Why men love science fiction
An article printed last year in The Observer (London) recently surfaced on a UK scifi blog. The author, who seems to think that science fiction is comprised entirely of Star Trek and Star Wars, says there are more male than female SF fans because men like “order” and science fiction is orderly:
The appeal of the sci fi system to the ordinary fan lies not just in its orderliness, but in its finiteness. You can watch every single episode of Star Trek and learn everything there is to know about it. You can contain an entire universe in lists and DVDs. The kind of universe that is knowable by heart is much less threatening than the real universe outside, off screen, full of unpredictability and disorder.
It is my contention that the reassurance offered by a system of order, internal coherence, completability and collectability - a universe that can be put in alphabetical order - is particularly appealing to men . . .
Whether by social conditioning or nature women seem better able to adjust in adulthood to the irksome imperfection of the universe . . . I can only speak for my own gender, and I can reveal that men are mostly dragged kicking and screaming into grown-upness. They never give up the secret hope that complexity will go away and leave them alone. They take refuge in trivia because facts, nice orderly facts, are psychological balm to the friction burns inflicted by contact with real life.
There’s the old chestnut that men hate being grown-ups, but somehow women don’t mind it. Then there’s the extreme misunderstanding of science fiction itself, a genre which is full of ambiguity, plotholes, infinite complexity, and disorder. What’s amusing is that this guy is really talking about world-building, a practice more often associated with fantasy than science fiction. And fantasy is a genre full of extremely successful female authors.
Why men love SF [via SciFi.UK.com]
December 5th, 2006 at 8:40 pm
i think the real problem is what both of you touched on briefly: it’s more socially acceptable for men to be obsessed with the fantastic than it is for women. a non-scifi instance of this is the notion that most men will go through a midlife crisis, have an affair, get a hot car, etc. and that this is NORMAL. the fact that it is not considered normal for a woman to do this illustrates the gender bias we all live with.
incidentally it is my experience as well that there are more guys than girls in the scifi/fantasy world. that doesn’t mean there aren’t girls - there absolutely are - but the guys definitely seem to have us outnumbered. again, i think this goes to the above point.
great post btw! i just started reading this blog the other day. always makes me think.
December 6th, 2006 at 7:44 pm
As for science fiction versus fantasy, remember the old saying: Any magic sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from technology. (I think that was Dr. Who, and quite right he was).
December 8th, 2006 at 10:14 am
Heh, and as a female Star Wars fan, I have to say that it is neither SF nor “orderly”–it is mythological fantasy and gaping with plotholes. Which is why I love it so. And if it’s all about “order” for men, why is it that almost all of the female SF authors I can think of offhand write hard military SF? And Star Trek wasn’t about “order,” either, it was about tackling difficult moral issues full of gray areas, especially in the later series.
I think it has much more to do with social acceptability–not necessarily that it’s more “acceptable” for men to be SF geeks (the stereotype of the Loser in the Comics Shop isn’t a nice one), but that women are raised to crave social acceptance more than men, and thus tend to stay away from socially unacceptable tastes, like F/SF.
December 16th, 2006 at 11:34 am
…And any writer lame enough to refer to the genre as “sci fi” has already subverted any claim s/he might have held to being taken seriously regarding their observations/theories about those who enjoy the field.
December 16th, 2006 at 11:54 am
Wow, I love skiffy snobs. I suppose you refuse to watch the Scifi channel too?
December 19th, 2006 at 3:23 am
The quote Kaleberg was reaching for is “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” This is one of Clarke’s Laws; Arthur C. Clark is a scientist and SF writer. Or perhaps Kaleberg was trying to quote Larry Niven’s response to Sir Arthur: “Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.”