Noah Bertlatsky: The (Short) History of Feminist Utopian Literature

"Nancy Porter"
Source: Wikimedia Commons

“Imagine there’s no gender: the long history of feminist utopian literature” is an article in The Atlantic highlighting the history of feminine utopian literature. However, writer Noah Bertlatsky does not delve far enough into said history. Based on Bertlatsky’s subtitle: "From Wonder Woman to Shulamith Firestone to Joanna Russ, visions of societies run by women or absent of gender altogether have existed for almost a century”, it’s obvious he either has decided to ignore earlier examples of feminine utopian literature, or he is unaware it exists.

The beginning of the article focuses on feminist writer Shulamith Firestone, and her views expressed in her text The Dialectic of Sex. Bertlatsky quotes Firestone as having said in 1970, “There is no feminine utopian literature in existence”. He believes the claim to be exaggerated, especially given the fact of several publications he cites, like The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Herland (1915), and graphic novels like Wonder Woman (1941- ).

In Bertlatsky’s view, the most distinct part of Firestone’s philosophy is her description of feminism, which has roots in utopian theory: “[as radical feminists, we] are talking about changing a fundamental biological condition." Inequality, according to Firestone, is begot foremost by gender differences, and can be overcome when gender differences are gone (a notion shared by many a feminist, whether they be man or woman). Without gender to get in the way, Firestone imagined utopias in which technology would eliminate the need for work and even the need for live childbirth (an idea found in several utopian/dystopian novels, like Woman on the Edge of Time, The Shore of Women, and Brave New World).

Overall, it was refreshing to see an article on feminist utopian theory in the popular media, because it is not seen often. However, I feel like Bertlatsky deprived his readers by limiting his scope of feminist utopian history to a mere hundred years. He also displayed his male outlook on feminist utopian literature by including the Wonder Woman graphic novels. The world of graphic novels is notorious (much like science fiction) for being a good ol’ boys club, so to include any graphic novel (especially Wonder Woman, a graphic novel objectifying women on a grand scale) speaks volumes.
It saddens me that this article was written this past year, illustrating just how much further the world needs to progress to attain gender equality, which, consequentially, in the words of Marlene Barr, would bring an end to feminism.

Bertlatsky, Noah. “Imagine there’s no gender: the long history of feminist utopian literature”. The Atlantic. The Atlantic Mag., 15 April 2013. Web. 20 May 2013. http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/04/imagine-theres-no-gender-the-long-history-of-feminist-utopian-literature/274993/

What a Strange World We Live In- "Woman on the Edge of Time" by Marge Piercy

Source: Wikipedia

Marge Piercy creates a detailed portrait of a poor minority female who is constantly trying and hoping for a better life that never comes. For most of her life, Connie has been oppressed in every way imaginable. She has suffered at the hands of male and  government institutions. She has never known real power, not even over her own body.

During her second incarceration in a mental institution, visits from a time traveler become more insistent. At first, Connie is convinced the traveler is in her imagination, but as the visits transport her to an androgynous utopia in the future, the legitimacy of the traveler is indisputable, and it is the present which seems more like a surreal nightmare.

Luciente is the traveler that shows Connie another world, a better world. Luciente is described as a male, at least in Connie’s eyes. From Luciente’s movements, confidence, and attitude, Connie is sure she is dealing with a man. She even forms the beginnings of romantic feelings for Luciente, but they fade after she discovers Luciente is actually a woman.

While visiting the future with her time-traveling friend, Connie is confronted with other non-traditional forms of society. For example, men can petition to be mothers. Children in the future are no longer born, they are grown. As such, babies are assigned to those that request them, and men commonly request to be mothers alongside women. Each child has three mothers (male or female), and is separated from their mothers at age twelve to foster independence.

Towns are kept small, so as to remain self-sustainable. A town models itself after past cultures of a certain time. The town Luciente is a part of follows the traditions of the Wampanoag Native Americans, and different races are purposefully bred, with racism having been bred out of human beings.

Sexually, Luciente and her friends are quite liberal. Homosexual relationships are normal, as are polyamorous or monogamous relationships. When Luciente is recalling her most passionate relationship, she tells Connie it was with a woman, a concept Connie cannot grasp.

