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March 12, 2025

Men Bad, Women Good - Gender Essentialism in Feminist Science Fiction (copy)

A pink building with yellow trim around the windows and ivy on the left side. At the center is a head and torso bust of a large-breasted woman labeled "Luna."

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.

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