The Female Man

[Max Sinister]

There's one thing you have to understand about me: When I'm bored and have a halfway good book around, I'll read it front to back. Even if it's from a genre many people'd tell me "A guy like you shouldn't read that!" In this case, feminist SF. To be precise, Joanna Russ' book, which uses four different TLs (as we'd say) as the setting, two of which are FH, one is OTL 1970, and one is an ATL where Herr "Shicklgruber" died (or was killed?) in 1936, which butterflied away WW2, but also prolonged the Great Depression and delayed progressive developments of society. To the point that a woman from TTL wonders whether his death was a good thing. (Make no mistake: Joanna Russ was Jewish, so you can't exactly blame her for Nazi sympathies!)

Actually, I read the story years ago, but I'd still like to ask whether anyone else has read it, and if yes, what your opinions are so we can discuss it.

 

[Charles EP M.]

I read it a while ago and remember liking most of it, though some parts I remember thinking were a bit too 70s - mainly the adult character having sex with a teenager (and IIRC they weren't yet 16?), and one section in the gender war is notoriously transphobic. I guess the biggest problem is I either need to believe there can be a utopian future-civilisation where all the men are dead or I have to be shaken & disturbed by the concept that the world could be better with all men dead, rather than finding it a laughable concept (no women will be shits, really?) and worn trope, but it's an old book.

 

[Max Sinister]

Oh shit... I seriously must've blocked that in my memory. Maybe I didn't fully understand it then, either. The book was... written in a pretty weird way, hope you understand what I mean.

But yes, you're right. Anyone can read it on WP even: That sex-with-a-teen bit is in there, and that despite a double taboo - the teen is from OTL 1970 when people didn't even tolerate adult lesbians having sex, and the other woman is from a TL where it's considered taboo having lesbian sex with someone who's old enough to be your mother/daughter.

WTH was the author trying to tell us with that? Why does she make up a lesbian society with their own taboos, which make sense too - only to throw it away with the first (and probably only) character from that society we meet?

 

[Max Sinister]

I hope very much that Joanna Russ was neither a criminal paedosexual nor an apologist of those. Is she completely crazy then?

Nobody has ever asked me to defend feminists or queers even in case they're paedos. For obvious reasons: Because I'd never have agreed to that!

 

[Sideways]

I liked The Female Man - it's an angry polemic and I think it needs to be read in the context of someone living in a society where she experienced the things she was polemical about. She has since apologised for the transphobia and it was an interesting thing. I think there's even a meta reading to be had there that the trans women in it are literally products of rape. The cis woman in the scene who is sympathetic to her is also a product of rape culture - be it from a different dimension. The woman in the scene who show no solidarity or sisterhood are the ones who don't experience social oppression. Almost as though it's easier to be transphobic if you're privileged. I kind of... look, we've been bought up in a society where transness is often resented in the context of sexual humiliation. I read it before transition but I didn't feel alienated by the trans women in the story. Though they are written as being vain, narcissistic, etc because it's essentially a TERF view of transness.

I don't know how I'd feel about reading it post transition in the current political context. I always saw 1970s feminists who hated trans people as similar to old ladies who hate Austrians. Victims of past traumas and destined to irrelevance on the topic. But now I think that view was very very naive, and also difficult in the modern context where GCs are more akin to people cheering on the blackshirts in the 1930s.

The story has some interesting social dynamics and the narrative structure is really cool - the "fantasise about killing the oppressors in a deeply problematic and angry political screed presented as acience fiction written with a non-linear narrative" thing is basically Torrey Peters' Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones but 50 years earlier and honestly I love that

 

[Max Sinister]

Are you deliberately trying to change the topic? Because I don't think that the problem I mentioned in my last post was less important than this one. And I shouldn't have to explain why.

 

[Charles EP M.]

Dial it back, you don't need to be that aggressive.

