Men Bad, Women Good - Gender Essentialism in Feminist Science Fiction (copy)
Last year somebody gave me copies of Native Tongue and The Judas Rose, the first two parts of a feminist trilogy by Suzette Haden Elgin.
These are reprints of a book printed in the 1980s, at about the same time as The Handmaid’s Tale and slightly before Sheri Tepper’s The Gate to Women’s Country.
The 1980s saw a lot of feminist science fiction. Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover series arguably falls in the same category, but the three books I want to talk about here are Native Tongue, The Gate to Women’s Country, and The Handmaid’s Tale.
Quick Overview
So, these three books:
1. Native Tongue. The U.S. has gone anti-feminist, claiming women are inferior and writing constitutional amendments that make us second class citizens. Two male authors apparently won a Nobel Prize for “proving” our innate inferiority. This happened in the early 90s and is a reminder to be careful about specifying dates in your near future work. Ahem. The madness appears to have spread and women everywhere are legal minors requiring a male guardian. We have, however, reached the stars and made contact with aliens. The only way to become fluent in an alien language is to be exposed as an infant, which requires hereditary translators. Their women are creating a women’s language (the men, bizarrely, claim conlangs are impossible. Esperanto has existied since the 19th century… The women’s language is the key to their freedom.
2. The Gate to Women’s Country. After the apocalypse, men live in roving, primitive bands, while women have rebuilt civilization…with only subservient males allowed in their beautiful enclaves. The women reproduce by mating with the men outside the walls, sending their male children to the male society…which is expressly inferior and barbaric.
3. The Handmaid’s Tale. In an unspecified future, the United States has become the Republic of Gilead, a pseudo-Christian theocracy in which the reduced Caucasian birthrate is being addressed by the extensive use of surrogacy…in which the women involved have no say. If you are a woman you are a Wife, a Handmaid (a surrogate who goes from household to household, rotated once you’ve given birth and handed the child to the Wife), a Martha (servant), an Auntie (basically a guard) or an Unwoman (which includes sex workers, etc).
You might think it’s strange to link these three books together, even if they were published within five years of each other by women who identify as feminists.
But they’re useful for this particular analysis.
Men Bad, Women Good
I put these books in the order I did for a reason…because I’m going to look at their treatment of men.
In Native Tongue, all of the men we see are almost cartoonishly misogynistic. Women are routinely called females and in some cases bitches who whelp children. Every single man in this book has drunk the Kool Aid that women are inherently inferior and need to be protected, coddled, and not allowed to do anything strenuous.
Even the woman linguists, trained in alien languages from birth and in many cases speaking multiple languages with native or near-native fluency are seen as mere interpreters…they can’t actually make decisions despite being clearly as talented as the men. (Also, these linguists are basically being selectively bred).
Every woman, on the other hand, is smart, brave, and…you guessed it. Michaela’s killing spree is perfectly understandable (at some levels it is, somebody did take her baby and torture him to death…unfortunately, not the people she thinks did it).
Men are bad, women are good, and living apart from men…the dream is to go to another planet and take enough varied sperm with you that you never need another man…presumably the male fetuses would be routinely aborted.
In book two, they change their tune and the women’s language is going to “fix” the violent men.
Men Bad, But We Can Breed Better Men
So, let’s move on to The Gate to Women’s Country. Is it any better? At first glance, no.
Women, in Tepper’s world, are the bastion of civilization. By putting women in charge, society can be rebuilt better, with no more war and conflict. The men can fight it out outside the walls.
But in Women’s Country, male servitors, quiet, docile, and willing to let the women rule also exist.
And the “twist” of the story is that instead of being impregnated by the men from beyond the wall, all of the women are being impregnated by the servitors.
They’re using selective breeding to reduce male aggression.
Okay, so in some ways it’s worse. Not only are men bad, but eugenics is the answer here.
Most Men Bad, But It’s Really the System
And finally, I come to the last book. Some of you may be more familiar with the TV show, which I haven’t got around to watching yet so can’t fairly judge.
Offred, our protagonist, was happily married before the state went crazy misogynistic. She had a job, a child, a husband.
A husband who tries to get her out to Canada, fails, and is never seen again.
Men are involved in the Underground Femaleroad to get women out, including Nick, the father of Offred’s second child (doing stud duty).
Even the Commander is not an entirely unsympathetic figure.
In The Handmaid’s Tale, men are not inherently bad. They are pulled into the system too, and while most of them enjoy it, they’re still people, not cartoonishly evil.
The system is what’s broken in this book, a system which leaves Nick “not rating a woman, not even one.” A system which forces Moira, who is gay, to service men in a brothel.
And let’s think about this. Which of these books is still read the most? Which one got made into a TV show?
The one that didn’t revolve around gender essentialism to make its point. Unfortunately, a lot of modern so-called feminists still believe Men Bad, Women Good…and that nothing can make men better.
Which leads, amongst other things, to transphobia (trans women are trying not to be Bad, which isn’t an option for them because being born with a dick makes you bad and trans men are victims of the system). And it ultimately does not lead to freedom for women.
Or for men.