Gender...forget it
Review: The Judas Rose by Suzette Haden Elgin
This is book two. I wasn’t given book three and won’t be looking for it.
Bluntly, Elgin doubles and triples down on the gender essentialism here, all the way to “Women have grown out of violence and men haven’t because girls mature faster than boys.”
Not only is girls maturing faster a pure social impact, if it’s even real, but…just what? What?
And a woman’s language will, thus, end violence, because all other languages were made by the patriarchy.
I couldn’t get past any of it. It’s a shame, because Elgin is a good writer and this book had some more interesting characters. The plot was a little bit slow…it had a bit of “middle movement” going on, but this would have been a good book if it hadn’t kept telling me that almost all men are bad (while the author states that there are good men we, once more, see none in this book).
Also, there might be some eugenics going on here too. You can’t plant a baby as a double agent. Of course, Elgin also seems to think you can’t learn new languages as an adult, so…
I know. It was written in the 1980s. And at that level, I can give it something of a pass.
But only something of one. I have no interest in going further here…although if you absolutely adore this kind of 1980s feminist SF, you should probably go pick it up. Again, Elgin’s a good writer.
I just spent the entire book thinking about how she would be a TERF if she was still around.