Courage is willful hope. (p86) - Joanna Russ

all political propaganda generally ends the same way: it's yours now, this thing isn't over; I can't tell you what finally happened because it hasn't finally happened yet! This is always a problem when you write anything with real social or political consciousness-what you're describing hasn't ended. I suppose this is true, in a way, of all fiction.

Staying in charge of feminism is personally comfortable and personally gratifying for White women and may avoid the struggles and problems talked about his chapter (as well as some others), but if we do, we will lose. Not only we lose allies and our moral decency-no small matter for a radical movement whose position is founded not on armies but on its claims to justice-we will lose something of even greater importance: the ability to understand the interconnections between different kinds of oppression. That is, we will lose any possibility of developing an accurate map of the world. And if we don't have that, we will fail, even in getting anything for ourselves. ("THERE IS A VILLAGE / OVER / THAT HILL", p311)

I'm not anti-utopian in spirit. I'm just not so naive as to think that people can discard who they are. My point isn't that utopia is impossible-I think "Bodies" presents a real utopia-but that creating it isn't as simple as most SF implies.