The Female Man by Joanna Russ

Source of book: I own this

 

Perhaps one unofficial theme of my reading the past few years has been to work a little science fiction into my queue, particularly classics by female authors. In this case, I have added to Ursula Le Guin and Octavia Butler another important author, Joanna Russ. 

 

Russ was perhaps the most overtly feminist science fiction writer of her time, wielding form itself as a protest against the patriarchy, blending argument with narrative, and generally refusing to play by the rules. 

 

I wasn’t all that familiar with Russ until a few years ago, when the Library of America shared a short story (“When it Changed”) online. 

 

The Female Man is related to that short story in that both contain the alternate earth of “Whileaway” and the character of Janet Evanson. However, there are some differences in addition to the many similarities. 

 

The title itself is an allusion to Gulliver’s Travels: the book refers to Queen Anne by that term. That is only one of a number of literary references in the book. Consider them easter eggs for those who read. 

 

I mentioned that the book intentionally defies the idea of narrative form. There are four main characters, and the book is from each of their perspectives at different points. But it isn’t always clear when that perspective changes - you have to pay close attention, and even then, it won’t be clear at first. 

 

The book also jumps around in time and place, sometimes lapsing into extended dissertations on gender dynamics. It makes for a bit of a disorienting experience. This was one of the rare books where I would finish a section, then go read an online summary to be sure I was understanding the plot (such as it is) correctly. Or at least in line with how others have understood it. 

 

I would say that this is one of the more difficult books I have read this year for that reason. This was also a contrast to the short story, which had a conventional narrative style. 

 

Let me see if I can at least give an idea of what the book is about. 

 

There are four women, who are possibly different versions of the author. They each live in alternative realities - possible presents or futures for our own planet. 

 

Joanna, the most obvious stand-in for the author, lives in our own reality, or at least the 1970s America of the time the book was written. She, like the author, is feminist and lesbian, and working to smash the patriarchy. 

 

Jeanine, on the other hand, is a timid librarian who feels forced into a conventional marriage. Her world is one where World War Two never happened, and the world is still mired in the Great Depression decades later. Little technological or social progress has been able to occur. 

 

Janet is from Whileaway, a potential future earth, where a plague has killed all of the males, and humans can only reproduce by fusing ova. This is a technologically advanced society that has returned to agrarian living and protection of the environment. Love is free, other than taboos on intergenerational sex, and childrearing is mostly communal. 

 

Jael is the fourth woman, and she is from a planet where men and women live in completely separate societies, which are locked in a sort of cold war. For Jael, radical feminism means men will eventually be exterminated. 

 

As you can see, these are four very different visions of possible societies, from the most patriarchal to the caricature of the “man-hating feminist.” As I noted, the character most like the author - and who shares her name - is Joanna, who refers to herself as “the female man” as her way of asserting her essential humanity, a full equal of any male. 

 

Beyond that, all I will say is that the four of them eventually meet. As I said before, even the idea of a “plot” is subverted by the author. Things do happen, but there is no real arc other than the idea of feminism as seen through these alternate universes. It’s an interesting idea, but definitely not what a typical science fiction reader would expect. 

 

My advice would be to keep a summary handy (if you wish), and just jump in and enjoy the ride. 

 

As usual, I took some notes about lines that I liked. There are a lot of zingers in this one, with an unabashed loathing of the shit that women continue to have inflicted on them in our toxically patriarchal society. 

 

Early on in the book, Janet, newly arrived on our earth, is interviewed for the news. And it is…uh…interesting. 

 

MC: When the - ah - plague you spoke of killed the men on Whileaway, weren’t they missed? Weren’t families broken up? Didn’t the whole pattern of life change?

JE (slowly): I suppose people always miss what they are used to. 

 

And later in the interview, the awkward attempts to say “sex” without saying it. 

 

MC: But Miss Evason, I am not talking about economic institutions or even affectionate ones. Of course the mothers of Whileaway love their children; nobody doubts that. And of course they have affection for each other; nobody doubts that either. But there is more, much, much more - I am talking about sexual love. 

JE (enlightened): Oh! You mean copulation. 

MC: Yes.

JE: And you say we don’t have that?

MC: Yes.

JE: How foolish of you. Of course we do.

MC: Ah? (He wants to say, “Don’t tell me.”)

JE: With each other. Allow me to explain. 

 

At that point, there is a sudden cut to a commercial…

 

There is an observation by Janet after her sudden appearance on earth is greeted with fear and threatened violence. 

 

[E]veryone knows that anger is most intense towards those you know: it is lovers and neighbors who kill each other. There’s no sense, after all, in behaving that way towards a perfect stranger; where’s the satisfaction? No love, no need; no need, no frustration; no frustration, no hate, right? It must have been fear. 

 

And another interview is fascinating. 

 

INTERVIEWER: It seems odd to all of us, Miss Evason, that in venturing into such - well, such absolutely unknown territory - that you should have come unarmed with anything except a piece of string. Did you expect us to be peaceful?

