While I like to see articles lauding Leckie

[james_davis_nicoll]

It seems to me the author of this one hews too closely to the standard forms used when writing about successful women.

For example, the photo of John Scalzi used in this article on Ann Leckie didn't have "John Scalzi, husband and writer" under it, it had "Sci-fi blogger and author John Scalzi is a big fan of Leckie", whereas Leckie's photo got (in part) with "St. Louis mother and first-time novelist.

Passages like

The first Nebula was given to Frank Herbert's Dune in 1966. Over the next thirteen years, only two awards for Best Novel went to a woman — both to Ursula K. Le Guin. That trend began to change in the late 1980s as more and more women began publishing. Since 2000 the gender split for Nebula winners, which is also awarded for novellas and short stories, has been about 50-50. But that hardly means we've arrived at a post-sexism literary world.

suggest the author means well, despite falling short.

Comments

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

I notice that near the end of page 1, the article refers to Ancillary Justice as having a "strong female protagonist". Does it? So far as I can recall we never learn the biological sex of the body that bears the name Breq. (In fact, we never learn the sex of most of the major characters, with only one or two exceptions.)

[martin-wisse.livejournal.com]

Very very early in the story there's one indication that Breq is female, but blink and you miss it.

[avram]

Well, that person in the bar on Nilt thinks Breq looks female, but we’re also told that different cultures have different rules for gender, and what looks female in one place might look male in another.

[vass]

If you think the biological sex of Breq's body is what determines her gender, I think you may have missed the point.

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

Certainly if there's a good reason to regard Breq as female other than the sex of her body, I missed that.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

I can't claim that it's a *good* reason, but from my own reading, in my head all the characters were female, including the ones who were female and looked biologically male. Pronoun usage apparently trumps physical description (or complicated personality/biology hybridization) for me.

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

I apologize if this offends, but no, I don't think that reason is a good one. We're told up front that the Radcha language doesn't mark things by gender; it becomes clear that English-feminine (including nouns such as "girl" for a young person) is used for "gender-unknown". I think we need to make an effort while reading to regard that feminine as gender-unknown -- leaving us not knowing the gender of nearly all the characters, an interesting and difficult place to be.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

I did actually read the book and understood that point about the Radcha language. I was relating how I personally engaged with the story, because I found it interesting and difficult that the English-language-pronouns usage was apparently the thing that most strongly affected how I thought of the characters; other readers clearly find the physical descriptions most important.

I do not agree that my own reaction to the text is doing it wrong. My apologies if my own reaction to the text is unwelcome in a discussion of How The Book Must Be Read.

[awesomeaud.livejournal.com]

"it becomes clear that English-feminine (including nouns such as "girl" for a young person) is used for "gender-unknown". "

I found it odd that while Breq uses 'she' and 'girl' etc., she refers to Annander as "Lord of the Radch", not "Lady of the Radch", somehow making Annander distinctly male.