(Note: I wrote this up the following for an annoying cite-monger on another thread, but I thought I would post it in Cafe Society as well, fwiw.)
Feminist utopian fiction is a sub-genre that ranges from serious polemic to wishful fantasy. In depicting societies of the future or other worlds, feminist utopian fiction often involves science-fiction elements, though other stories are placed in the distant past, in the not-too-distant future, or fictional contemporary societies. Because of its wide range of setting and themes, feminist utopian fiction crosses over several genres – novels with literary aspirations, science fiction, historical romance, and more.
Some of the frequent themes of feminist utopian fiction are societies in which men have either died out, have never existed, or live separately from woman, who are the narrative focus. The all-female societies in some cases propagate through cloning, parthenogenesis or other means. In Ursula K. LeGuin’s “The Left Hand of Darkness,” characters are sexually neutral and can change freely into males or females and back again. In other stories, men and women co-exist equally or women rule. In historical fiction, the utopian society might worship the Goddess – at least until patriarchal religion ruins everything.
A related sub-genre is the feminist dystopia, which often imagines a horrible future society displaying the oppression of a ruthless patriarchal rule, the most famous example of this being “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
There is also a male-centered version in which men encounter a society of women and re-assert themselves. This theme has been made into a number of humorously bad movies such as “Queen of Outer Space” and “Cat Women of the Moon,” and some critics suggest that the animus lies in men returning from World War II and finding that women had taken over many traditionally male jobs and roles.
But it is feminist utopian fiction that has been the more prolific sub-genre and as such it has received a good deal of scholarly and historical interest.
Defenders of feminist utopian fiction might call it empowering or minimize the hostility in it as mere wishful fantasy: men disappear and women get to run things. Yet we can’t deny the animosity in those works whose theme is how much the world would improve if men did not exist, or those that portray all men as too violent to live in a civil society. “Empowerment” here descends into female chauvinism.
The web has many sites that discuss feminist utopian fiction – many that can be found by searching for that term.
On the site Feminist Fantasy, Science Fiction and Utopia, (http://www.feministsf.org/femsf/index.html) for example, you can find bibliographies, research, criticism, checklists of authors, and a page dedicated to “Theme & Character Lists: Women-Only Worlds,” which includes some fiction that uses a women-only theme in a non-feminist manner.
Note the prevalence of the theme of reproduction without men:
Where would you classify ‘The Shore of Women’, by Pamela Sargent? It’s somewhat utopian for the women, who live in walled cities separate from the men, though they still have some of the normal human problems, like jealousy, violence, etc. Things are definitely not utopian for the men, though, who live as primitive hunter-gatherers in the wilderness between the cities. They are manipulated by the women’s super-science into believing that females are gods, and the men are used for their germ plasm.
I haven’t read that one, but from the description it sounds like one of the titles that is more science fiction than feminist polemic. There are many women-only-society stories and many women-run-society stories that are not overtly feminist. Some are actually the opposite – men swagger in and the women melt in their arms, etc. Anyone who has read this title is invited to clarify any misconceptions I might have.
Miller, as I indicated before, I was faced with a particularly annoying poster who kept screaming “cite?” I had made a reference to feminist utopian fiction, which this person had not heard of it, so she took it upon herself to suggest that I had just invented the entire sub-genre out of my own head! I produced a length cite for the cite-monger, and felt I might as well post it in Cafe Society in case anyone wanted to discuss. If you don’t, please feel free to ignore the post.
The first I ever heard of feminist utopia fiction was during class discussions in my sociology class. Their entire philosophy seemed to boil around the simple concepts that men are bad and women are good. That was my only exposure to the genre and I certainly don’t want to paint it with a wide brush.
I always thought that feminist were suppose to believe that women should have the same rights as men. It doesn’t seem to me that a utopia based on the superiority of one sex over the other is a feminist ideal. Maybe I’m missing the point of these books. Are they really all that popular?
Discuss what? What position are you advocating, other than “There exsists a genre of literature called feminist utopian fiction?”
