a masculinist take on steffen-fluhr

In her essay on The Invasion of the Body Snatchers as a “complex psychomachia” (152), Nancy Steffen-Fluhr notes the parallel between Miles Bennell's anxieties in surrendering to alien invasion and surrendering to his feelings for his high school crush, Becky Driscoll. The author writes:

She is the familiar stranger, alien flesh to which he is about to bond himself, and he is worried that this merger may entail some loss of freedom and identity. The pod part is, at least in part, simply a surrealistic projection of these unacknowledged anxieties, of a man's terror of falling helplessly in love. (140)

Under this logic, however, I am not convinced that the climax of the movie reflects betrayal on Becky's part, nor am I convinced that Miles' refusal to surrender control supports a return to patriarchal norms. First and foremost, I'd like to argue that another hallmark of so-called “macho role-playing” (153) is the desire to command and conquer. Though Steffen-Fluhr emphasizes the stereotypical male distaste for being controlled, she focuses little discussion on the need for men to actively control their environment. Furthermore, men are presumably obsessed with power, but it was a man who acknowledged that “with great power comes great responsibility.” As a result, I'd propose that Miles' manhood took a significant blow when he succumbed to the temptation of a distant lullaby and left the love of his life all but exposed to the invaders.

In addition, the inconclusiveness of the story's ending complicates the notion that only a return to the “bi-polar values of the American patriarchy” (153) can fight off an alien invasion. This is primarily because the film fails to set up an explicit alternative: embracing the pod people would result in passionless conformity, hardly the first thing that one expects from empowering and embracing women as equals. Unless present day norms have rendered my perceptions of gender equality too far removed from those in the 1950s (very possible), or Don Siegel was attempting to associate the invasive, soul-sucking feminine pods with marriage (fun to think about, but less possible), I simply do not see how Steffen-Fluhr's is the most relevant argument (though it is certainly compelling to a particular audience).

In fact, I found the whole of Steffen-Fluhr's analysis, while detailed and well thought out, to be extremely biased toward a feminist viewpoint. It demonstrated to me just how much one's outside beliefs can influence the interpretation of a text. For example, Steffen-Fluhr's focus on the “real meaning of fear” in a kiss (139) led to her assessment that Miles blamed Becky for succumbing to her feminine weakness and falling asleep. Meanwhile, I thought that a pervasive guilt of abandonment underlay Miles' reaction to discovering that his beloved's body had been snatched. Steffen-Fluhr's propensity to identify vaginas where I might simply identify bloody, sliced palms also epitomizes for me the effect that preconceived agendas can have on literary analysis. Again, I do not mean to disrespect the school of thought from which Ms. Steffen-Fluhr makes her arguments; I just find it remarkable that we saw such different things in the same exact movie.

Only Amateurs

In NASA/Trek, Constance Penley proposes that Star Trek is the theory and NASA is the practice of space travel, and that the combination of the two humanizes our relation to science and technology. Penley first discussed the ways that NASA has marginalized and discriminated against women, only accepting those who could either be the "token overachiever" or mediocre enough to appear a mere amateur, an individual whose appearance and role on a shuttle reconfirms, rather than rebels against, the dismissive role of women as nurturers, teachers, mothers and inferiors. Penley then connected this to the position that women have marked for themselves in the fan-verse of Star Trek, creating a close-knit community of Kirk/Spock slash fanfic writers. However, I think that this connection has implications for Star Trek as the "theory" of NASA that Penley did not fully explore.

Penley mentions that these fanfiction writers are stubborn amateurs: "they feel free to express themselves as writers only insofar as they can conceive of their writing as a hobby and nothing more." In this way, the women that Penley discusses seem to place themselves within the amateur role within the theorizing of space travel that the female astronauts were forced to take in its practice.