The separation of gender, especially through the eyes of the lead female character Connie, are analyzed throughout the novel. The validity of power structures in society (like police, social workers, and doctors) are also questioned, as all the structures Connie encounters only take advantage of her position in society as a female, low-income, minority citizen.

The capitalist life style Connie is on the fringes of seems barbaric in comparison with the rich and happy life Luciente exposes her to. Piercy brings a disconnect to the modern world, and certainly evokes Suvin’s infamous theory of “cognitive estrangement” in science fiction writing with Woman on the Edge of Time.

The Brilliance of James Tiptree, Jr. (or as she was born, Alice Sheldon)

Found on outofeverywhere.wordpress.com

This is a collection of stories by Tiptree, collected before Tiptree was discovered to be a woman. The introduction by Robert Silverberg is almost comical, especially when he defends the questioned masculinity of Tiptree: "There is something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree's writing. I don't think the novels of Jane Austen could have been written by a man, nor the stories of Ernest Hemingway by a woman, and the same way I believe the author of James Tiptree stories is male" (xii). Silverberg's supposition calls into question the definition of male and female writing. If in his mind Austen is the quintessential female writer and Hemingway the male, then his radar concerning the gender of authors is seriously misguided, more notably when he compares Tiptree to Hemingway. Silverberg manages to unknowingly pen several sexist claims, like Tiptree must be male because he talks about things like fishing, hunting, travelling, and the government with such authority. Reading the introduction reminded me of LeGuin's article "The Carrier Bag of Fiction", where she talks about the origins of what is intrinsically human, and it turns out not to be violent (and supposed) male tendencies, but the ability to gather, (a supposed) female tendency. It seems as if Silverberg is trying to legitimize Tiptree's place in science fiction by insisting on Tiptree's maleness, as if the possibility of Tiptree's womanhood would do the opposite.

There are two short stories I read in the collection, starting with “The Girl Who Was Plugged In”. If anything, the story takes place in both a utopia and dystopia. The world as laid out by Tiptree has outlawed advertising. It was deemed immoral, and word of mouth is the only way companies have of getting their products sold. That’s where J. Burke comes in. She’s described as ugly, but company execs have their own ideas on how to make her pretty. After she attempts suicide, they know she is desperate enough to accept their offer: to plug her brainwaves into a beautiful humanoid. Through the new J. Burke (re-named Delphi when in humanoid form), the execs are able to wield an alluring and subtle spokesperson for their products. A man falls in love with Delphi, and discovers in part her secret. When he finally meets the real Delphi (J. Burke), he is disgusted at her appearance and accidentally kills her.

The story is a reminder of how humans will do their best to undermine the law, even when the law is put in place to enhance their rights. Another theme of Tiptree’s short is the lie women must keep up with their looks. J. Burke/Delphi could be an analogy for said lie, with J. Burke being how men view women without “cute” clothes/make-up on, and Delphi being how they view women in their costumed perfection. In the story, Delphi’s admirer was naïve in believing she was a paragon all the time, and he is disillusioned, even horrified, to discover his real love shares her likeness with a monster.

In “The Women Men Don’t See”, a group of people have to survive a plane crash on a sandbar in the Yucatan. Two women make up part of the group, and two men make up the other. The story is told from a male perspective, with the man constantly being surprised in the unflappable nature of the two women. When he expects them to complain, they remark on the scenery. When he expects them to make demands, they make kind concessions. This second story I read really had little to do with utopia/dystopias, and everything to do with how men expect women to act, versus how women can act.

Overall, the book is a great example of how women are seen not just in science fiction, but through the eyes of men. What’s ironic about it is that Tiptree managed to write from the male perspective so convincingly she had everyone believing she was a male, and they thought it patronizing and progressive of “him” to take small feminist stands in his writing. How must they have viewed Tiptree’s writing after discovering he was a she? I have an idea as to what they were thinking, because Silverberg puts a postscript at the end of his intro, describing the letter he received from Tiptree. She confessed to him her true sexuality, and of it, Silverberg wrote, “What I have learned is that there are some women who can write about traditionally male topics more knowledgeably than most men, and that the truly superior artist can adopt whatever tone is appropriate to the material and bring it off” (xviii).