JE: No. No one is, completely.

INTERVIEWER: Then you should have armed yourself.

JE: Never.

INTERVIEWER: But an armed person, Miss Evason, is more formidable than one who is helpless. An armed person more readily inspires fear.

JE: Exactly.

 

Many of the parts (there are chapters within the parts) begin not with plot, but with philosophy. In some cases, the opening sentence warns of the upcoming lecture, and gives the reader a chance to skip to the next chapter. But the lectures are fascinating too. 

 

Here is a bit, which I believe is from Jeanine’s perspective. 

 

I was moody, ill-at-ease, unhappy, and hard to be with. I didn’t relish my breakfast. I spent my whole day combing my hair and putting on make-up. Other girls practiced with the shot-put and compared archery scores, but I - indifferent to javelin and crossbow, positively repelled by horticulture and ice hockey 

- all I did was

dress for The Man

smile for The Man

talk wittily to The Man

sympathize with The Man

flatter The Man

understand The Man

defer to The Man

entertain The Man

keep The Man

live for The Man.

 

One secondary character who gets a bit of time in the book is Laura, the teen girl of the family that Janet lives with while she is on earth. Laura is frustrated at being a girl for the usual reasons. Including the way her mother tells her to give up her own dreams to marry a man who can live his. 

 

She said that instead of conquering Everest, I could conquer the conqueror of Everest and while he had to go climb the mountain, I could stay home in lazy comfort listening to the radio and eating chocolates. She was upset, I suppose, but you can’t imbibe someone’s success by fucking them. 

 

At times, the book is really quite hilarious. For example, this exchange between Jeanine and Janet. 

 

JEANINE: But we might lose our way.

JANET: You can’t. I’m here and I know the way.

JEANINE: Suppose you weren’t with us. Suppose we’d killed you.

JANET: Then it would certainly be preferable that you lose your way!

 

I will mention the chapter where Janet goes to a rather tedious party, and is accosted by an even more tedious and boorish man. Who tries to make a move, and finds himself utterly flattened by Janet. She then proceeds to mock every last vestige of his arrogant masculinity. It’s what I think most women wish they could do at least once. (My wife read her CEO out at a party back in the day…) 

 

Another one of the lectures mocks the stupidity of courtship in our culture. 

 

The game is a dominance game called I Must Impress This Woman. Failure makes the active player play harder. 

 

The amount of ink spilled telling men how to play the game better is ridiculous. And, as Russ snarkily points out, it is beyond tedious to women. 

 

Oh, and this one, in a chapter entitled The Great Happiness Contest (this happens a lot). 

 

FIRST WOMAN: I’m perfectly happy. I love my husband and we have two darling children. I certainly don’t need any change in my lot.

SECOND WOMAN: I’m even happier than you are. My husband does the dishes every Wednesday and we have three darling children, each nicer than the last. I’m tremendously happy.

THIRD WOMAN: Neither of you is as happy as I am. I’m fantastically happy. My husband hasn’t looked at another woman in the fifteen years we’ve been married, he helps around the house whenever I ask it, and he wouldn’t mind in the least if I were to go out and get a job. But I’m happiest in fulfilling my responsibilities to him and the children. We have four children.

FOURTH WOMAN: We have six children. (This is too many. A long silence.) I have a part-time job as a clerk in Bloomingdale’s to pay for the children’s skiing lessons, but I really feel I’m expressing myself best when I make a custard or a meringue or decorate the basement.

ME: You miserable nits, I have a Nobel Peace Prize, fourteen published novels, six lovers, a town house, a box at the Metropolitan Opera, I fly a plane, I fix my own car, and I can do eighteen push-ups before breakfast, that is, if you’re interested in numbers. 

ALL THE WOMEN: Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill.

 

Or this one:

 

HE: I can’t stand stupid, vulgar women who read Love Comix and have no intellectual interests. 

ME: Oh my, neither can I.

HE: I really admire refined, cultivated, charming women who have careers.

ME: Oh my, so do I.

HE: Why do you think those awful, stupid, vulgar, commonplace get so awful?

ME: Well, probably, not wishing to give any offense and after considered judgment and all that, and very tentatively, with the hope that you won’t jump on me - I think it’s at least partly your fault.

(long silence)

HE: You know, on second thought, I think bitchy, castrating, unattractive, neurotic women are even worse. Besides, you’re showing your age. And your figure’s going.

 

I suspect these are literal conversations she has had with others. The first one is literally the Fundie subculture. Except that six kids are okay now, because radical fecundity and out-reproduce the brown people. 

 

I find I am mostly quoting the “lectures.” Perhaps because quoting the plot wouldn’t work well. But there are some super zingers in the lectures. Here is another bit, from Joanna explaining why she chose to be a “female man.” After describing the objectification and disrespect, she notes that eventually, women just disappear. 