Furthermore, if Star Trek is the theory of space travel, even this supposedly "female-oriented domain" of K/S pushes women away into the background. Although women are the writers, the artists, the creators, and the consumers, the product with which they are working only involves male figures. Although Penley argues that this is actually a feminist move, as it allows the writers and consumers to explore a relationship that is entirely equal (and, because it is set in the 23rd century, somehow "gender neutral"), it still reinforces the idea that masculine is the neutral gender, and that women have no visual place in the theory or practice of space travel. To what extent could we argue that some of these women become so involved in the Kirk/Spock relationship because it is the most developed relationship on the show, and that they would be more inclined to write and read about male/female pairings (or female/female pairings) if more fully-developed female characters were available to them. A comparative study to other fandoms could be useful here: for example, when considering Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the majority-female fanfiction writers do produce slash, but the presence of engaging female characters means that many heterosexual pairings are also popular. Although slash is a popular form in many fandoms, it therefore seems to be more popular, more dominant, when compelling female characters are less accessible. As they are not given a compelling entry point into the world of space travel, the female viewers identify with (and even make gender-neutral) the existing male characters, building a separate space for themselves in which they are still only "amateurs," just "hobbyists," viewing adventure from a distance dictated by their gender.

Self, gender, and society: LeGuin through the lens of cultural psychology

Though I very much respect and admire Ursula LeGuin's discussions of gender and the other in The Left Hand of Darkness, I couldn't help but view her notions of interdependency on a cultural spectrum. In fact, my thesis research is heavily rooted in the psychological theory that two major pathways of cultural development exist: individualism and collectivism. The former is exemplified by independence and the assertion of self, while the latter emphasizes interdependence and connectivity. This is reflected by LeGuin's comparison of society on Winter with society in China, as it is generally accepted that Oriental cultures tend to exhibit a preference for collectivism.

Our understanding of a work of human intellect (e.g. literature) is integrally tied to our understanding of the human psyche. Sigmund Freud opened up many discussions of the subconscious, driving the appearance of the id/ego/superego terminology in literary critique. Already in this course, we've experienced two works (written about 70 years apart) that explicitly mention psychologists: Well's Time Machine and LhoD (a psychologist is present during the storytelling in the former, while Genly mentions how mindspeak has refined psychology as a practice in the latter). This emphasizes the importance of the discipline to the genre of science fiction, which cannot be understated; as LeGuin might put it, the goal of such “thought-experiments” is more “descriptive” of the current human condition than “predictive” of how it will be in the future. How, then, can we understand LeGuin's notions of gender and society in light of recent developments in cultural psychology?

LeGuin draws some clear divisions in LhoD, a necessity in any discussion of dualism. The line between male and female is explicitly acted out and also explicitly mused upon. The human narrators in the story are quite preoccupied with characterizing a particular Gethenian's action by gender; one moment Estraven displays masculine resolve, while the next, his mannerisms appear motherly. In addition, certain qualities are associated with traditional notions of gender. Marcellino invokes Russ' idea that the countries in LhoD represent gendered forms of government: Karhide as the communal and female, while Orgoreyn represents the oppressive and masculine. Both, however, operate on somewhat Marxist principles, reflecting the collectivism inherent in interdependency. Are we, then, to interpret the female as collectivistic, or the ambisexual (with all its Taoist, yin-yang undertones) as collectivistic?

At the time that LhoD was written, LeGuin was likely unversed in the collectivistic versus individualistic dichotomy. Her gender associations are certainly supported by empirical research: studies have shown that male children tend to be competition or game-oriented during socialization, while female children are more relationally competitive. This seems to reflect the different styles (genders) of government proposed by Russ, but LeGuin complicates it with notions of ambisexuality. For example, the lack of persistent sexual energy in everyday life is thought to push society towards personal vendetta and intrigue instead of war and domination. One might view this as a result of feminine government, but LeGuin seems to suggest that Winter is simply more feminine (without being exclusively so) than our traditional notions of dominion. In addition, collectivism does not necessarily remove the desire for war, nor does it associate with a particular gender (in fact, one might conceptualize both individualism and collectivism as the products of largely patriarchal societies).

