Baileys Prize: Naomi Alderman wins for “shocking” sci-fi novel The Power (bbc.co.uk).
“Naomi Alderman has won the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction for her feminist sci-fi novel The Power.”
The Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction (wikipedia.org) being United Kingdom’s most prestigious literary prizes annually awarded to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom in the preceding year.
“Her book envisages a world in which women have developed the ability to give electric shocks at will. The chair of this year’s judges, Tessa Ross, praised Alderman’s ‘brilliantly imagined dystopia, her big ideas and her fantastic imagination’.”
Which I am sure will have some on the alt-right assuming the idea that wimmin with their “feminist agenda” are secretly plotting to punish their gonads with extreme electric shock stimulation justifies their MRA (“Mens Rights Activists”, urbandictionary.com) or MGTOW (“Men Going Their Own Way” ibid.) castration anxiety leading either to the YMCA or to seek more porn featuring women in scenes of bondage and humiliation.
But that’s not quite the whole story told by the author of the distinction drawn between genders which seemingly vanishes when power is reversed.
“The Power, Alderman’s fourth novel, was published in October last year and explores themes of power, violence and gender. It follows four main characters as they adjust to a future in which women can inflict shocks ‘from a tiny tingle all the way to full electro-death’. … ‘What would happen if women had the power to cause pain and destruction? Do we really believe that women are naturally peaceful and nurturing? How much of gender is in our expectations of violence?’ she asks.”
Questions of “gender expectations” within the dynamic of power which have been asked from a sexual perspective before: Author Daniel Bergner claims research suggests women’s desire is an “underestimated and constrained force” in What Do Women Want? (Pick of the Week 10th Jul. 2013)
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