[ExI] Wizard of Oz and Capable Women in Power

[Lee Corbin]

Ever notice how Baum played with gender/sex differences
in WoZ?

It's a fairly common observation, I think. First, there was
General Ginger and her army made up entirely of women.
(Baum was actually satirizing the women suffragettes or
some aspect of incipient feminism, and their overly strident
attitudes (to him), but that was way over the head of this
eight-year-old.)

And there was Tip's amazing transformation into Ozma
(Tip thought he was a boy, but had only been bewitched
into being one; Ozma was the rightful ruler of Oz.) I 
think that Martin Gardner pointed all this out to me
in some column years ago.

I do know that I had liked Tip, and found Ozma relatively
dull. I still actually miss Tip and his friends, (who also became
less interesting after their trip across the desert in the Gimp).
And I shall forever be enchanted with The Powder of Life.

I was not a male chauvinist to any degree at that age.
At least General Ginger looked *organized*, and that
was the thing that appealed to me about the military
when I was very young. Coordinated action. Perhaps I
should have become a collectivist.

Likewise, six years later I became the number-one fan
of the Right Honorable Gloria Cecily, the Lady Laurr
of Noble Laurr, grand captain of the Star Cluster. That
spaceship, you will recall, was five miles long and had
a crew of 35,000. (Cordwainer Smith eventually 
satirized it in the story about the 93,000,000 mile
long spaceship, but then, he was an adult.) Now
that was organization, and with superb technology
that today still holds up. (They knew how to curve
space around an enemy fleet.)  Her Lieutenant Neslor
was one very shrewd female, the first to solve the mystery
of the double-minded mixed men.

Well, just some late night thoughts I wanted to share 
with other SF fans, especially those affected at an
early age the way I was by those particular stories.

Lee