As far as I'm aware, Russ didn't do that subplot for any reason other than "it was the 70s", a decade that got grotty in the name of maturity and liked being transgressive.

 

[Sideways]

Are you deliberately trying to change the topic? Because I don't think that the problem I mentioned in my last post was less important than this one. And I shouldn't have to explain why.

I can't always reply to the latest post in a thread because it doesn't always contain something I know about - I had literally forgotten that Laura existed as a character. Just because I don't reply directly to something you say doesn't mean I mean you any harm or think your point isn't worth making or discussing. It simply means that I'm addressing a different point that someone else made.

As far as I'm aware, Russ didn't do that subplot for any reason other than "it was the 70s", a decade that got grotty in the name of maturity and liked being transgressive.

I suspect she would argue there are comments in there about socialisation and desire and... I don't know I haven't read it in a long time. The whole book is intensely grotty and no society comes out perfect. One thing I do remember is Whileaway practicing duels to choose romantic partners - violence and distrust is baked into that world less obviously than the others but in a way that really counters the notion of it as a feminine utopia. I'm not sure how much of this is Russ being a bit of a mess at the time, Russ being cynical of women, and deliberate edge for the sake of edge

 

[Charles EP M.]

One thing I do remember is Whileaway practicing duels to choose romantic partners - violence and distrust is baked into that world less obviously than the others but in a way that really counters the notion of it as a feminine utopia.

I'd remembered they did duels but not that it was for that, which yeah that's an interesting bit of grit in the proverbial oyster shell.

Skimming it, the description of Laura keeps emphasising her youth, to paraphrase a recent Beavis & Butt-head, "I'm not saying she's young but when she asks people back to her crib, she means an actual crib". That feels deliberately uglier than I remember. If I was reading it at the time, the plot with Laura might've also read a lot like similar scenes with men in contemporary books and it's being deliberately provocative, "look it's that thing you like, right?". (It reminds me, a very cultured man, of a Judge Dredd tie-in book, where black writer Charles J Askew writes a fight scene that keeps talking about what a big scary black man this perp being beaten up by the heroic troopcop is, so you can't not feel dirty reading about a fascist law enforcer)

 

[Sideways]

Skimming it, the description of Laura keeps emphasising her youth, to paraphrase a recent Beavis & Butt-head, "I'm not saying she's young but when she asks people back to her crib, she means an actual crib". That feels deliberately uglier than I remember. If I was reading it at the time, the plot with Laura might've also read a lot like similar scenes with men in contemporary books and it's being deliberately provocative, "look it's that thing you like, right?". (It reminds me, a very cultured man, of a Judge Dredd tie-in book, where black writer Charles J Askew writes a fight scene that keeps talking about what a big scary black man this perp being beaten up by the heroic troopcop is, so you can't not feel dirty reading about a fascist law enforcer)

That's an interesting take. I think you might be right.

I went back to the Female Man to check what's being discussed and lines like "everyone knows that nothing in the world is worse than making love to someone a generation younger than yourself", "you are too young; and some day soon you'll look at me and my skin will be dead and dry, and being more romantically inclined than a Whileawayan, you'll find me quite disgusting", "I represented again to Janet that what she was about to do was a serious crime".

I feel like the point in all this is a kind of attack on 1970s values - presenting a fantastical utopian society and then saying that one of the things that makes it fantastical and utopian is that its a world where it is considered unacceptable for adults to sleep with children. It's a weird way to get the message across, but I kind of feel like the whole novel is an extended scream about the kind of things Operation Yewtree bought up, and the book constantly shifts and struggles to fit into a narrative as it attempts to shock people into acknowledging the things people refused at the time to talk about.

It makes for a grim book but I also think that's why it's so important. There's lots of reasons to discount it as a problematic text and it's certainly not a guide to gender and sexual orientation. But do we need it to be? It doesn't make sense outside of the context of the society it was written for but as a critique of that society - it's vicious and unaologetic.