As someone who very much loved the books as a young girl, though I haven’t read them lately…
They rocked. But McCaffrey had some…icky notions.
The Tent Peg Theory. (Basically, a man can become Forcibly Gayed by having something inserted in his butt, even against his will). Yeah.
A line from the first book, with F’lar thinking something about how noble he was in refraining from forcing himself on Lessa, when she clearly didn’t want him, at least after the first few times - “if the dragons weren’t involved, why, the way she acted he might as well have been raping her.” (Not actual quote, paraphrase)
In the second book I think - F’nor’s first time with Brekke. She’s a shy young gold rider, he’s the first person who’s really paid much attention to her, and they’re clearly in love. When she says no when he tries to make love to her, he keeps continuing. She fights him off and screams but then starts enjoying it mid-rape. They still wind up as a couple.
So. Um. I do like them, I just gotta do what I have to do when I read Heinlein and remember the different mores of the era they were written in, and take off my feminist glasses.
Can someone actually provide a cite for the Tent Peg statement? Because people have been throwing around for years but I’ve yet to see the actual interview - just the free-floating quote.
There’s a big gap between the first book, and to some extent, the second book, from the rest of the series. Dragonflight was published in 1968, and parts of of it were published earlier. Dragonquest was published in 1970. Then there was a six-year gap before Dragonsong and the rest of the Harper Hall trilogy. The White Dragon, which was the direct sequel to Dragonquest, was published in 1978.
Okay, to be perfectly fair, I’d like to halfway retract - once the Thread starts falling it’s a pretty good adventure story. I wouldn’t say “cracking” - maybe half-cracking, but I could definitely see a lot more of the appeal.
My library copy was adorably annotated by a correct-age girl who had a few comments, like “oh it’s getting good now!”
They tried to back in 2002. I found out about it right after the whole plan was tanked. There’s been some noise about making a movie but that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere fast.
I’d like to see this myself. I’ve traced it back to a book review in 2004 where someone had a real pissy attitude about the books. It’s supposed to be from a fanzine from the mid-90s, but I haven’t seen any reference to the actual 'zine.
Yeah. I really don’t believe it exists. As obsessive as fans get, surely there would be a scan online of it by now. And it really doesn’t gell with the world she built in her books, or anywhere. Gay people are consistently portrayed positively, and their relationships as just as meaningful as straight ones (atleast that’s the message my preteen and teenaged self got, which is the important thing, all things considered). Yeah, there are some unfortunate stereotypes, but really? Stuff written that far back and it gets flack for stereotypes instead of praise for positive portrayals? Please, people, check your special snowflakes at the door.
That’s a good point. But on the other hand, if the interview was published in the mid-90s–given that McCaffrey lived until 2011, wouldn’t she have put a denial on record?
The remarks attributed to her aren’t generic anti-gay, openly hostile sentiments. Instead, they’re oddly specific, and “plausible” to those who are poorly informed about human (homo)sexuality. They’re the sort of thing a person who doesn’t think of herself as being prejudiced would say.
If the remarks were fictional, published to injure her reputation, wouldn’t she have said something?
LBJ, according to l Hunter S. Thompson told it, got a win in his 1948 Senate primary campaign by calling a news conference to allege that his opponent, a prominent and well-regarded pig rancher, “*was having routine carnal knowledge of his barnyard animals.”*When Johnson’s press secretary balked, saying it wasn’t true, Johnson spat back: “Of course it’s not, but let’s make the bastard deny it.”
Sometimes denying a lie is the best way of drawing attention to it.
It surprises me a little to see the outraeg in this thread about the fact that Lessa’s first experience of sex comes while under the telepathic influence of a horny dragon and so is less than fully consensual, while no-one even remembers that at Ramoth’s hatching a number of terrified young noblewomen offered up as prospective partners for the newly-hatched queen get trampled and mortally wounded by the clumsy hatchling. :dubious:
I’ll put one more to the tally of McCaffrey heroines forced into sex which they then enjoy, and that’s “The Thorn Bushes of Barevi” in the collection Get Off The Unicorn, where Kris is taken against her will by an extremely well-equipped Catteni warrior, but despite her terror that she might not be physically able to accommodate him she ends up relaxing and applying the old dictum about “when rape is inevitable”, and within twenty minutes or so she is offering no more than token protest about the suggestion of another round. Of course, this story lay a-mouldering for 25 years or so before being revised as the introductory sequence of a novel cycle, and this time Kris manages to roundhouse kick the far stronger and battle-hardened Zainal into unconsciousness, which is far more acceptable to a fin-de-siecle audience.
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If the remarks were fictional, published to injure her reputation, wouldn’t she have said something?
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Actually, when I first started seeing the quote, it was usually accompanied by vague statements to the fact that McCaffrey had been trying to “cover it up”.
Why on earth would someone out of the blue issue a statement that “I never said that absurd thing which is floating around the internet”. As far as I know, no-one ever asked her directly about it.
If someone started quoting a fictional interview with me, claiming that ten years ago I said that rape was OK if the victim was black, I sure as hell wouldn’t issue a statement to deny that I believed that. That would be weird.
Yes, I’m not sure how much of a trend other than the Gor books there was at the time, but the quote you’re thinking of is indeed in GOTU and is repeated on the Wikipedia page for the Catteni cycle.
But shouldn’t these be interpreted in context of the characters who made the decisions that led to these events? It’s made quite clear that the Weyrleader and his wing-second (not F’lar, but the ones who were in charge of the weyr before Ramoth’s mating flight) made those decisions under the heading of “It’s the way it’s always been done, so it must be right and none of your uppity notions, missy” It is also made abundantly clear that as soon as Lessa gets leadership, she changed the policy that led to the death you mention. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that she made similar policies to prepare candidates for mating flights.
Brekke, I believe, was chosen as a queen candidate under Lessa’s weyr-leadership. She was obviously freaked out by the prospect of her first mating flight. So, if Lessa did prepare her in some way, it was the wrong way.
Kylara, ironically, was one of the surviving candidates from Ramoth’s impressing Lessa. She acclimated to mating flights just fine without Lessa’s guidance.
Too damn well, unfortunately, since when Wirenth rose to mate Kylara was too busy getting her brains banged out to remember that Prideth was close to her own season and didn’t need any extra provocation.
So far as Zyada’s good point goes, though, that’s McCaffrey again with the familiar shtick: Stupid men and their stupid ways oblivious to the harm their stupidity is doing until a brilliant woman, previously held back unjustly because of her sex, comes along and sweeps everything clean. Mind you, Lessa had her share of total fuck-ups too.