The underlying, anthropological foundations of the individualistic versus collectivistic dichotomy looks at the relationship between the self and society. In the Left Hand of Darkenss, Ursula LeGuin attempts to break down this relationship by exploring many dichotomies, including the pervasive and complicated dualism of gender. Though I cannot deny its identity or importance as a work of feminist science fiction, I am impressed and intrigued by how LeGuin's discussions of gender forces one to look at the self and soceity as well.

By Any Other Name...

I’m interested in the influence of gendered language, and the difficulty of conveying an idea when you don’t have to words for it. I was surprised that Bill Marcellino, as a student of rhetoric, didn’t focus more on the basics of gender as it is connected to language in his article. I read Le Guin’s article before I read the book, and even though she talked about her use of masculine words and pronouns, I was still surprised by how much they impacted my vision of Gethenians as I was reading. Of course, it is important to consider that the use of terms like “man” and “mankind” may have seemed at least slightly less gendered when the book was originally written. While I’m no expert on the linguistic history of “mankind," I know from changed song lyrics and the like that over time "man" has been replaced with words like "person." Regardless, words like “man” or “him" don't automatically call up images of someone with feminine qualities.

I was particularly struck by the fact that Estraven used words like “mankind” until I realized that it was an issue of translation. Estraven wasn’t saying “mankind.” Genly was, in retelling his story for us. The novel abounds with translation and communication problems, between narrator and reader, author and reader, and characters. In dealing with gendered words especially, I was reminded of the Whorfian hypothesis that I learned about in Psychology 101, the idea that language can constrain or influence our way of thinking. For example, when bilingual people who spoke English and Spanish were asked to describe a key, they used traditionally feminine adjectives. When English speakers who also spoke German instead of Spanish described a key, they used masculine adjectives. The word for key is feminine in Spanish and masculine in German. At first glance it might seem that, aside from the pronoun problems, English is better suited for a story about genderless people because we have mostly genderless words.

But that’s not entirely true. Though the Whorfian hypothesis is controversial, I think it’s interesting to wonder about how the words we use influence how we think when it comes to matters of communicating with others. Perhaps because I was primed to think in terms of gender while reading, I was struck by the use of the word patriotism, and the way Gethenians, or at least Estraven, connected it to fear. I would never have thought of patriotism in terms of fear of the other, but do think of it in terms of gender. The word it comes from in Latin, patria, is feminine, something I only remembered because it struck me as bizarre when I learned it – why would a “fatherland” be feminine? Of course other words with the same root have even stronger masculine connotations – think patriarch.

What’s interesting for me, then, is that Le Guin uses this word’s definition within the world of the Gethenians to describe some communication problems in general. This idea of fear of the other comes into play in the inability to conceptualize the world as “others” do – certain words of the Gethenians, particularly "shifgrethor," are untranslatable. And they avoid our system of gendered language because it isn’t a concept they understand. But because there are no words for it, it’s hard to imagine what is really meant. Even in the most intimate act of conversation, mindspeech, Genly has to speak Estraven’s language, explaining, “you don't know mine” (253). I think this provides a key example of the limitations of Le Guin’s own storytelling capability. She could only conceptualize so far within the bounds of the English language. So even though reading is a form of mindspeech, sending words from her heads to ours, they have to be words in our language, and so it is difficult to get past some of our preconceived notions of gender.

Gethen & Gloria: Differences in Single Sex Societies

Tags: Single-sex vs. third sex, fantasies/sexual desire, gender, sexuality

 “When you meet a Gethenian, you cannot and must not do what a bisexual naturally does, which is to cast him in the role of Man or Woman, while adopting towards him a corresponding role dependent on your expectation of the patterned or possible interactions between persons of the same or the opposite sex.” (Le Guin 94)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Last week in class, we discussed Tiptree’s “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” and the concept of “being female” in a world where there was once, but is no longer, a male gender. Lorimer thinks the inhabitants of the future he encounters might call themselves “Women’s World”, “Liberation”, or “Amazonia” – names that are based around the absence of men, or emphasize women’s “freedom” from them. But in fact, the women call themselves they call themselves “human beings… humanity, mankind…the human race” (Tiptree 216). 

