It's sad when a woman writing fantasy in the United States in the 1970s has less actual feminist cred than Sir Walter Scott.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Women have seen that they have locked themselves up with feminist writing.
I don't think that the feminist movement has done much for the characters of women.
I am a feminist, although I always worry saying that because you then get people asking you about the 1970s.
There is still a funny notion that women should not write violent fiction.
I think women do write politically all the time. Margaret Atwood does; Doris Lessing does.
I sometimes get asked: 'How come the men in your stories don't have such strong characters?' And I'm like: 'I don't care.' I just want to find out about all the different lives a woman can live. But my feminism has never been against men. It's not erasure; it's just they're not the focus. In real life, they're quite nice.
Nobody is surprised that women writers accurately represent male characters over and over again, no doubt because everybody knows that women understand men much better than vice-versa.
Literary fiction is kept alive by women. Women read more fiction, period.
Historically, men have a hard time getting onboard with feminism, but I think that's changing.
The 1970s were so wonderful for women writers. There were all these women, and they were seen as doing the most interesting, innovative and exciting stuff in science fiction. I was inspired by that.