Tiptree Jr., James. “The Girl Who Was Plugged In”.  Warm Worlds and Otherwise. New York: Doubleday, 1973. Print.

            -. “The Women Men Don’t See.” Warm Worlds and Otherwise. New York: Doubleday, 1973. Print.

When Women Rule the World: Sherri S. Tepper's "The Gate to Women's Country"

Image found on
www.eternalnight.co.uk 

From the onset, it's hard to tell The Gate to Women's Country apart from The Shore of Women. Both are stories featuring post-apocalyptic settings in which women preside over great, peaceful cities, whereas men are left out to be warriors amongst each other. The differences between the stories are minor: instead of women not caring about giving up their sons (like in Shore), Tepper brings the reader through an emotional process that is very real. Instead of procreating with the aids of science (like in Shore), women and men meet twice a year at carnivals. In Tepper's world, men may return to the female cities at age fifteen if they choose.

Tepper creates a dual-natured gender society, one in which the balance of power appears to be equal between men and women, with perhaps a bit more power going to the men. By the end of the book, the big reveal shows the true balance of power to be entirely in favor of the women. After a nuclear war three-hundred years before, women decided to take over and establish new cities. Like Shore, they wanted to keep men out, but they also wanted to create an illusion to keep them happy. Part of the illusion is letting the men in the garrisons believe that they father children from women inside of Women’s Country. Really, all babies are born from artificial insemination. Sperm is carefully selected from those men who live within Women’s Country, as they have no desire for violence. Violence is a trait the women are set on breeding out of the men, even if it takes centuries to do so. Every fifteen-year-old male who chooses to return to Women’s Country then becomes part of the breeding pool.

The entire set-up of Women’s Country is a large breeding program, which the men are completely unaware of. The women allow the garrisons from different towns to go to war with one another, and they allow it to control the male population, or to get rid of undesirables quickly. The reader comes to understand how the men are puppets, much like the men in Shore. However, unlike Shore, the women in Women’s Country hope to reconcile with men eventually, by breeding out their violent natures.

The entire novel is themed around power. In the beginning, women appear weak, deferring to the men, loving men, giving into them. The men seem strong, protecting the women. One might argue Tepper set up a conventional dual-natured society, with proper male/female gender roles. Later, the women are seen to hold all of the power, and the men (the ones in the garrisons at least) are seen as pathetic, almost like children playing their little war games, unaware of the secrets and power the women hold over them.

For a good part of the novel, the men in the garrisons are convinced the women have secrets, but they don’t know what they are. Some of the men plot to get at the secrets, to control the women. The novel got me thinking about life, how men may believe women have secrets, or believe childbirth to be a sort of secret (or power). Considering all the anti-abortion measures state legislatures have taken, it’s possible the men of these states are uncomfortable at the thought of women controlling their own secrets, their own power. Even if their ideas about abortion are steeped in their religion, their religion is steeped in male-powered rhetoric.

At times during the novel, the comparisons between Shore and The Handmaid’s Tale would prompt the reader to believe Tepper wrote it as a further exploration of the elements in both of those feminist utopian/dystopic novels. Unlike Shore or The Handmaid’s Tale, Women’s Country is trying to change, trying to become better than the status quo, and as H.G. Wells tells it, the mark of a modern utopia is one that is ever-changing (9).

Tepper implies that a male-dominated world revolves around violence and competition, and the only end-game to such a cycle is destruction through war. According to Tepper, in history, those who suffer most in war (without any real say) are women and children.

In Women’s Country, women and children are spared from senseless death. Tepper describes Women’s Country as a world in which women have complete control, and the results are for better, or as good as they can be in a post-nuclear age.

Even as Tepper creates a sort of utopia, there are several dystopic elements to her story, such as the war games the women allow the men to play out. It is viewed as an activity the men need to do, to channel their aggression and keep their illusion of power intact, but when the men are dying on the fields, they are not allowed help for their wounds. The smallest wound can fester, turn to blood poisoning, and kill the man weeks later, a horrific death Tepper describes of one of the men. Also, the men in the garrisons are not allowed to have or create any technological advances, not just in weaponry, but everyday items that might create a better life for them are also barred. Because of the way the men are bred, most of them don’t care about advancing anyway (only a few do), but the females in the city, the perceptive ones, feel it’s wrong to intentionally hold the men back. It’s comparable to holding a dog in a cage.

