"I read the 100 “best” fantasy and sci-fi novels - and they were shockingly offensive"

"At the end of 2013, after a year of reading very little, I decided to embark on a challenge: read all the books I hadn’t yet read on NPR’s list of 100 best sci-fi and fantasy novels. Nostalgia permeates the list. Of the books I read, there were more books published before 1960 than after 2000. The vast majority were published in the 1970s and 1980s. There were also many sci-fi masterworks or what were groundbreaking novels. However, groundbreaking 30, 40, 50 or 100 years ago can now seem horribly out of date and shockingly offensive...

What I hated, and dreaded the most as I continued to read through the list, was the continued and pervasive sexism - even in seemingly progressive books for their time. I devoured science fiction and fantasy when I was younger - the idea that I was also devouring patriarchal and sexist ideas made me deeply uncomfortable. The fact that these were all supposed to be the best of the genre, was even more shocking...

In this book and others, it felt like the book would have been less sexist if there weren’t any women at all. At least that way, they wouldn’t be belittled or be treated contemptuously... the women characters were all mothers, nurses or love interests. They were passive characters with little agency or character development, like the women in A Canticle for Leibowitz and  Magician . They were scenery, adding a tiny bit of texture to mainly male dominated world."

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2015/08/i-read-100-best-fantasy-and-sci-fi-novels-and-they-were-shockingly-offensive

So, I found this on facebook and I commented to just react to the title and the lede, and it was really interesting to see how people were reacting - they were not necessarily hostile, but many people seemed threatened by the fact of there being a critique. People read into this "you must immediately stop having good feelings about these books - that makes you evil". Which... that's not the point? And the people over-explaining about putting these books in context sort of ended the brief conversation of people discussing their negative experiences. Like, can't we talk about these negative things? Why does that threaten you so much?

Also, seconding the recommendation re: Ancillary Justice. It is really, really amazing to read a book in female-normative. And it won, like, all the awards.

(credit to KK)