Book review: "Freedom's Choice" has no freedom or choice for women

[asterroc]

I used to think when I was younger that Anne McCaffrey was a feminist writer. This might have been partially due to the fact that I viewed my mother as a feminist and she was the one who started me on the Dragonriders of Pern series when I was still in elementary school. It was probably due more to my early notions of what feminism entailed: McCaffrey was a woman, and her books contained a lot of strong women characters who bucked the norm. What I failed to see that the time was that while they bucked aspects of the norm, they did not fight against the gender stratification of their societies, and all of McCaffrey's societies were gender stratified.

And "Freedom's Choice" fits neatly into this trend of hers. "Choice" is the second in the 4-novel Catteni series - I've only read the first two so far, but I'm a glutton for punishment and do intend to read the rest. The main character Kris Bjornsen is a strong woman fighting against the slavery of mankind by an alien race. She takes on a role advising the first leader of the involuntary colonists dropped onto an unknown planet by the enslaving race, and then continues to serve the colony as a scout.

Where the series takes its sharp turn from feminism is when Kris is informed that the leadership has decided (while she was out scouting) to start pregnancy rosters whereby all women in the colony would take turns bearing children. Kris's response is a petulant whine that she doesn't want to have children, or at least to put off childbearing for years (her friend implies this is selfish, and tells her Kris's name was put at the bottom of the list because of her value to the colony), or concern that she will not be a good mother (this problem too has been solved, with creches where unwilling incubators can drop off the babies after birth and never have anything else to do with them, though it's never indicated that anyone actually does this). McCaffrey blows off Kris's concerns as being childish and irresponsible; nobody ever takes them seriously, not even Kris's alien lover (who because of being a different species could never be the father of a child of Kris).

Kris goes along with the program in the end, never outright objecting to the leadership at all. In the end though, the reason she goes along with the program is even worse (IMO) than the program itself. After rebuffing dozens of men trying to get in her pants with the excuse that it's for breeding purposes, Kris is date-raped while drunk. She excuses it to herself as "oh, I was just drunk," and yet she never tells anyone else (not even her lover), when she learns she is pregnant she is embarrassed and then enraged that one of her "friends" reveals it to everyone (and even tries to attack the "friend" and has to be held back), and moreover Kris doesn't even reveal to her rapist that he is the father - if that isn't a clear sign that the sex was NOT a good thing, I don't know what is. And to make it clear that Kris's rape was a good thing and her distaste for it a bad thing, at the end of the book McCaffrey has an omnipotent race appear and reveal to Kris's rapist that the child is his, and he offers to help care for the child when she has to go on another scouting mission. Kris is filled with a benevolent glow and realizes the childishness of her past actions.

Because we all know that a woman doing anything other than meekly submitting to a culture that promotes women as vessels for men's seed is just childish.

How did I *ever* think McCaffrey a feminist? I kinda want to reread the Pern series now, but am afraid to do so (what with the dragons' rape flights and all).

Comments

[allandaros.livejournal.com]

...the hell?!

(I'm mindboggled that you'd continue with the series after that.)

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

A book contains multiple aspects to me: the philosophy, the universe, the characters, and the writing style. I find that in print books I need to like three or four of these to enjoy the book, while in audiobooks I only need two. In this particular series the philosophy is the only part that I dislike, and I'm reading it as an audiobook that I'm borrowing from the library so I'm not paying for it.

Take the "Sword of Truth" series by Terri Goodkind as another example. I didn't like the philosophy and I was just "enh" on the writing style, but again, it was an audiobook so I read the entire super-long series.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

It may also be worth noting that the situations as described in the book were not as clear-cut as I depicted them here. What I label as date rape, the character Kris labels as "drunken consensual sex" - both characters were very drunk, and in fact the man may have been more drunk than her as later in the book evidence surfaces that he wasn't even sure afterwards whether they had sex. If such is the case, then perhaps she perpetrated the date rape upon him, especially since just prior to the sex (but after they were both drunk) Kris muses about being horny and missing her lover, implying that she initiated the sex rather than the man.

[l0stmyrel1g10n.livejournal.com]

Did you ever read the Pern book that was about F'lessan? There's the bit when his girlfriend's dragon wants to mate and the girl gets scared, and he asks "wait, did they rape you? that's horrible!" and then goes and rapes her too.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I've read so many of them they really run into each other. IIRC McCaffrey's "excuse" for the dragon rape flights is that the riders get so swept up by the emotions of the dragons, that it's really all okay.