The major dystopic element of Tepper’s world is the fact that from five years of age on, little boys get sent out of the cities and into the garrisons. They are separated from their families, and it can sometimes be a traumatic separation. Just like in Shore, the position of the women are elevated (and if it were the other way around, it would be just as wrong), and men (no, little children) are made to suffer for the power-swap.

A side-note: The Gate to Women's Country is a good book, nearly as good or even better than A Handmaid's Tale in my view. It's written with the same weird displaced timeline as The Dispossessed, and the writing in it feels more like poetry (at times). While The Shore of Women is great, too, I found the writing style to be a bit too romanticized. With The Gate to Women's Country, Tepper tackles the male/female romantic dynamic, but with a more objective eye than Sargent. Then again, I've also considered Sargent's over-use of romantic language and phrasing may have been on purpose, as a parody of the way women and men view one another.

Tepper, Stewart, Sheri. The Gate to Women’s Country. New York: Bantam Spectra, 1989. Print.

Wells, George, Herbert. A Modern Utopia. London: Chapman & Hall, 1905. Print.

"The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction", a thought-provoking essay by Ursula K. LeGuin

LeGuin’s essay begins by explaining the gender dynamics of the early humans from the Paleolithic and Neolithic time periods. She describes the average life of an early human as one that began as gatherer, not hunter as many have assumed. As part of that description, she brings with her the theory that the first cultural device used by humans was a container (LeGuin 150). Again, it has been an assumption, an assumption perpetuated by the media (as LeGuin notes), that the first device used by humans had to be a weapon.

To LeGuin, the invention of the weapon was most likely a man-made invention, and one that men used to hold over women in a way, as to say, “Ha, look, men made the first invention that just happened to be violent, and women hate violence, therefore, women aren’t really human.” As Russ says of the men in her short story “When It Changed”, they didn’t consider the women they found on planet Whileaway to be human. They kept asking the women, “Where are all the people?” People, to them, meaning men.

Using the idea of the container as the first human invention, LeGuin goes on to say that finally, she can be counted as human now too: “If it is a human thing to do to put something you want […] into a bag […] and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it […] and then next day you probably do much the same again, if to do that is human, if that’s what it takes, then I am a human being after all.” (LeGuin 152). What LeGuin is saying is that women invented the first relevant piece of culture, but I think it could have been both the container and the weapon, all at once. Human beings could have started out as both the hunter and the gatherer, as we also began as women and men. Still, the point that LeGuin makes is fascinating: the invention of the container is one of the most important inventions to man, and being an assumed female invention, it brings women into the arena of humanity in a way she wasn’t before.

The rest of the essay changes directions. LeGuin begins to equate the idea of grafting a good novel by using a container of words, instead of a spear of words. LeGuin mentions how some authors have described writing a book to be a mock-battle, when she believes it to be the lugging of a container full of words, thoughts, and story elements waiting to be used up.

LeGuin, Kroeber, Ursula. “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction.” The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literacy Ecology. Ed. Cheryll Glotfelty, Harold Fromm. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1996. 149-154. Print.

The Idea of Gender Divides in LeGuin's "The Dispossesed"

The Dispossesed (1st Ed. Hardcover)
1974, Harper & Row Cover
Source: Wikimedia

Somewhere in a similar galaxy is a planet much like Earth, called Urras. On Urras, a group of settlers were sent to colonize the moon, Anaress. Cut-off from their home planet, the Anarresti built a different society than the one they came from, one in which there is no central government, no real form of currency, and gender equality isn’t even a thought, it just is.

