Feminism and Science Fiction : "The Girl Who was Plugged In" and "When It Changed" Tiptree and Russ

Feminism and Science Fiction : “When It Changed” by Joanna Russ and “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” by James Tiptree ( Page ◄ 1 • 2 )

In James Tiptree’s “The Girl Who Was Plugged In,” the reader observes similar possibilities and similar problems as those that are identified in Russ’s “When It Changed.” Although the content and idea of “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” is entirely different from that of “When It Changed,” in that Tiptree’s story addresses the problems of the modern world and imagines what will happen if these problems of celebrity obsession are not arrested, the weakness of the story and that which detracts from its achievement as a feminist science fiction text is the sweeping nature of its judgments. In “The Girl Who Was Plugged In,” corporatization is wholly, universally evil. It has no redeemable characteristics. The intensity of the narrator’s (Tiptree’s?) judgments and their totalizing vitriolic quality make it impossible for the reader to really engage with the text in a meaningful way.

The narrator seethes and rails against everyone: “See for instance that rotten girl? In the crowd over there, that one gaping at her gods. One rotten girl in the city of the future….” (7). With these words, the narrator dehumanizes the girl, adding “Watch. She's jammed among bodies, craning and peering with her soul yearning out of her eyeballs. Love! Oo-ooh, love them! “ (7). The reader is not permitted to see the girl as anything other than a superficial, one-dimensional character. While the criticism of the cultural phenomenon that is being attacked in “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” may be entirely valid, and in fact, may have gained more validity since 1973, when Tiptree wrote this story, the negative charge of the story does not permit a productive and thoughtful engagement of that phenomenon.

The narrator’s flippant, disgusted, casual treatment of the subject that Tiptree wants to argue further establishes distance between the text and the reader. Phrases such as “double-knit dummy” and “dead daddy” (7) do not serve to raise consciousness; rather, they are off-putting and insulting. It is difficult to take this narrator seriously, much less to feel that the narrator is credible and worth the reader’s time. Furthermore, the narrator fails to establish whether the girl is plugged in by choice or by coercion, and by neglecting this aspect of the situation, Tiptree elides discussion of the nature of agency, which is central to the feminist theory and practice. What would it mean, for instance, if the girl chose to be plugged in? What does it mean if, after seriously considering their celebrity obsession and corporate loyalty, the kinds of “rotten” girls and women portrayed in “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” came to the carefully studied decision that these choices to be obsessed and loyal were, somehow, liberating for them? At its heart, the feminist movement is about individual choice, agency, and autonomous decision-making. The struggle for women that feminism has largely achieved is that there are various roles available to women and that a model of womanhood can—and should—be forged by a woman herself. Roles and models should not be foisted upon a woman by any other individual, even-- and especially-- by a woman who calls herself a feminist.

It is important to emphasize that Russ’s and Tiptree’s stories are indeed valuable contributions to the science fiction genre. These two stories represent initial incursions of feminist writers into a male-dominated literary genre, and they are solid attempts, by no means unimportant. What is problematic about both “When It Changed” and “The Girl Who Was Plugged In,” however, is that while purporting to open or expand physical, psychological, and social spaces and roles for women, the authors ultimately mimic dominant paradigms and tropes, thereby defeating their own purpose and constricting women to familiar stereotypes. Whether the authors were conscious of these limitations is unclear; extra-textual evidence might support this writer’s assumptions that Russ and Tiptree were not aware of the inherent limitations of their subjects and constructions, and that their intentions were, to the contrary, quite noble and representative of the goals and objectives of the feminist movement.

Perhaps, though, it was absolutely impossible for these texts, and others by feminist science fiction writers of the same era and since, to represent and explore the phenomena that they do in any other way. One of the persistent problems and challenges of gender studies and activism is that gender norms can only be considered and discussed—and constructed--by the appropriation of the very norms that are being contested. There is not yet the language or conceptualization that helps us to imagine gender beyond the binaries of traditional masculinity and femininity, despite the increasing challenges to those norms presented by people who identify as transgendered or intergendered. “As if we had to produce a carbon copy of their mistakes!” declares Janet towards the end of “When It Changed” (para. 52). While we may not be forced to mimic or enact the mistakes of dominant paradigms that are challenged by feminists, it may well be the case that we must mimic their language because, quite simply, we have no other constructs for discussing them at present.

Tiptree, James. “The Girl Who Was Plugged In.” In Her Smoke Rose Up Forever. New York: Tachyon, 2004.

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