Science Fiction Gender Roles

Cathie201
11, October 2013
Science Fiction and Gender Roles Gender has become an epidemic topic that people always talk about in their daily life. Males and females as the two groups of gender, play their own role and undertake the respective responsibility no matter for themselves, families or society all the time. However, because males and females have different gender roles, different responsibilities and, different behaviors, this causes various social issues, the problems of gender roles are always controversial. Nowadays, the issues of gender roles still exist specifically in the patriarchal society. Therefore, a lot of excellent writers such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Theodore Sturgeon, and James Tiptree Jr, publish many science
The answer is that science fictions can help people easily understand gender roles. There are several reasons. The first reason is that science fictions give a chance for writers to build a fictitious world which is nicer, more ideal, and more perfect than the real world. In this fictitious space, writers can throw off the defect of real world and build an ideal world that they want the real world to be. They can optionally exercise their imagination to write something which is impossible in the real world. Herland is a good example that combines science fictions with gender roles. Charlotte Perkins Gilman builds a world that only has women. It is impossible for this to happen in the real world. In the real world, women must rely on men and women must be weaker than men. However, in Herland, everything is fine without men. Even they think that the women in the modern world are weak. Because when Jeff wants to take the fruit basket from Celis who is his adored girl, Celis feels strange and she asks Jeff: “I do not understand. Are the women in your country so weak that they could not carry such a thing as that” (Gilman). In Herland, women are independent, they can help each other, but they never rely on anybody completely. The second reason is that science fiction can violate the natural order, after all this is an unreal world. For example, women can be pregnant and carry on the family line by themselves
They provide a chance for writers to build an ideal world even if such a world breaks the natural order. In science fictions, writers can stand by a special perspective to depict and structure a story to reflect the importance of gender roles in the society. Also, science fictions make readers easily understand gender roles and make readers better understand what are the flaws of people’s traditional opinion about gender roles. The authors also can use their imagination to build an ideal society; after all science fictions are an unreal world. In conclusion, science fictions are one of means that incarnate the importance of gender roles, make people more easily understand gender roles and change the people’s traditional opinions about gender