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Written in 2002 by James Wallmuth, university of colorado student.
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Joanna Russ
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Feminism is precious to me. That's why I hate seeing it become a new lifestyle for middle class, career-minded couples or an improvement in certain men's public manners. I have seen feminism turn all too often into an advancement club for middle-managerial, white, professional women.
Joanna Russ, born in 1937, is credited by critics with being the writer who brought lesbian and feminist issues into science fiction. Her career began in 1959 when she published "Nor Custom State," in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. However, her work did not achieve particular notoriety until the 1970s. In general, critics have especially hailed Russ for her tough female protagonists and she is given credit for the rise of action adventure novels that are centered around women rather than men.
Her most famous and critically acclaimed work is The Female Man (1975), for which she won a Best Novel of the Year Nebula award. This novel shares a feature that is a common thread in her fiction--resilient female characters. The characters in Picnic on Paradise (1968) and The Adventures of Alyx (1976) have also been praised for providing a model for future writers. The protagonists in Russ's work represent her ideal of strong, independent women. Russ applies feminist theory in her novels--as well as in her non-fiction pieces--to criticize the undue influence of men on society.
Patriarchal ideology and culture are nothing but lies about women. I think we often forget this because it's so absolutely pervasive in everything from clothing to the design of houses to the structure of cities.
What influences her writing most is Russ's application of feminist beliefs. She is strongly opposed to the patriarchal society as it exists: Russ believes that this society undermines women's strength and individuality.
If men have an unreasonable and unjust double amount of authority (intellectual and other), self-esteem, time, energy, leisure, cultural importance, wealth, freedom, and so on, this is precisely because they have stolen our time, our energy, our leisure, our authority, our labor and the wealth it produces, our self-esteem, our claims to knowledge and achievement, and our possibilities for autonomy and freedom. We are not merely excluded from male activities and institutions; our resources have been appropriated by men as their own for centuries.
Russ critiques the male-centered ideology because it forces women to become something that they are not. Her creation of independent, free-thinking female characters is a reflection of her belief that women should not be subject to the whims and desires of men. Russ saves her harshest critique for male influence over female appearance.
Thirty-seven years of listening to male sexual bragging have made me absolutely certain that men's insistence on women's attractiveness and sexual availability has nothing to do with either carnality or aesthetics. For one thing, "attractiveness" in women changes to fast and too often to have any deep connection with male instinct. What is demanded is that you "make something of yourself." Sometimes this means being artificially thin or girdled and sometimes it means being artificially fat and padded, but it always means being unnatural and uncomfortable. What it also means is giving off signals of the availability of your energies, time, emotions, and resources to men, that is, your loyalty to the patriarchal order.
Russ's questioning of sexual terminology is due in part to her own sexual identity. Russ characterizes herself as a lesbian, but she feels that the culture definitions that she must "fit into" are too narrow to define her individuality.
There is immense social pressure in our culture to imagine a Lesbian as someone who never under any circumstances feels any attraction to any man, in fantasy or otherwise. The popular model of homosexuality is simply the heterosexual institutions reversed; since heterosexuality is (supposedly) exclusive, so must homosexuality be. It is about the assumption, I think, that lies behind arguments about what a "real Lesbian" is. I have been attracted to men, so I'm not a real Lesbian. This idea of what a Lesbian is is a wonderful way of preventing anyone from every becoming one; and when we adopt it, we're simply doing the culture's dirty work for it.
By refusing to accept the label the society provides for her, Russ illustrates a common theme of her work, her opposition to the narrow roles provided for women by a patriarchal society. Her science fiction--and non-fiction work--actively supports feminist issues because Russ does not want to see feminism become watered down. Russ's feminist beliefs led her to question the fundamental mores upon which women's gender roles are based. In particular she assaults the language, which is an extension of the male dominated culture.
"Sexual" is a dangerous word precisely because it splits one part of experience off from the rest. . . . Perhaps that's the function of official classifications. Names are given to things by the privileged and their naming is (wouldn't you think?) to their own advantage, but in the area of sexuality women are emphatically not a privileged class.
In all, Joanna Russ has written eleven novels and twenty-six short stories. She has won a Hugo and Nebula award for her science fiction. Much of her recent writing is consumed with the authorship of critical essays and novels. Her latest book, What are we Fighting For? Sex, Race, Class, and the Future of Feminism (1998), is an example of the direction she has taken. She continues to write and also lectures at various universities throughout the United States, remaining an outspoken voice for women everywhere.
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