The Fiction of Ideas

This week, I read the female man which hit a lot of controversial points and
carried strong subtexts such as masculinity, gender/sexual orientation, and sexual identity.
This novel came out in the mid 70’s just right before we hit the big gay area where more people
were coming out of the closet.

The Female Man talks a lot about what proper girls and women are supposed to feel and
do. Topping the list are activities like being attractive, being pleasant, and being attentive.
Things that don't make the cut include being ambitious, wanting fulfillment outside of marriage
and motherhood, and being intellectually and/or sexually attracted to other women. Femininity
in this novel is a web of social expectations that make women easy prey for power-hungry men.
Only in Whileaway, where men no longer exist, can women experiment and explore without being
told that their actions aren't properly "womanly."

Masculinity in The Female Man goes hand-in-hand with patriarchal power. The most
conventionally masculine men in this novel are also the most dangerous, and the book suggests
that that's not a coincidence. As you encounter one no-good, dirty, rotten scoundrel after another,
it may seem as though The Female Man is all about hating on the mens. While Joanna Russ is certainly
free with her anger, sarcasm, and satire, it could be said that the real antagonists of the novel aren't men
themselves, but the social conventions that teach young males to be aggressive, domineering, and
violent toward women.

It can be difficult to separate questions concerning sexuality and sexuality identity from the act of sex itself in The Female Man, because so often the characters' sexual encounters are staged to tell us something about their societies more generally. For instance, Joanna and Laura have to overcome powerful anxieties before they accept that they want to be with women, and the novel suggests that those anxieties are products of the patriarchal world they're stuck in. Janet, who comes from a world where patriarchy no longer exists, has none of the same concerns. On Whileaway, no one thinks of herself as "lesbian"—women's sexual relationships with other women are so natural, there's no need to have a specific word for them.