Science Fiction and Female MMA
Feb. 7th, 2021 03:47 pmScience fiction and female mixed martial arts are probably things most people don't put together. Apparently I'm not most people.
There was a school of thought in science fiction that held an all-female society would be very peaceful and cooperative. I first encountered that school years ago when I read Alice Sheldon's Houston, Houston Do You Read?. Other first-wave feminist authors, such as Joan Slonczewski, notably, in their A Door Into Ocean, published in 1986, and Joanna Russ, are also exemplars of this.
These works pre-date the phenomenon of female mixed martial arts, in which women get paid to beat the shit out of each other. The first-wave feminists, I think, mistook culture for genetics. It's an age-old mystery, one that we are still unravelling.
There was a school of thought in science fiction that held an all-female society would be very peaceful and cooperative. I first encountered that school years ago when I read Alice Sheldon's Houston, Houston Do You Read?. Other first-wave feminist authors, such as Joan Slonczewski, notably, in their A Door Into Ocean, published in 1986, and Joanna Russ, are also exemplars of this.
These works pre-date the phenomenon of female mixed martial arts, in which women get paid to beat the shit out of each other. The first-wave feminists, I think, mistook culture for genetics. It's an age-old mystery, one that we are still unravelling.