Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany)'s review of The Female Man (original) (raw)

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Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany)'s Reviews > The Female Man

The Female Man by Joanna Russ

The Female Man
by

3660666

Last book of 2022! And boy was it an experience. Not always enjoyable, but interesting as a piece of both feminist and genre fiction history. I wouldn't suggest reading this for fun/escapism but if you're interested in the intersection of second-wave feminist ideas and science fiction, it's great for that.

Note that ideas about gender have come a long way since the mid-70's when this was published. It is very much a product of its time in terms of its handling of gender, and in terms of using racial slurs among other things.

This is also a novel about being a lesbian (or bisexual?) and coping with that identity in various unhealthy ways. And one other content note is that this contains a graphic scene of what amounts to child sex abuse and I did not like how that was handled. A much older woman is with a pubescent girl and while it is called a "taboo" it isn't treated in the narrative as the assault that it actually is. Again, I think this is part of a larger issue of older people in queer communities having had sexual relationships with much younger people or even minors- a topic that is being discussed and reckoned with now. And it gets sticky because you have to untangle homophobic fears of all queer people grooming children (no, queer people are not inherently abusive) with ACTUAL abuse or grooming enacted by queer individuals and the fear that addressing that will be used as an excuse to harm everyone. Anyway, let's talk about what the book actually is.

The Female Man is an experimentally structured novel following four women who are sort of multiversal versions of each other (though it takes quite some time to figure that out and one of them only becomes a visible presence in the last couple of chapters).

Joanna is a 1970's feminist in a world like our own trying to make it in a mans world and grappling with what it actually means to be a woman or a man. Her story kind of reckons with this idea that lesbians just have "penis envy".

Jeanine is a librarian from an earth where the Great Depression never ended and WWII never happened. She is in a relationship with a man who she feels ambivalent about, but there is pressure to get married and fall into a specific gendered role. The subtext is clearly that she is a lesbian in denial.

Janet is from an earth where all the men died and the world is a sort of all-female utopia. Except it becomes clear that it isn't actually a utopia, the problems it has are just different. This world is sex-positive and obviously sexual relationships between women are no big deal. HOWEVER, emotionally intimate or romantic relationships are rare and viewed as embarrassing. This accepts lesbian sexuality, but divorces it from emotional intimacy and leaves marriage as not much more that a practical arrangement for creating a household. Janet's perspective is probably the most interesting though because her lack of understanding for gendered social norms underlines their absurdity.

Finally we have Jael, who is a shadowy presence for most of the book though in the last couple chapters we finally visit her version of earth where men and women are at war with each other and this futuristic society has allowed for body modifications such as claws or invisibility. Jael has a male sex-slave who has been partially lobotomized and this is clearly riffing on expectations that women be happy sex bots who live to serve and then reversing the gender.

For sci-fi reasons all of these women end up meeting and interacting with each other, and it's interesting to see what happens.

I will say, my review probably makes this book sound more enjoyable than it actually is to read. The narrative structure is confusing, jumps around, and doesn't make things super clear. Some scenes are deeply uncomfortable for the modern reader, some are a window into what women faced during this time, and some are really fascinating. It was a mixed experience but I am glad that I read it, even just for the historical value.

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Reading Progress

December 29, 2022 –Started Reading

December 31, 2022 –Finished Reading

January 2, 2023 – Shelved as:lgbtq

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