I began a lifetime of reading science fiction books and magazines, like Amazing Stories, in the early fifties, when I was ten or eleven years old. All of the great authors: Heinlein, Bradbury, Jules Verne, HG Wells, Asimov, wrote short stories and novellas for these early magazines, and, by the time I moved up from Normandie Ave. Elementary School to Audubon Jr. High School, I had been elected President of the Science Fiction Club. I would happily have gobbled up Robert Heinlein’s Stranger In A Strange Land, too, except that it had been held back by his publisher because the book challenged nearly every social norm of the time: sexual behavior, monogamy, religious orthodoxy, groupthink, and would, therefore, be banned in every library and be virtually impossible to sell.
They waited patiently until the uber-conformist and prissy 1950s gave way to a time when hardly anyone would be likely to clutch their pearls and collapse onto a fainting couch simply from reading the words “free love”. That was 1961 and I was twenty.
Two things about this, personal and political.
I’m pretty sure that my early fascination with science fiction led me to a preference for thinking outside the box, upending the rules, trying to find the Other Way, sussing out the flaws and hidden levers in our culture and, especially, understanding that controlling the structure, laws, religion, and symbols of a culture was key to controlling the society.
Dune, by Frank Herbert, for example, sets out the ways in which religion is used to influence politics and accrue power by manufacturing “prophecies” to guide decisions on interplanetary affairs, and setting out strict rules for tracking bloodlines and inheritance. The Dune books also revealed the power held by those who control transportation and trade. Ursula K. LeGuin held a mirror up to our current society by exploring alien cultures that were different from ours. Fahrenheit 451 showed how hatred and fear of The Other built power for demagogues. One classic Star Trek episode, “Let That Be Your Final Battlefield” emphasized the insane and destructive ends to which hatred of the other could twist an entire world.
Stranger In A Strange Land brought home to me the establishment’s fear of change, a fear that is well taken, given that those in power have much to lose. The book’s protagonist is a human named Valentine Michael Smith, the only survivor of the first earth colony ship sent to Mars, orphaned and raised by the indigenous Martians as one of their own.
In a few years, another human expedition lands safely on Mars and takes Valentine home to Earth. We see him enter a world that follows a stunningly unfamiliar set of human values, closed and hostile to his Martian culture. He becomes a lightning rod through his advocacy for Martian values of sexual freedom, and its deep critique of organized religion. Resistance groups name him the messiah of a quickly growing religion based on love and empathy. His word “grok” entered our 1960s language as a synonym for deep understanding and mutually shared feelings. On Mars, the word actually meant sharing water with someone (water being extremely scarce), but, in the larger sense, it meant having a profound sense of connection. This empathy, and the ability to share, presents a dangerous challenge to virtually every set of individualistic social norms, and, by the close of the book, Valentine is killed by an angry mob, organized and maddened by those whose hegemony he is challenging.
I was reflecting on these stories of perceived threats by, carefully developed hatred for, and oppression of, the Other, as I watched hundreds of young men being violently bent double, having their heads brutally shaved and being prodded and marched onto a plane to be imprisoned, with no due process, on the orders of one man. The same man who desperately needs to divert attention from his economic policies which are pushing wealth upward and impoverishing the middle class. To accomplish this goal, the current administration works overtime to convince us that cruelty and brutality are the correct and necessary bases for a culture, and that our greatest weaknesses are empathy and diversity. Just as in Stranger, we see that those in power fight fiercely and fight dirty to overcome the greatest threat: Change. To do this, they must erase any positive messages about the Other. These positive messages and those who teach them or make them available pose a threat to the status quo, and, thus, to the power of those at the top. Instead, these paranoid actions demonstrate the power we hold and can exercise by simply saying No. We won’t obey.
Science fiction is not exactly science. But it’s not exactly fiction, either.
Using Difference to Create Hierarchy
Years later, I returned to these other-worldly lessons as I was tasked with designing and presenting gender bias training sessions for judges and lawyers. By the end of the 70s, and well into the 80s, I was working with others to increase legal protections for women. I was tapped to teach judges about new laws and, especially, to help them to identify and counter whatever biases they may have, based on the gender of those who appear in their courts.
Thinking about how safe I had felt, awakening to the flaws of my own culture by reading stories about aliens, I attempted a fiction of my own, as a way to draw them in.
“I will tell you something about myself that most people don’t know,” I would say, conspiratorially, “I am actually a Martian anthropologist, here on a grant, in order to report on the identification and use of differences among people in the USA in these current times.”
After studying for months, I told them, I was a bit confused to find that, although there were many, many differences among and between the people who lived here, only a few were seen as a very important difference. It made a difference what color your skin was. Your eyes, not so much. It mattered what country you were born in, or your religious beliefs. However, the place in which you now live, or your technique for the best way to cook pancakes, not so much.
I also reported that the differences which were being treated as basic and critically important did not, actually, seem to reflect a real difference in people’s talents, abilities and behaviors. Instead, stories were developed and amplified by one side of the difference divide about the behaviors, capacity, intelligence, and morals of the other half of the divide. All the stories were negative, and, once embedded in the culture, led to actions that severely impacted the lives and experiences of whole groups of people. The hierarchy used its power to actualize the divide. Laws were adopted to keep certain people from finding housing, or accruing wealth, or gaining employment. Those prizes were reserved for the side of the divide that was Better. To paraphrase one of my favorite authors, Ursula K. LeGuin: Same and different are growing words, friendship words, learning words. The damaging words, the killing words, are better and worse.
In trainings regarding gender bias, I went on to point out that sex seemed to be one of the most important differences that was, actively and forcefully, made to make a difference. I told the judges, “When a baby is born, most people seem to ask only one question of the parents: ‘What did you have,’ they would ask. No one answered, ‘We were lucky this time. We had a pony.’ Everyone knew that the question meant, ‘Did you have a boy or a girl?’ Since this was the first, and often, the only question asked, I concluded it must a be very, very important question.” But our society didn’t stop there. Newborns were carefully dressed in different colors from the first months of their lives, given different toys before they knew what toys were for, and fed totally different messages about proper behavior. Stories were created and repeated as to who was smarter, more talented, more analytical, best suited for higher education, and more. Society continued, throughout these lives, to hammer home the importance of adhering to these stories and to punish those who didn’t.
Now, we are seeing both these concepts join forces. The dangers perceived by the keepers of the status quo and the myths about superiority and inferiority, are the foundations of the repressions reported every day. Foreign cultures are the enemy. They threaten, allegedly, our American way of life. Any challenge to our hierarchy must be met with censorship of positive information about the Other. Hence the banning of books, the closing of libraries, the defunding of higher education. Don’t read about Harriet Tubman, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Jackie Robinson or Maya Angelou. These lives counter the myths and make superiority more difficult. Shape history and science to fulfill the hierarchy’s goals.
The lessons absorbed by my ten-year-old self, curled up in a library chair, have followed me throughout my life. The revelations contained in those piles of amazing books and the alien cultures they created and presented as a rippled mirror, are forming the bases of our everyday news.
Of course, these ideas and tools are not new. Now, however, they have a salty air of sweaty desperation about them, coupled with a tired dustiness, as though the ideas are wearing thin and it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the myths. Their reaction has been to double down on the strategies and the lies. Unfortunately for them, more and more of us are realizing that the Emperor has no clothes, nor has he any interest in telling the truth. More of us are saying No. More will. It will make a difference.
Sheila
