreciate in her writing as well.
thank you for writing this crucail insight. It is exhausting we humans are prone to forget even the most obvious in such a short time.How to pass on the experience (not just knowledge but the experience) to the next generation without the young getting overly confident of "seeming gains" .Can we say "Experience cannot be passed on from one to the other." It is a delicate issue.
My wife is a big Tipper fan and always wanted me to read her, around 2004 maybe she said here try this, and gave me Gate to Women's Country. I enjoyed the story and thought it was well written and conceived, but obviously its been a long time since I read it but what stuck with me is normally when you have a scenario like this with a society that is structured with oppression within it, you usually are left with the impression of "Yeah, that was a bad idea" like whether it is women or men at the short end of the stick, but when I go to then end of it I recall being left with the idea that Stevia's feeling was "Yes, after all that's happened here and knowing the truth... It was still the right thing to do 😛" And suffice to say my wife regretted giving me that one as exemplary of Tepper's work. In fairness my wife hadn't read it herself since it came out so when I was telling her the story she didn't remember any of the details. I do want to read it again. I will say this for it... 20 years later I still talk about it!
This book gave that thing, that gap between generations and how the responsibiltiy lies on the part of the older generation in giving out information without ruining the life experience of the younger generations. Information cannot just be read simply from a book or told by someone who is more experienced. There must be a subtle care, many levels of subtle intelligent planning. I loved the book by showing how much care should go in this careful planning by the older generation. Passing information through many generation if it is done sincerely takes so much attention and group work. In my view Ms Tepper's book is not just a feminist book . Also it is a book about how to educate children and not be insultingly heavyhanded towards them.
As always, a great kind of review Rachel. I was curious to read this already and now, after listening to you speak, I'm even more curious and interested. I also want to read Ammonite and The Left Hand of Darkness. Hopefully I'll be able to read them all quite soon.
+FinalBlowJoe You can do a 'compare/contrast' video! Really digging into the differences between Women's Country and Ammonite... or comparing Ammonite to Whileaway in The Female Man...
Thanks for sharing. I just finished reading Gate to Women's country for my book club and I see what you're talking about with presenting cultural beliefs as scientific facts. The word for using the guise or authority of science to give ideas weight, by the way, is _scientism_. I thought the general eugenics plan they had (spoiler) was another instance of that. Human behavior is a little too plastic and the nature of political violence goes well beyond biological instincts for violence so that weeding out men who have problematic characteristics is going to be less successful than is led on.
rip sherri s tepper , my mum got me into her more fantastical works like the true game/marianne stuff but this was always my mums favourite
I think you hit the nail on the head here about black and white cast. I am reading grass right now, shrugging to read it and I want to DNF. Nice review!
Grass is really not worth the effort, in my opinion, but the sequel called Raising the Stones is awesome! I loved that book. I don't think it's even that necessary to read Grass before hand.
@@Kalanadi oh wonderful because I might DNF it tbh. I like the style enough to keep at it slowly. will defiantly check out the sequel!
It's not a feminist sci novel though is it. The society in WC is actually quite conservative. It has feminist aspects but I would argue it is a bit more similar to a conservative Islamic society. This being said the more progressive or "feminist" aspects of WC compliment the more traditional aspects of it rather nicely I think and we really should have something more like that in the present day - gender segregation and annual Carnival when? For all of humanity's sake, I do genuinely believe that this is something we really need and that we should really implement it at once.
Great review as always. :) Where do you buy your SF Masterworks books from? I notice you have almost all of them now.
+Brian Marshall There are so many more I don't have! But I do have most of the SF Masterworks by women. I have to get them from BookDepository, with the occasional rare find in a used bookstore.
The servitors are the ideal masculine to Tepper. They are still very masculine!!! It's the men who choose to be violent that are held outside of society. There is nuance.
A fantastic discussion. This book didn't really work for me for multiple reasons, some of which you mentioned, but I very much enjoyed this review.
Loved your review. I'm a huge Tepper fan, but you're right on the money- she simplifies everything down until there are absolutely no shades of grey. Men are either evil bastards or servile housepets- there are no other options in her work. At least she didn't have the Heroine run off to have sex with an alien horse, the way she did in Grass. :) If you haven't read it yet, find a copy of the Mavin Manyshaped novels.
I'm not going to rush for this one, but I will keep an eye out for it. And save it for a day when I can control my temper over the sexism. But I'll put Ammonite first. XD
+tarabyt3 I probably over-stated the sexist feel of the book - I just had a hard time figuring out what it was that bothered me so much! It's interesting because I think it's much, much more unfair to men than women. But yeah, get Ammonite! :-) I am 99% sure you will love that one!
Well, I would like to read it, but the "men are from Mars, women are from Venus" crap would rile me up too.
+ElleKayEm The only good bit is that clearly the women are just as flawed as men, but you almost feel like the author is sympathizing so much more with the women... I can't talk too much about that without giving away the ending! I probably make the sexist and gender essentialist parts more exaggerated when I talked about it. But it irritates me still to think about how subtly it's handing you that black-and-white version of the world.
But they are though, generally speaking. 💅
'they cured the gay' im laughing so hard
+AmberSpirit It was a bizarre passage - so that was the best way I could distill it! =D
Jajajaja
The more I hear about Tepper's work, the less I want to read it. It is in the shades of grey where the best speculative fiction excels.
+Jill Munro I probably do a disservice to Tepper by broadly painting her novels as black and white, but that's certainly how I felt about the dominant issues by the end. I'll be reading her fantasy novel Beauty soon, and third time will either be a charm - or a final verdict.... :-)