In light of this, we discussed in class the question of what it means to be female in the absence of the male, and how the concept may have changed – one example given as a sign of a fundamental difference between the women of the future and the women of today was the attitude toward fantasies. In response to Lorimer’s comment that “everybody” has aggressive fantasies, Connie replies, “’But nobody does… I mean, [have]the fantasies’” (Tiptree 215). These women are thus somehow very different from the women of today, who do have such fantasies as well – there is a fundamental difference, then, between the women of the future and those of today.

It is to this difference that Ursula LeGuin seems to speak when the Investigator of her novel writes, “What is very hard for us to understand is that four-fifths of the time, these people are not sexually motivated at all…The society of Gethen, in its daily functioning and its continuity, is without sex” (Le Guin 93). Although written by a woman of Chiffewar (and therefore still marked as being potentially very different from the words of a woman of Earth today), these words are still framed as thoughts  about Gethen from the point of view of a person whom the reader can find more relatable than the people of Gethen themselves – if only because she shares the characteristic of coming from a bisexual society. Such a woman finds the very concept of a world without the constant potential presence of sexual desire or the fantasies of sex to be difficult to understand, suggesting that both Tiptree and LeGuin seem to share a belief that in a society where only one sex is present, a constant desire for sex, or fantasies of sex,* disappear.

Of course, there appears to be a biologically inherent reason for this in Gethen that does not seem to be present on Gloria – in somer they simply have no sex drive, unlike the women of Gloria, who undergo no such biological change. The question that arises from this is – what are the differences that arise in these two types of single-sex societies: (1) a society where everyone is a gender that has historically been defined in relation to another gender that is no longer in existence, and has not been for so long that the people no longer really remember it, but still use the language that was defined by this difference in genders; and (2) A society where everyone is a single sex** that is not neutral, as Ong Tot Oppong comments (Le Guin 94), but has in it the potential of two other sexes that seem to exist to complement and be opposite to each other  (from a traditional point of view), and where the language itself reflects these differences.  Why might the concept of fantasy disappear from both such societies? Is there a difference? I’d imagine there is, yes, but more importantly, what is the nature of that difference?

After all, the advice that Ong Tot Oppong gives to her reader (at the beginning of this post) seems like it might have stood the crew of the Sunbird very well (you know, if they hadn’t been…well, drugged…)

My notes are after the jump -

Kemmering and Heterosexuality

When reading The Left Hand of Darkness I was very interested by kemmering, and it led me to some questions about how sexuality and sexual desire are represented in Gethen. I was actual very relieved when LeGuin addressed (in a bracketed addition to her original article) the fact that the world she draws is entirely heteronormative. She says, "I quite unnecessarily locked the Gethenians into heterosexuality. It is a naively pragmatic view of sex that insists that sexual partners must be of the opposite sex! In any kemmering house homosexual practice would, of course, be possible and acceptable and welcomed -- but I never thought to explore this option; and the omission, alas, implies that sexuality is heterosexuality. I regret this very much." Indeed, the way that she constructs the kemmering process in the novel explicitly denies the existence of any kind of sexuality other than heterosexuality on a physiological level which was a bit upsetting for me. Though we are obviously not supposed to identify the Gethenians as 'human' it seemed to me that their sexual process was far too similar to the human sexual process to deny the parallels -- calling on descriptive phrases such as 'hormonal secretion' 'genitals engorge' immediately draws on human biology. Obviously, a major human debate about sexuality and gender deals with whether sexual orientation is a genetic fact or if it is a lifestyle choice. She describes the kemmering or sexing process: "hormonal secretion is further stimulated...until in one partner either a male or female hormonal dominance is established. The genitals engorge or shrink accordingly...they do not know whether they will be male or female, and have no choice in the matter." First, with LeGuin's explicit description of the biological process of 'sexing' the Gethenians, it seems that she is saying that yes, sexuality is genetic and further, the only result of the genetic process is heterosexuality, and anything outside of that is a lifestyle choice. This is only reinforced by the weighty 'either or' statement in this excerpt -- either male or female, and nothing in between. Sexual orientation aside, in constructing this 'either or' scenario, LeGuin denies the existence of transgendered individuals, hermaphrodites, etc.
I don't want to be too negative here, because she of course did say that the heteronormativity was a mistake, and that she regrets that her words locked the Gethenians into an unequivocally heterosexual lifestyle. So, I will end with a few possible questions that might be worth discussing in class tomorrow if anyone has an interest. First, what did anyone else make of the absence of sexuality outside heterosexuality? How do you think an inclusion of more sexual categories would impact the overall narrative?