Shevek, a theoretician from the colonized moon, is invited by a university on the home planet to come and study. When he does, his entire worldview is shaken, as he is exposed to alien concepts, like class divides, crime, money, and ego. Once Shevek understands that the home planet society is driven by profits (i.e. capitalism), he chews on his assumption “that if you removed a human being’s natural incentive to work--his initiative, his spontaneous creative energy--and replaced it with external motivation and coercion, he would become a lazy and careless worker […] The lure and compulsion of profit was evidently a much more effective replacement of the natural initiative than he had been led to believe.” (82). LeGuin is answering  a central question here about the details of a utopian society quite simply: if a citizen is given all they need by the State, they will not become lazy, because their own creativity will be their drive. She also answers the question about innovation in an utopian society, a concept assumed to stagnate in any imagined utopia, because only suffering can foster innovation (the need to make something bad into something better), but if creativity is its own reward, then even in a utopian society citizens will know of and promote innovation.

There are many gender divides Shevek encounters on the home planet. He argues with many of the Urrasti about how they treat their women and why they feel the need to treat women differently at all. Several times, he asks the Urrasti men “Where are the women?” They are amused at the question, and they tell him that women make great wives, but terrible scientists: “[Women] can’t do the math; no head for abstract thought; don’t belong. You know how it is, what women call thinking is done with the uterus! Of course, they’re always a few exceptions, God-awful brainy women with vaginal atrophy.” (73).

When Shevek reveals that 50% of the scientists (and workers in all fields) on his world are women, the Urrasti men become very uncomfortable. They cannot imagine a world in which a man is not made to feel “manly” and a woman is not kept as a feminine object and an object alone.

At the end of one of these gender arguments, Shevek concludes “that he had touched in these men an impersonal animosity that went very deep. Apparently they, like the tables on the ship, contained a woman, a suppressed, silenced, bestialized woman, a fury in a cage. He had no right to tease them. They knew no relation but possession. They were possessed.” (74).

Soon, Shevek comes to realize that the very design of the planet Urras, and the syntax of the Urrasti speech, all help to maintain the binary gender divide, however unintentional (or intentional) the design might be. Aboard his first starship, Shevek notes that the curves and lines on the ship are soft, supple. Even his bunk bed on the star ship is soft and inviting, and he cannot help but have erotic thoughts of yielding women. The language of the Urrasti is as possessive as their nature, as they refer to things as “my hankerchief” or “my wife”, when an Anarresti would say “the hankerchief that I use” or “the woman I share life with”. Shevek does not know of a translation in his language for the possessive pro-nouns Urrasti people are so fond of using.

Overall, LeGuin uses the analogy of a visitor to an Earth-like world to illustrate the cognitive estrangement of Earth-like customs. Through Shevek’s eyes, the reader sees everything backwards, gender included. Everything that is “normal” is odd to Shevek, and the simple nature in which he explains his world makes it seem as real as the Earth-like planet of Urras.

LeGuin, Kroeber, Ursula. The Dispossessed. New York: Harper & Row, 1974. Print.

"Brave New World"- So Close Yet So Far from Utopia

A picture of Richard Stallman, in the style of Che Guevara. 
The title is a play on
"O brave new world / that has such people in it"
from The Tempest and Brave New World.
Date: October 2006
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Huxley’s speculative tale of London in the year A.F. 632 is a Utopian world except for a few distinctive differences. There is the matter of a class system determined even before birth. Fertilized human eggs are chemically treated to be Epsilons, Betas, Alphas, or other derivatives. Once the egg becomes a full-fledged human being, the mental and physical conditioning begins. Children are raised in wards by the State, taught that their god is Ford (as in the Ford that invented the automobile assembly line), and also taught repetitive reasoning in their sleep, such as “Never put off till tomorrow the fun you can have today” (Huxley 93).

In place of love, there is the pursuit of fun in the form of “the feelies” and drugs like soma. Like in The Giver, the public is unaware of the implications of death or what it really entails, another way to shield citizens from feeling anything real. Similar to both Anthem and The Giver, this dystopia is ruled by a handful of individuals known as Directors. Directors are always male, therefore the gender equality implied by Huxley is severely lacking. The reader need only analyze the sexual dynamic between the genders to come to the conclusion that in Brave New World, women are still beneath men in the social ladder.

Women are required to be sexually available at every turn, and part of that is maintaining a fit and “pneumatic” body. Another burden the women must abide is the responsibility of safe sex. All women carry a belt around, a belt full of different contraceptives. In the book, it is never mentioned that a man must upkeep his body for women, or remember to use contraceptives. Huxley leaves that up to the women.

