From the Kidlet Lexicon

[resonant]

I was recommending books to the ten-year-old, and I mentioned Anne McCaffrey's Dragonsinger. "I think I remember it being a pretty good book," I said, "but I'm not sure, because she also wrote books for adults, and as I remember it, the gender politics were pretty awful."

"What do you mean, gender politics?"

"Well, it's been a long time, but what I remember is that all the women were beautiful and tempestuous, and mostly they were there to be prizes for the men to win. The books weren't very interested in what they wanted, unless it was a man, and they fought over men, but aside from that they didn't really have relationships with each other."

"Oh, yeah, I've read books with women like that. Sugarboxes."

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

out of the mouths of babes.....:)

[resonant]

When they're old enough to watch movies that aren't made for kids, they may be very shocked at the prevalence of sugarboxes.

[giglet]

Awesome!

[resonant]

Last night we were at a performance where the king knows he can't go outside the country's boundaries or the devil will claim him, but the queen says, "I won't kiss you until you take me there," and the kidlet said, "Oh, she's one of those bribing sugarboxes."

[giglet]

I read this entry aloud to my husband and son, and they *got* it. I was particularly pleased that they understood that it meant depictions of women in fiction -- not real women. (Because losing that distinction gets skeevy really quickly.)

So in our house, "sugarbox" is the word replacing the far less graceful but oft-used phrase "woman-as-prop" that I've been ranting about for years. (Thank god my son grew up with the counter-examples of Buffy and Xena, and although I'm not crazy about some of it, Tank Girl.)

Please thank your daughter for me.

[rian_aphasia]

Anne McCaffrey is so fucked up. I read her books and just pine for the amazingness that could have been written in that universe. And unless her stand has changed, she thinks gay men become gay as a result of being anally raped. Seriously. ::headdesk::

[resonant]

Yikes!

[sorrel]

Dragonsong and Dragonsinger are actually not bad, as far as McCaffery goes. The only deeply squicky thing is Menolly's... thing with the Masterharper, which isn't actually sexual but apparently in earlier versions of the series it was going to be, and you can tell. But unless the Kidlet is even more awesomely precious than it seems, it probably won't ping for a little while yet. I didn't even notice till I was rereading as an adult.

[resonant]

That's useful to know; it's been so many years since I read those books.

[giglet]

Huh. I remember thinking that on Menolly's end, it was more along the lines of hero worship (ala Ged for the Archmage in Wizard of Earthsea). But I was also pretty young when I read them.

[sorrel]

Well, that's how I saw it when I read it the first time, too. It's only when I went back to reread them that my squick sensor started going off, and not long after that I read that in the original version, AM had intended to write the two of them into a relationship, until wiser heads prevailed and she changed it. But the sort of... emotional lead-up to that was still there. And looking at the relationship over the Pern series as a whole, she's pretty much always a little uncomfortably close, emotionally. And it never read like she loved him as a surrogate father or a mentor- to me, anyway.

[sanj]

I feel VERY SECURE knowing the future is in this kid's hands. :)

And Dragonsong/Dragonsinger is actually pretty good for what it is, gender-wise, if memory serves me right. Menolly is a strong character and something of a gender outlaw.

It's not until later in the series that McCaffrey sort of backs away and remembers she's a girl and should have babies. ;P

[resonant]

Oh, right; it's so easy to forget your destiny as a woman, isn't it? It just slips your mind.

[delurker]

Your kidlet is awesome.

I remember reading Dragonsinger when I was in year 6 (so 11 or 12) and I enjoyed it a lot. It was actually recommended to me--we'd gone on a class excursion to a house in the countryside where we met an author who read us her book (it was a picture storybook, I remember) and talked about how she wrote it and how the collaboration between author and artist worked. Afterwards we visited the bookshop, and one of the booksellers saw me wandering around and recommended it to me. I remember my teacher arguing with her that the book was too adult for me, and I remember looking at the dragon on the cover, deciding it sounded hella awesome, and slipping off to buy it while the debate raged. :D

[resonant]

That's a great story! I remember adoring the firelizards; I don't actually remember much about the humans at all.

[lobelia321]

Sugarboxes! Brilliant.

But, Res, have you abandoned LJ??

[resonant]

Hey, some weeks I can't even manage to stay on top of one journal. So LJ is basically a pointer to DW now.

[fullygoldy]

Oh, this is so going into my vocabulary!

[resonant]

It works, doesn't it?

[mad_martha]

The Pern novels were my gateway into fantasy fiction, but I hardly re-read them now because, as you say, the gender politics are dire. The women are allowed to be strong, but only in a way that doesn't threaten the males' supremacy, and her handling of gay characters leaves an awful lot to be desire to put it mildly. Having said that, Dragonsong and Dragonsinger are among the better reads of the series and I liked Menolly as a character in those. At the other end of the scale, I found The Skies of Pern to be particularly offensive in its gender politics, but that might just be me.

And Kidlet is wise beyond her years :-)

[resonant]

They were mine, too! (Specifically a short story called "The Littlest Dragonrider," which was basically crack for a kid who couldn't understand why none of the other kids were interested in the things she was interested in.)