What is it to Write as a Man?

James Tiptree Jr. aka Alice Sheldon is able to explore topics of female inequality through her adoption of the male pseudonym. Julie Philips refers to this adoption of a male pseudonym as raising "questions [to] all our assumptions about writing and gender" (Philips 6). Tiptree was thought of as an oddly pro-feminist writer. The mystique surrounding Tiptree was rather large, Sheldon claimed, "My secret world had been invaded and the attractive figure of Tiptree-- he did strike several people as attractive-- was revealed as nothing but an old lady in Virginia" (Philips 3). That this constructed pro-feminist male writer could be considered

Sheldon's work often deals with the gender binary, especially in the story of The Screwfly Solution.  Sheldon switched from the penname of Tiptree to Racoona Sheldon for this story, a woman who was believed to be a student of Tiptree. The story explores the concept of a global catastrophe stemming from a mixing of the pleasure gained from "agression/predation and sexual reproduction in the male... shown by (a) many of the same neuromuscular pathways which are utilized both in predatory and sexual pursuit, grasping, mounting, etc., and (b) similar states of adrenergic arousal which are activated in both" (Tiptree 25). Through the letters and correspondence between Ann and Alan we are able to see the degeneration of a loving husband and father as his psyche switches from love and desire to feelings of violence and a lust for blood.

The impact of the title, and of Alan's position as scientist studying how to remove parasites, comes to a head with the conclusion of the short story and the reveal of the "angels." Starving and feverish, Ann encounters one of the fabled angels that motivated the mad ravings of the Sons of Adam Cult. This angel takes samples of the earth, and utilizes a system they used to eradicate the screwfly population: "Pinpoint the weak link, wait a bit while we do it for them" (Tiptree 31). The angel clears the earth of the parasite, in this case man, for reasons unexplained. Ann speculates that they have taken on the role of "a real estate agent," but it is never explained whether the angel is either magical or alien. Based on the evidence in the short story we can determine that the aliens are clearing the world of humanity, yet for what end we cannot tell.

The use of angels, God and the cult's name referring to Adam all hint towards the aliens reverting the Earth back to a prelapserian sort of world and the inevitability of man's destruction. A world before the fall and the spread of humanity throughout its border. Something resulting from the change the aliens brought about drives Alan, a former loving father, to murder his daughter. This inevitable movement towards sin, as if it is within man's nature to destroy himself, serves as a forceful embodiment of the gender divide and the essential nature of women in society in order to temper these destructive impulses.

Conceal and reveal

Given the remarkable truth of James Tiptree, Jr.’s identity, I was naturally more inclined towards biographical readings of her work than usual. A good number of the stories, I found, rewarded such an approach on multiple levels, from the conceit to the narrative or prose style. Both “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” and “The Women Men Don’t See,” for example, have as their subjects female figures who are in some way seeking an exit from the constraints of their identity and social standing. Although the latter story concludes immediately after the revelation of this dilemma, it’s also relatively clear in both that this urge for gender transcendence can obtain fulfillment only in a tragic or destructive manner, with the brutal death of P. Burke in the former and the horror of “a woman [who] choose[s] to live among unknown monsters” in the latter—though we can hardly trust a narrator who refers to a woman as a “classic penetration target” (143, 133).

