Hi,
Akkana Peck schrieb:
A TV show or movie isn't very representative of printed literature.
I expect you'll find that if you survey TV shows or movies in
genres other than SF, you'll find the same stereotypes.
Sure. I am not too much into TV in general, but I would probably assume
that TV (not always cinema) tends to feed more conservative tastes and
prejudices.
Books are less so. I expect there are several reasons for that:
books are a lot cheaper to produce, so you're going to see a wider
range of types and more publishers willing to take chances on
nonstandard views than movie and TV makers are; and there are just
so many more books that if you don't like the sexist ones, you can
always find something else, whereas there are only a handful of
SF movies or TV shows showing at any one time.
Also I guess it takes more effort to read a book and therefore as a
medium itself has a different kind of public.I am not a media specialist
though. I do see a lot of interesting, challenging, and very innovative
SF. The genre itself makes it easy to expand imagination. I do not want
to say that the genre as such is derogative towards women. I want to say
that a lot of the SF literature/films I have been referred to transport
conservative assumptions about gender.
Whether sf *books* are more sexist than mainstream books is another
interesting question. It's possible they are, on average, but Star
Trek won't work as an example.
As to how this affects girls growing up, I couldn't say. I was a
"tomboy" (more interested in climbing trees than playing with dolls)
and if a story featured male characters doing all the fun stuff, I
just went ahead and identified with those characters. It never crossed
my mind that being female meant that I should only identify with only
female characters. I know a lot of girls aren't like that and good
female role models are important; but for me it wasn't an issue.
Role models are really important. Probably a lot of women who are
already in free software do have a similar background and approach to
you and do act as role models. But this is a preselection I would
assume. Whereas I think that there is nothing wrong with women who can
identify with male characters. However I ask myself whether a
signification of activities, states of minds, etc. as fixed male or
female will rather determine ideas about masculinity or femininity among
the male open source participants.
Bernhard
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