If a woman (or man) chooses not to be promiscuous, they are seen as socially inept. Given that, there is no marriage in Huxley’s world. If two people are considered a couple, it is prudent for them to begin coupling with anyone and everyone else they can, the sooner the better.

The main female characters in the novel, Lenina and Lydia, are both insipid and promiscuous, a product of their society. Two main male characters in the novel, Bernard and Helmholtz, are likewise products of their society, however, Huxley allows them to question their surroundings and long for a better world. Helmholtz confides in his friend Bernard that he is unhappy, even though he is at the top of the class system as an Alpha and women literally line up to sleep with him: “I’m thinking of a queer feeling I sometimes get, a feeling that I’ve got something important to say and the power to say it---only I don’t know what it is, and I can’t make any use of the power” (Huxley 69). Bernard tries to explain to Lenina what is lacking in their society after she repeats the mantra learned in their childhood, Everybody’s happy nowadays. “Yes," Bernard tells her, "‘Everybody’s happy nowadays.’ We begin giving the children that at five. But wouldn't you like to be free to be happy in some other way, Lenina? In your own way, for example; not in everybody else’s way.” (Huxley 91).

Aldous Huxley
Date: (original upload) May 2007
Transferred from Wikipedia
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Happiness is the main objective of Huxley’s alternative London, but as Bernard and Helmholtz illustrate, their world is far from perfect. Even though there is no war, disease, or poverty, not everyone feels happy because they are too controlled. Everyone’s absolute place in the world is chosen from birth, down to what they’re going to look like, their place in the class system, and where they’re going to work. There are no creative freedoms, and that is what is most stifling about Huxley’s dystopia. Everything else, such as gender and class disparities, follows in the wake of that.

Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. London: Chatto and Windus, 1932. Print.

Orlando: The Man, The Woman

Original cover
User: El-luismi
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Orlando is a novel by Virginia Woolf that takes the idea of being a man and woman in one lifetime (or several lifetimes) and puts it to good use. The title character, Orlando, is a nobleman living in England during the Elizabethan period. He is content with his life except for the loneliness, having been engaged, married, or assumed to be engaged to four women in his lifetime. When he meets a Russian princess, he thinks that life has finally rewarded him with his one true love. Unfortunately, the princess does not reciprocate and leaves Orlando. Distraught, Orlando turns to his other passion: writing. He takes writing seriously, writing plays, poems, and stories, all odiously long. Away in his country manor he writes and writes, until he is visited by a famous writer Nicolas Green. Green reads Orlando's work and writes up a poem to satire it, thus making Orlando hate humans and turn even more inward while at his country estate.

Later on, Orlando visits other European countries, encountering gypsies as he does so. One night, he has a strange dream, and as a by-product, becomes a woman. There is no shocking reveal or loathing from Orlando at having turned into a woman, only acceptance. With his/her new worldview, Orlando comes to see how different her life will be as a woman. Her return to London is a lesson in women's rights, because she realizes that she can no longer own her land, manage her finances, or vote. Small things come to Orlando's attention now that she is a woman, like the fact that men cannot cry in front of an audience. A man falls in love with her, and when she refuses him, the man begins to cry, and though Orlando knows from experience that men cry just as women do, that they are not supposed to openly weep, and so she is shocked at the emotion display of her thwarted lover.

"Orlando as a boy"
paiting by Cornelious Nuie
(1650)User: El-luismi
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Orlando life spans many generations. He/she goes into deeps slumbers every few years, almost like a bear hibernating, and this (or some other type of magic) prolongs Orlando's life from the 1500's, taking the story all the way to the 1920's.

As a man, Orlando never questioned his privilege or sexuality (believing himself to be inherently heterosexual and powerful). Yet, as a woman, Orlando's eyes open up to see that the world is often one-sided in its treatment of women. Orlando the man fought in wars and dueled men to the death, but he/she is aghast when a gentleman treats her like a dainty flower, as she feels much more capable than she is given credit for, not just as a woman, but as an equal division of humanity.

Woolf, Virginia. Orlando: A Biography. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1956. Print.