Of course, this longing is part of Alice B. Sheldon’s story—James Tiptree, Jr.’s is instead a story of incredible, nearly lifelong concealment. What I found especially interesting about these two stories is the way in which concealment and disclosure also feature prominently, seemingly as necessary correlatives to a successful transcendence of gender. The issue is less fundamental to “The Women Men Never See,” although it quietly pervades its conversations, which always appear hamstrung by the male gaze, to the point that deft concealment seems the only defensive tactic available to a woman. These are offered as imperatives or direct statements of fact, as if with them Tiptree addresses Sheldon: “Answer a question with a question.” “Competent, agreeable, impersonal.” (120, 128) And it dominates “The Girl Who Was Plugged In”: P. Burke can only “pass” as Delphi while her body is concealed deep within the GTX compound, “five thousand miles away . . . [as] the monster down in a dungeon smelling of electrode paste” (66). Worse yet, the ending’s tragedy follows logically from Paul’s naïve impulse to liberate the woman behind the woman. In so doing he disregards not only the technological and physiological limitations on their relationship—insofar as P. Burke appears to have atrophied to the point of being unable to survive outside of her chamber—but also, arguably, its social conditions. P. Burke’s death allows Tiptree to avoid answering what must, for her, have been the hardest question: whether one of the “gods” could ever have loved or respected a mere woman. Everything in—and behind—the story at this point indicates otherwise.

Titles, Names, and Gender in "The Women Men Don’t See”

Tags: Titles, names, blindness, projection of preconceptions, gender

Seth points out that one of the highlights of “The Women Men Don’t See” is that the reader is inclines to think that the great mystery of the story must have something to do with the Parsons. Of course, some of this inclination comes from Tiptree’s clever manipulation of the title. One of the conventions of the science fiction genre is to refer to the main element of novelty in their story (the “part that’s sci-fi”) in the title itself – “The Girl Who Was Plugged In”, for example. The title “The Women Men Don’t See” is an example of Tiptree’s clever manipulation of convention that ultimately reflects the structure of the entire storyand causes us to project our preconceptions about science fiction onto the story in the same way that Don Fenton projects his preconceptions about women onto Ruth and Althea.

            After all, we as readers never truly see Ruth Parsons and Althea Parsons – the great irony of this story is that it is told from the point of view of a man, whose narrative is made unreliable by virtue of the title alone, as emphasized by the first line of the story - “I see her first” (115). We soon discover that in this act of “seeing” Don does not “see” very well at all – only a “double female blur” (115) – thus the very first act of seeing in the story is rendered myopic at best.

Don continues this myopia later on, up until the end of the story with the example Arlyn points out – Don’s total obliviousness and blindness to the fact that the world Ruth is leaving is in not her own, which is why she’s leaving it – but also earlier, with his insistence in using the title “Mrs” with Ruth even after he has found out her true marital status (132). The title of “Mrs” is one which he himself projected on her after learning her surname was Parsons – and even learning the truth about Ruth does not allow him to get rid of his former preconceptions of her, which are formed almost the moment he first sees Ruth and Althea for the second time – “It’s the woman and her young companion – daughter?- picking….” He describes the two women. Less than three sentences later, when he mentions Ruth again, she is referred to simply as “the mother” – in such a way, his initial speculation immediately becomes fact in his own mind, without any confirmation by the women themselves (not yet anyway) – this is the beginning of Don’s projections onto Ruth and Althea.