Incidentally, how many of those books have you personally read? 'Cause I’ve read three of them, and none of them could reasonably be termed “utopian”. And at least one of them could in not possibly be considered “feminist.”
Nobody has mentioned Sherri S. Tepper’s “The Gate to Women’s Country.”
This is not utopian per se, and men do figure in the story. But, it is a feminist take on a way to run a society.
David Brin did a really interesting story set on a world where women, that was something of a utopia. I can’t remember the details, but men still existed and served a much smaller reproductive role, and were 2nd class citizens and kept segregated from females. I just remembered the name - Glory Season. The society in the book was not without it’s problems, but it seems a lot more stable and intelligent than our system.
In Asimov’s last year, in the October/November double-issue, there was a novella called “Stories for Men”, by John Kessel. You can read at least part of it here.
I don’t know about Parable of the Talents, and it’s been a while since I’ve read Parable of the Sower, but from what I recall, it didn’t advocate the removal of men from society, and men weren’t the only ones who were incredibly violent.
So I’m not sure how valid that one is. What have you read on the list that you’ve offered us as representative of feminist utopias?
In addition to the books The Wrong Girl, what about “The Left Hand of Darkness”? I’ve read it two or three times, and it didn’t seem like a feminist utopian fiction to me. How could it be, if there are no women and no men? (Well, there’s one man. But that just reinforces my point.)
I’m trying to remember the name of my favorite example of this genre. It’s a dystopian novel in which women are in charge and are all scary-like. Men are referred to as “housebounds,” are usually raped on their prom nights, are derided and matronized for their natural brutishness, etc. Eventually the protagonist of the book, a nerdy manwom (as opposed to a wom), writes a novel in which the situation is reversed, in which men are in charge, as a way of showing how sucky that would be, and starts this whole masculist movement designed to procure equal rights for menwym.
It’s a pretty fun book, and avoids falling into the trap that claims too many novels in the genre: having the gender roles reversed in this book is considered just as bad as the current situation.
Its easy to make them sound nice. Hell, you can make a society of brutal butchering women-amazons who consume the still-beating hearts of men sound nice.
Well, Miller, the few titles in the OP that I have read are ALL utopian, so I guess it cuts both ways. Although I’m danged if I can fathom your reason for being so combative about such a non-combative issue.
I’m certainly another one who would loudly protest the inclusion of Left Hand of Darkness as a feminist utopia. To say that mangles any possible understanding of the book.
Out of all the books described here, that is the only one that sounds really fresh. That one I may just have to read.
I wonder why in this world anyone would consider those scenarios as “Utopian.” What a misnomer!
I don’t like futuristic novels or science fiction in general. Just personal taste. But as an older feminist, I would like to know if it is common for young people of this generation who are self-described feminists, to read and enjoy and share these books? This is not intended as a criticism. After all, it is fiction.
Thirty years ago if a woman believed that she should have equal access to opportunities, she usually described herself as a feminist. (Men who supported these beliefs were also feminists.)I have often wondered why the younger generation, while taking full advantage of hard-won opportunities (thank goodness!), now refuse to refer to themselves as feminists. If that word has been twisted to mean only belligerent, pro-female-dominance women, then no wonder there are so many misunderstandings.
Andy, excuse me if this is a hijack. I’m just wondering if your thread is the explanation that I’ve been looking for.
David Brin’s Glory Season was really written as an antidote to standard Feminist Utopian Fiction.
The premise is that humans on Stratos have been genetically engineered. Humans can reproduce conventionally, and produce conventional offspring. But women can also produce clone offspring. Most people are members of clone families and of course all clones are women, but standard sexual reproduction takes place as well, and this produces both males and females. Men make up something less than 5% of the population and aren’t second class citizens, although established clone families hold most of the power in society, and men can never establish clone families. Sexually created girls must struggle to find a way to support themselves, and only the lucky and talented are able to establish families.
The point of the story was to establish a society that didn’t violate laws of physics, biology and human nature, and tried to imagine a realistic female society. Unlike most feminist utopian fiction, which imagines the only solution is enslavement and/or extermination of men.