 

This is until you’re forty-five, ladies, after which you vanish into thin air like the smile of the Cheshire Cat, leaving behind only a disgusting grossness and a subtle poison that automatically infects every man under twenty-one. Nothing can put you above this or below this or beyond it or outside of it, nothing, nothing, nothing at all, not your muscles or your brains, not being one of the boys or being one of the girls or writing books or writing letters or screaming or wringing your hands or cooking lettuce or being too tall or being too short or traveling or staying at home or ugliness or acne or indifference or cowardice or perpetual shrinking and old age. In the latter cases you’re only doubly damned. 

 

And this:

 

Anyway every-boy (sorry) everybody knows that what women have done that is really important is not to constitute a great, cheap labor force that you can zip in when you’re at war and zip out again afterwards but to Be Mothers, to form the coming generation, to give birth to them, to nurse them, to mop floors for them, to love them, cook for them, clean for them, change their diapers, pick up after them, and mainly sacrifice themselves for them. This is the most important job in the world. That’s why they don’t pay you for it. 

 

I once had this sort of a conversation with a former acquaintance. She was giving the usual right wing line that feminism has somehow “devalued” women and women’s work. I pointed out what Russ does here: that what has really devalued the work that women do is that we don’t PAY them for it. Right wingers love to moan about falling birth rates (in their preferred demographic, at least), and propose cures. But for some reason, not one of them is willing to accept that in our economic system, children are incredibly costly to their parents, and that society has failed to compensate parents sufficiently for that. 

 

You want more babies? A check for $5000.00 isn’t going to cut it. Pay parents a full time wage for each child, and I bet you could see birth rates rise. Instead, there continues to be this expectation that women will just do unpaid labor and have children society refuses to pay for. 

 

And as far as women’s work, if it was respected, men would do it. Full stop. You want to show respect for childrearing, housework, cooking and cleaning? As a man, go fucking do it. (I have lived this, by the way. I don’t believe in “women’s work” at all. Man up.)

 

In describing the twisted males of Jael’s world, she notes that the men are consumed with a fear of being female, of being dual-natured. She notes that they have essentially shifted the burden of their emotions onto women (and the males they surgically turn into female substitutes). This picture certainly rings true these days, as toxically masculine males retreat further and further into these shells of unhumanity, terrified they might slip up and do a woman thing. 

 

There is a scene where Jael is attempting to do business with one of these men, who keeps posturing and bullying. Her thoughts as she endures:

 

Let it pass. Control yourself. Hand them the victory in the Domination Sweepstakes and they usually forget whatever it is they were going to do anyway. 

 

Um, Trump anyone? 

 

And another great description of fragile masculinity:

 

Those primitive warriors are brave men - that is, they are slaves to the fear of fear - but there are some things they believe every man is entitled to run from in abject terror, viz. Snakes, ghosts, earthquakes, disease, demons, magic, childbirth, menstruation, witches, afreets, incubi, succubi, solar eclipses, reading, writing, good manners, syllogistic reasoning, and what we might generally call the less reliable phenomena of life.  

 

Dang, that’s a savage burn. 

 

Joanna, the author if you will, is torn between her frustration with how horrid most men are, and a desire to connect with them. 

 

At times I am seized by a hopeless, helpless longing for love and reconciliation, a dreadful yearning to be understood, a teary passion for exposing our weaknesses to each other. It seems intolerable that I should go through live thus estranged, keeping it all to my guilty self.

 

If only men would let themselves feel too, and open themselves to a full emotional and human experience. Too few do, to their own detriment. 

 

I also very much loved Joanna’s own desire to be. 

 

Remember: I didn’t and don’t want to be a “feminine” version or a diluted version or a special version or a subsidiary version or an ancillary version or an adapted version of the heroes I admire. I want to be the heroes themselves.

 

I guess I will end with that quote. It is something every strong woman I admire has faced. To be themselves, not a diluted, “feminine” substitute. It is at the end of this passage that Russ mentions Elsie Dinsmore, which is a name you rarely see outside paleo-confederate fundie circles. And yes, my wife knew the books from childhood, and purposed never to be an Elsie. I have to wonder a bit about how popular the books were in the 1940s, when Russ would have been a child. 

 

One final thought: Russ was once criticized for her often harsh book reviews. She broke down the usual lines criticizing her into categories. This one stood out:

 

Don't shove your politics into your reviews. Just review the books. "I will," Russ said, "when authors keep politics out of their books."

 

For a woman writing science fiction, far too many of her male peers failed to write women characters, instead settling for stereotypes. This was a legitimate criticism by Russ, and it was definitely political.

 

I too wrote politics in my blog. I will stop when politics cease to be an integral part of the human experience - which is to say never. All of life is political, whether you notice it or not. 

 

For Russ, the experience of being female was inherently political, and this book reflects it. It is an interesting read, not least for the razor-sharp lectures and creative obliteration of expectations. I have some of her other novels and stories in this collection, and I look forward to reading them.