As might be expected in a story by Tiptree, names seem to play a significant role, even beyond the use of titles. Ruth and Althea’s names are marked by the influence that men have on their lives. Parsons is a surname, and surnames indicate either the influence of a man somehow, whether as father or husband, or emphasize the absence of a husband. The fact that Ruth and Althea initially use it as their only name (118) strips them of the individualizing power of their first names, and their whole being briefly becomes a reflection of either the influence of a man or the emphasis of the absence of a husband.

Paradoxically, both interpretations seem to fit Ruth and Althea equally well – especially when we do learn their first names, for both the names Ruth and Althea refer to Biblical and Greek mythological women whose stories and fates are heavily dependent on the influence of the men in their lives:

Ruth: http://www.bible-people.info/Ruth.htm#The%20Story%20of%20Ruth%20and%20Naomi

Althea: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0104:entry=althaea-bio-1

Ruth’s name is particularly interesting because of the other traits it associates with her (both loyalty and love and a foreignness). Ruth has great success assimilating into a foreign land in the Old Testament – will Ruth Parsons share her success in a foreign world? 

What Alice Didn't Know

ENG 396 Week 4: Gender Appropriations: James Tiptree, Jr.

It’s no surprise that animals are well represented in Sheldon/Tiptree’s stories, especially as representations of the feminine. Women’s status is reduced and compared to that of secret possums, pigs, sought and hunted ducks, or even obsolete spacemen.

What if Sheldon portrays something more sinister than just antifeminism? After all, she was the experimental Psychologist Who Empathized with Rats (not unlike the Japanese “Princess Who Loved Insects,” a model for Miyazaki’s Nausicäa), and her research was supposed to probe fundamental biology and animal behavior beyond the messy social influences which humans endure and learn from. Tilly Lipsitz’s rats, subject to starvation, penetration, and blindness, stand in as more than scientific toys, not unlike Carol Page, who is probably more than a voice for woman as humans understand.

This is all quite vague; consider instead a sort of related biological idea. There is a thought among the physics community (one that is prevalent here) that life is “optimized” for its tasks, whether it is to maximize the sensitivity and resolution for images discerned by the retina, or to minimize in the eardrum the random noise that fogs up the precise sounds made by humans and animals. Down-to-earth examples may suggest a grander “theory of life,” which may be BS but at least suggests that there does exist a logical plan in the design of life which may be understood through scientific theory and experimentation.

As much as Sheldon was a scientist, she did not identify with those scientists who hacked off rat heads, and instead she felt the misery of the rats (89). She was a scientist but not a part of Science, which in its violence is unempathetic and masculine. Yet Science, supposedly, seeks the unadulterated truth of Nature, who is female, and the capitalization is curiously common in scientific texts. If Science is done from the male viewpoint, can it still supply the truth? Perhaps only half of the truth.

But for Sheldon there is a more fearful possibility, one that “Love Is the Plan the Plan is Death” most strongly suggests: What if Nature is sexist? What if there is a cosmic Plan, the Plan is sexist, Moggadeet is always doomed, and Carol Page must die a rara avis? Sheldon’s answer is only halfway negative. On the one hand, the women of “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” have dismissed the millenia-old male institution for something equally viable, and even more “human” (216). But although the perspective is balanced through the male experience, the statement of truth has shifted to female. There seems not to exist any conciliation between male and female truth; even the beatification of Carol Page was in the arms of the female Cavaná (273).

Then this is Sheldon’s dilemma: As much as the female and male perspectives are equally truthful, they share no mutual resolution from their own pools of thought, so that the two worlds must remain orthogonal. (For the brave among you… consider the spin of an electron, which can exist in any superposition of “up” and “down,” but any observation, such as by light heading toward a human eye, collapses the spin to either up or down and never both.) Perhaps, from Sheldon’s own message, the best way to understand is through alienation from one’s own world—for the scientist to be aloof of Science, for a man to be removed from masculinity, for a human to acknowledge and pass up their terrestrial place. Sheldon lifts science fiction from literary method to an epistemological Plan for comprehending all Plans.