Reading Without -Ism

Currently, I’m trudging my way through my first semester of graduate school, teaching 1 course and enrolled in 2. One class I’m taking is 20^th Century American Literature, and it’s actually a really interesting and engaging class. The reading list of 6 books includes 3 female authors, two of whom are women of color, so that’s incredible in and of itself.

We just finished reading Octavia Butler’s DAWN, the incredible 1^st book in the SciFi trilogy Xenogensis (recently rebranded as “‘Lilith’s Brood”). Quick summary: Lilith Iyapo wakes up on a starship 250 years after the nuclear annihilation of earth. Her alien captors, the Oankali, have spent the past centuries nourishing the planet. Now that the earth is ready for humans yet again, Lilith is chosen to train a collection of 40 humans in survival skills to ready them for their eventual recolonization of earth. But there’s a catch: while the Oankali saved the human species, they require the humans to breed with them. So fun.

Class is structured around discussion. Either the professor introduces topics for us to mull over, or a student discussion leader does. So we finished up Dawn and I’ma discussion leader and I start by introducing questions of feminism. Where does this book fall? Is Lilith a feminist heroine, or is her compliance in the Oankali’s manipulative, baby-making plot against feminist values? I was hoping it would inspire some interesting discussion.

Instead, the first person to responds says, in short, that Lilith exists in a world without patriarchy, so she doesn’t need feminism and therefore the book cannot be read in that way. The discussion moved to another topic almost immediately.

I’m not sure if the instant change of topic meant general agreement, but if it did I’m disturbed by this. I fully disagree, and find it ridiculous, that an –ism reading of any text can be disregarded because that –ism doesn’t exist in the world of the novel. Regardless of whether or not Lilith would need feminism (ps, based on the way men treat her, I think she does…), this is a novel written by a woman on earth, where patriarchy is alive and well and affects her. We are also humans, reading this text in the context of our experiences. While reading, I cannot entirely separate myself from my experiences, and I’m sure Butler could not separate herself entirely from her own while writing. Lilith is a woman, who’d character will be informed by Butler’s experiences as a woman.

Refusing to read a text through a feminist lens simply because the world itself doesn’t need feminist is a dangerous and limiting perspective. This is the same mentality that assumes that a fantasy world without racism cannot be read through that lens. However, we are bound by our experiences as humans. Our world does contain racism, feminism, ableism, Marxism, whatever. And if we were to divorce ourselves from those lenses entirely we wouldn’t be able to read deeply into anything. SciFi and Fantasy have often been used as modes to critique reality. Even the creation of worlds completely divorced from reality can often serve as mirrors reflecting our world. Because these realms are fantastical, the critique is easier for audiences to digest and thus become more effective.

So the assumption that a fantasy world without sexism couldn’t be read through a feminist lens could actually be a means of completely ignoring the author’s intent, and missing an incredibly important note or critique of our world. It’s a means of intentionally narrowing your viewpoint as a reader that will result in only a surface-level analysis, or an analysis that purposefully neglects important pieces of the puzzle.

How Jurassic Park Permanently Damaged My Psyche

Like many young children in America, I had a dinosaur phase. I loved, Loved, LOVED them. I had dino books. Dino toys. Dino computer games. Dinosaur Blanket (proper noun…he is one of my dearest possessions). I made dinosaur nests in the backyard for my imaginary dino eggs. I pretended to be a dinosaur on regular occasions. I wanted to be a paleontologist to unearth dinosaurs. Because dinosaurs were my lifeblood.

Jurassic Park premiered the year after I was born, and so by the time I was well into my childhood the dino-rrific movie was all over TV. My parents recorded its TV premiere, so we could watch parts of the movie over and over again until our sad little video cassettes gave out. They didn’t let me watch the whole movie (they had only recorded segments of it) because, y’know, dinosaurs eat people and I was, like, 7. BUT they did let me watch all the nice, happy, herbivore dinosaur parts, I think because they wanted to make their little dinosaur-obsessed child happy, but what ACTUALLY happened is that I became aware that Jurassic Park existed, and SUPER aware that there were parts of the movie being intentionally kept from me. And that was unacceptable.

So when I slept over a friend’s house a few years later and she asked if I wanted to watch Jurassic Park, my immediate response was YES THIS A FULFILLMENT OF MY DREAMS GIVE ME ALL THE DINOS ESPECIALLY THE ONES THAT EAT MEAT. This was 9-year-old rebellion at its finest.

With the lights dimmed, volume turned near-deafening, and a rousing rainstorm pounding away at the skylight, I watched the magnificent film, all the while laughing manically at my parents in my imagination because I HAD GOTTEN MY WAY AND HAD DISOBEYED ALL THEIR ORDERS. I survived the T-Rex. I survived the spitty-shreiky lizard thing. I survived the velociraptors. And it hadn’t even been that bad.

And because I’m a terrible liar, the next day, almost immediately after I got home, I totally confessed that I had watched it even though it was forbidden. My mom just sort of looked at me and was just like “whatever, you’ll regret it” and I was like “I will never regret watching my favorite creatures frolic and eat things on screen.”

I was so very, VERY wrong.

LITTLE DID I KNOW that the images of those terrifying and way-too-intelligent Velociprators would IMPLANT THEMSELVES IN MY FEEBLE MIND FOREVER.

Suddenly, just 24hours after viewing the film, I became IRRATIONALLY AFRAID OF VELOCIRAPTORS FOR AN EMBARRASSINGLY LONG PORTION OF MY LIFE AND WAS LEGITIMATELY TERRIFIED THAT WHEN ALL THE LIGHTS WERE OFF UPSTAIRS THERE WOULD BE VELOCIRAPTORS HIDING IN THE DARK BEDROOMS AND THAT THEY WOULD EAT ME. I mean, we’re talking fear of velociraptors in my house. Every night. Like, some people fear serial killers in the showers or monsters in their basements, and I totally feared those too, but I was also convinced that Velociraptors would appear in those places.

I was far more terrified of a velociraptor under my bed than the boogeyman? Which is wrong on so many levels, but it’s the truth.

And because traumatizing fear of carnivorous genetically-altered evil in daily life wasn’t enough, I was destined to have REOCCURRING NIGHTMARES ABOUT VELOCIRAPTORS CHASING ME. 

So the moral of the story is that I, to this day, have reoccurring nightmares about velociraptors, and THEY WILL RUIN MY DREAMS FOR ANOTHER MILLENNIUM because this is my eternal punishment for all my sins. 

And that, children, is why you should listen to your parents and shouldn’t watch a dinosaur movie when you’re 9.