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Nate D's Reviews > The Female Man
The Female Man
by
by
Nate D's review
bookshelves: post-modernism, 70s-delerium, sci-fi, favorites, read-in-2014, feminism
Mar 06, 2014
bookshelves: post-modernism, 70s-delerium, sci-fi, favorites, read-in-2014, feminism
Messily inventive, exuberantly expansive in design despite (or because of) its passionately angry core, vital and urgent and brilliant. This is 70s post-modern feminist science fiction, so basically hits most of what I want to be reading all in one go. It overextends, perhaps, but in ways that suit its ambition and force of intent.
Of course, this was written in the 70s: since then everything has changed.
Of course, this was written in the 70s: since then nothing has changed.
Russ has many points to make here, personal, political, and sociological, but one of the overriding themes, equally applicable forever, is the significant effect exerted by sociopolitical context on personality traits. A society's idea of its subsets is a strongly self-fulfilling prophecy. People become what is assumed of them.
It's amazing that something this experimental and strange and urgent was released as a mass market genre paperback, but perhaps not surprising for its era:
Of course, this was written in the 70s: since then everything has changed.
Of course, this was written in the 70s: since then nothing has changed.
Russ has many points to make here, personal, political, and sociological, but one of the overriding themes, equally applicable forever, is the significant effect exerted by sociopolitical context on personality traits. A society's idea of its subsets is a strongly self-fulfilling prophecy. People become what is assumed of them.
It's amazing that something this experimental and strange and urgent was released as a mass market genre paperback, but perhaps not surprising for its era:
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Reading Progress
March 5, 2014
–
Started Reading
March 6, 2014
– Shelved
March 6, 2014
– Shelved as:
post-modernism
March 6, 2014
– Shelved as:
70s-delerium
March 6, 2014
– Shelved as:
sci-fi
March 11, 2014
–
Finished Reading
March 12, 2014
– Shelved as:
favorites
March 12, 2014
– Shelved as:
read-in-2014
June 25, 2018
– Shelved as:
feminism
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Gregsamsa: See also Lisa Tuttle, Connie Willis, and James Tiptree Jr. There might be a list of more floating about here somewhere... my first introduction was Ellen Datlow's anthology Alien Sex 19 Tales by the Masters of Science Fiction and Dark Fantasy.Nate: nice spadework! Your line People become what is assumed of them. brings to mind Vonnegut's adage "We are what we pretend to be" (excuse the misquote)
np. And Atwood and L'Engle, of course. Though I am not well-read enough to determine if the latter's concerns are strictly feminist or humanist, or even if the difference between those two aims is at all real.
Rand wrote: "np. And Atwood and L'Engle, of course. Though I am not well-read enough to determine if the latter's concerns are strictly feminist or humanist, or even if the difference between those two aims is ..."Depends whether you're using the definition based on ethics or the other based on education in the liberal arts. Or if you're just afraid of the word "feminist".
And Ursula K. LeGuin, though I need to actually get to her more overtly feminist work (The Lathe of Heaven has some really interesting gender relationship commentary subtly embedded in it though). And of course Anna Kavan's Ice, though many things, is also post-modern, feminist, and science fiction.Thanks so much for the suggestions Rand, this is the sort of thing I'm always on the look out for, yet I wasn't familiar with Tuttle or Willis. Are they as experimental as Russ, though? Russ' later We Who Are About To... has a similar meta-concern overriding the narrative in really interesting ways as well, but she might be relatively alone in this focus.
Incidentally, this isn't even really spade-work. This was Joanna Russ' most popular book, I think, and it has literally thousands of ratings here on Goodreads. Sci-fi is funny like this.
No one should ever fear the word feminist, unless they have something to apologize for anyway.
More, more! It makes me totally happy to see discussion sparking here.
Aubrey wrote: Depends whether you're using the definition based on ethics or the other based on education in the liberal arts. Or if you're just afraid of the word "feminist". omg my computer just crashed right after reading this comment for the second time, when i was trying to think of something to say about being confused by the many waves of feminism . . . going to try not to read too much into that. also, i meant le Guin, not l'Engle.
Ah, of course. I've never read any of L'Engle's stuff for non-children, so I thought it possible.
I have only read one story by Willis and two by Tuttle but would say that both are "experimental".From a review I wrote elsewheres for Alien Sex: "Lisa Tuttle's Husbands is a feminist triptych centered upon the idea that the gender divide is actually something more. In her post-script, Tuttle mentions the influence of the radical feminist Monique Wittig's idea that One is Not Born a Woman."
&
"Connie Willis's All My Darling Daughters is ultimately one of the more disturbing tales here. It is framed by two sets of dialogue from The Barretts of Wimpole Street, a 1930 play by Rudolf Besier about Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett and her father. Set in the future on a planet far, far away."
Unfortunately I gave away my copy of Alien Sex so cannot flesh out the first Tuttle story any more than that.
The other Tuttle story I read (in Datlow's follow-up anthology Off Limits) is much less serious, being a literalisation of "penis envy".
I just realized my comment didn't dileneate that my ethics/liberal arts schism was explicating humanism, not feminism. As for the waves, I see them as 1. sufferage 2. body 3. reactions against all previous for het/white/cis/etc normalizations. There's a lot more to it, of course, but as I'm more interested in general knowledge for accurate shaping of my own beliefs purposes than in concrete theorizing, I don't concern myself with it too much.
Also, Nate, this review qualifies as spadework insofar as novels of this quality which employ SF tropes are not on the radar of general readers of "Literary Fiction" .
Well that's just a failing of "Literary Fiction".Thanks for the details, though. Totally intrigued.
Oh, and watch out, your link to "Alien Sex" goes to a completely different book than presumably intended.
Nate D wrote: "Oh, and watch out, your link to "Alien Sex" goes to a completely different book than presumably intended."yikes! thanks for the catch. I fixed the misspelling of Monique Wittig also.
Another yikes! from me. I read "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" as a teen. If I remember correctly, it was basically a disturbing analysis of the physical damage that would occur in a sexual encounter between Superman and Lois Lane.
I just re-realized this! I seem to have Added it after reading your review two years back, but thanks for the reminder.
Aubrey wrote: "I just realized my comment didn't dileneate that my ethics/liberal arts schism was explicating humanism, not feminism. As for the waves, I see them as 1. sufferage 2. body 3. reactions against all ..."Sounds like a Venn Diagram is in order for the various senses of these two terms! The best I could find was this, which does not satisfy.
Rand wrote: "Also, Nate, this review qualifies as spadework insofar as novels of this quality which employ SF tropes are not on the radar of general readers of "Literary Fiction" ."True dat! Though they aren't buried by years and forgetfulness, some gems can be buried by all the genre dreck. I hate to admit it but one of my eyebrows does go up when I find that a book is a popular sci-fi title, as in high school I read so many very bad ones.
It's spadework of a sort.
I love this book. Too extreme to be written today. Funnier than it had any right to be. Right on the mark and when it isn't, it's so far out into craziness you got to love that too.
I haven't gotten the same excitement out of reading Willis. I read Doomsday Book and thought it ok, but anticlimactic, and really disliked slogging through Passage. My dad is a big fan, however. We got to talk to her at a SF convention in KC one time, and she was the nicest person I met there and a really witty conversationalist. I plan to read Blackout/All Clear one day.
"A society's idea of its subsets is a strongly self-fulfilling prophecy. People become what is assumed of them." - Also the words it has for them, their usage :)
I didn't even know there was such a thing! This sounds cool as hell.