[fireaphid.livejournal.com]

Eep! The only McCaffrey I've read is the Dragonriders of Pern series, and I rather liked it when I read it (middle school). I think I lost interest in McCaffrey right around when I discovered Ursula LeGuin and started rejecting gender. I'm seriously disturbed by her dismissive attitude toward the severity of rape. Is it possible she's just pointing out that the territory can be murky and not that she supports the view the protagonist eventually adopts? I hope that's what was intended, as in Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood series. . . Anyway, thanks for the review. I still may read the book, but the warning is appreciated.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

The first book of the series is definitely more liberal in attitude, as Kris forges her place among the colonists, and a peeping tom gets thrown in the stocks for a few days.

I also find it worth pondering whether feminism even is meaningful in the face of potential species extinction. In this series the human species is at war with the Catteni, Earth is occupied and attempting guerrilla warfare, and the entire populations of around 10 major Earth cities have been transported off the Earth as slaves. The colonists are a ragtag bunch of rebels who have been thrown onto an uninhabited world and could end up being the only surviving humans in the universe. In the face of such a situation, maintaining a viable population is crucial for the survival of the species, and individual preferences MUST make way for that imperative.

I also liked Pern a lot when I read it in elementary and middle school, and I've enjoyed other more recent books in the series that I've occasionally read since. I really do ponder how I'd receive it if I started over now though.

I'm curious what you mean when you say "rejecting gender." I feel gender is a useful descriptive tool, but it is not prescriptive. It is also limited and flawed, as all descriptions and models are, but like all models we can use it for as far as it works, and then look at where it breaks down to learn even more.

[fireaphid.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting question, that of the place of feminism in a world in such crisis. However, I think it's hard to defend a species that must remove a female's choice of if/when to reproduce in order to propagate itself. If the cause is great enough, people will volunteer to do what's right, according to the shared morals of whatever society it is. What's the point of saving the human race from slavery if there are no human rights remaining to defend? Would the resulting society be any better than that of the aliens who keep humans as slaves?

As for rejecting gender, I don't mean to offend those who are happy with its descriptive use, but I've seen gender misused to control people (in a religious context). On top of that, I don't feel like I fit into the flawed binary of gender at all, so I consider myself ungendered. Anyway, this discussion really makes me want to re-read the Dragonriders series, and maybe start on the Catteni series. Whoohoo for summer reading!

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

If the cause is great enough, people will volunteer to do what's right, according to the shared morals of whatever society it is.

I'm not convinced that there's a clear-cut difference between "volunteering to do what you want because it's right," "giving in to peer pressure because others want you to do it," and "being forced to do what you don't want."

Regarding my own take on gender, it is neither the first nor main adjective I use to describe myself. I agree that it is not entirely binary - while I identify as a woman/girl/female, I express it in multiple different manners (depending upon whether I'm at work, hanging out around town, visiting my parents, slouching around home all day, etc.), and there are many entirely other ways to express woman/girl/female than the ways that I choose.

Should I happen to refer to you in the third person, would you prefer that I use an ungendered/gender-free pronoun? I occasionally use "ze/hir" type pronouns when deliberately obfuscating someone's gender, or referring to someone whose gender has not been made clear to me.

[fireaphid.livejournal.com]

It's true that the social repercussions of non-conformism can be much worse than tolerating the consequences of whatever it is that one's expected to do. However, in the case of forced reproduction, I somehow doubt that the strong female protagonist would submit to peer pressure so easily.

As for pronouns. . . no one's ever asked me about the uncommon zi/hir before! My meatspace friends tend to go with whatever fits in the situation (5% it/its, 20% he/him, 75% she/her), but I think I'll take the zi/hir option now that it's been offered. * smiles bashfully * Thanks!

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've read any McCaffrey in, um, probably about a decade. Loved the Pern books when I was a teenager; started to get annoyed with them as the series got longer and longer, and having read some feminist criticism of them, I'm not sure I could stomach them any more at this point (maybe the Dragonsinger trilogy, since those were aimed at a younger audience), which would ruin the fond, dim memories I have.

I tried reading one or two of her other books and couldn't get into them. Sounds like I didn't miss much :\

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I haven't read any actual critiques of McCaffrey.

As for her other works, they're kinda hit-or-miss for me.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

the harperhall trilogy was great, the rest of it gets sort of boring after a bit.

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

Yeah, McCaffrey's dragon-rape was always kind of a problem with the Pern books. I'd like to think she played up the uncomfortableness of those scenes in order to make people think about what rape is, but honestly... these were children's (or at least YA) books and the scenes weren't that self-critical.

What I liked about Pern was that she constructed SF worlds that were fully within the conventions of science fiction, but didn't feel like science fiction. I think McCaffrey did a lot to open up the horizons of SF. What I never liked about Pern was the characters and the social structures.