All the men are gone. Usually this is conceived as the result of a plague. Less often, the cause is violence. Occasionally, the men dont die and the sexes are just segregated in different geographical regions. Or men miraculously vanish without explanation.
Left to themselves, the women create a better society, without inequality or war. All goods are shared. All children are safe. The economy is sustainable and Earth is cherished. Without male biology standing in the way, utopia builds itself.
Im describing a subgenre of science fiction, mostly written in the 1970s-90s. It was once so popular it was almost synonymous with feminist SF. In 1995, when the Otherwise Award, a literary prize for works of science fiction or fantasy that expand or explore ones understanding of gender, gave five retrospective awards, four of the works were set in such worlds: Suzy McKee Charnass Motherlines and Walk to the End of the World, and Joanna Russs The Female Man and When It Changed. The fifth was Ursula K Le Guins The Left Hand of Darkness, about a world whose inhabitants are all of the same sex.
Recently there has been a revival of the genre in radically different form, with titles including Lauren Beukess 2020 novel Afterland, Christina Sweeney-Bairds 2021 thriller The End of Men, and my own new release, The Men. I think the way that these contemporary novels diverge from their earlier counterparts tells us something useful about gender politics in the 21st century. Part of the story, too, is a growing opposition to the basic premise, a conflict in which my novel has been recently embroiled.
The women-only utopia has a modest prehistory, going back to the myth of the Amazons and early feminist works such as Christine de Pizans 1405 The Book of the City of Ladies. But in its strict form as a single-sex utopia, it begins with Charlotte Perkins Gilmans Herland of 1915. Here, in an uncharted and unspecified wilderness, three male explorers stumble on a plateau the local savages fear as a realm from which no man returns. With their aeroplane, they are able to land there, and are instantly taken prisoner by the all-female inhabitants. The book then becomes a tour of the features of the womens ideal society.
Women excel in all occupations. Older women gain prestige instead of losing it; the women are physically formidable and easily subdue their male captives. Charmingly, the narrator says of the national costume: I see that I have not remarked that these women had pockets in surprising number and variety. Their babies never cry.
Much less charmingly, were assured the Herland women are Aryans, and their society is focused on the perfection of their race. In fact, many of the hallmarks of fascism are here: the paganism, the obsession with cleanliness, the emphasis on gymnastics, the eugenics. The Herlanders also have no erotic or even romantic feelings for each other; they have bred those dirty things out.
The golden age of the genre, roughly coinciding with the era of second wave feminism, could scarcely be more different. Here the keynote is freedom, and lesbian polyamory is the order of the day. Solo travel features prominently: the authors are captivated by the idea of women hiking alone into the wilderness without the threat of rape. No regret is expressed about the loss of men, which is always in the distant past. Indeed, the topic is often treated with a bracing gallows humour.
Alice Sheldons 1976 novella, Houston, Houston, Do You Read? (published under her pen name, James Tiptree Jr) gives the idea in its most trenchant form. Three male astronauts return to Earth after several hundred years in space. Learning that all human men have died centuries ago, they assume they will be masters of the helpless women who remain. Instead, the women test them by giving them disinhibiting drugs, watch them flail around blurting out rape fantasies and assaulting girls, then politely inform them they will be euthanised: We simply have no facilities for people with your emotional problems. However, they do thank the doomed men, saying: You have brought history alive for us.
Joanna Russs novel The Female Man (written in 1970 but first published in 1975) is considered the masterpiece of the genre. Here, four versions of the author inhabit four parallel worlds. One is ours, where the protagonist is Joanna. The second is a more conservative New York, where the anxiously conventional Jeannine works to catch a husband she doesnt truly want.
The third world is Whileaway, Russs utopia, where all men died of a plague 800 years earlier. Here, Janet fights duels, roams the wilderness, and is cheerfully promiscuous while adoring her wife, Vittoria, who, she boasts repeatedly, is much admired by Whileawayans for her big ass. Whileaway is a joyous, irreverent creation. Russ makes no apologies for stocking it with her own predilections (were left in no doubt of her opinion of big asses). Its people grumble all the time and are often jerks; it is above all things free though it does have capital punishment for people who dont do their share of the work. Even if its not your idea of paradise, you never doubt Russ would be happy there, which is more than you can say for most utopias and their creators.
Only towards the end of the novel are we introduced to the fourth world, a gender-apartheid society where men and women are locked in perpetual war. Here, Jael is fixated on revenge against men because of the sexual abuse she suffered as a child. After tearing a would-be rapist apart with the steel claws implanted in her fingers, she comments: I dont give a damn whether it was necessary or not I liked it. In an aside, she announces that this world is the past of Whileaway; its men didnt die of plague, but were exterminated. She approves: In my opinion, questions that are based on something real ought to be settled by something real without all this damned lazy miserable drifting. Im a fanatic. I want to see this thing settled Gone. Dead.
The 21st-century revival is a very different animal. First, instead of being a dimly remembered political event, the mass death comes now. It has no good aspects. Men die horribly in front of us. Women are plunged into collective grief. Technological society falls apart for lack of skilled workers, and the world goes into decline. Women, meanwhile, are just as violent as men, and no more cooperative or empathic. The only result of generations of indoctrination into female roles is that girls are crap at engineering.
Another difference is that, in almost all these stories, at least one man is saved. The best known example is the comic Y: The Last Man, by Brian K Vaughan and Pia Guerra, published from 2002 to 2008. Here, all male mammals die from plague except our hero, Yorick, and his pet monkey. Only yesterday an unsuccessful stage magician, Yorick is suddenly the most important person in the world, as his DNA holds the key to the survival of humanity. Hes hunted across post-apocalyptic America by various groups, notably a cult of rabid feminists intent on exterminating every last man. Of course, he is also desired by randy women wherever he goes.
In Lauren Beukess 2020 novel Afterland, a threatened male is again the focus, after 99% of all male humans are killed by a flu that triggers prostate cancer. Survivors are incarcerated by the government and prevented from reproducing until a cure is found. The few free men are pursued by baby-hungry women and hunted by profiteers who want to harvest their sperm. The main character has broken her son out of a research facility and is fleeing with him through a post-apocalyptic world.
Christina Sweeney-Bairds The End of Men (2021) shows the male plague through a kaleidoscope of viewpoints. None, however, find the new world an improvement. As in Afterland, theres an intense focus on sperm: though only 90% of men die of plague, there is somehow a critical shortage. The government enacts a form of eugenics, restricting the precious substance to mothers it deems fit. This move may be uncomfortably reminiscent of the politics of Herland, but the impression is not that Sweeney-Baird is a fan of eugenics; she is imagining things she thinks would happen if there were a male plague, not suggesting what should happen.
All three of these works are apolitical. In their different ways, they are thrillers, and the reception of these works in most quarters has correspondingly been about their success as such, not their politics, and has been mostly positive.
The exception is the reaction of a group of critics who are hostile to the genre. You might think this would be about the fantasy of male genocide. In fact, its the erasure of trans identities. The line between male and female in these books is always based on traditional notions of biological sex; trans women share the fate of cis men. In the old utopian versions, female societies are always better; this is seen as implying that gender traits are biological. In some second wave works, trans characters are described with open bigotry; Joanna Russ later apologised for the (mercifully brief) depiction of trans women in The Female Man. But this is not the main point: the premise itself is seen as bioessentialist and harmful to trans and non-binary people.
Even a recent book by a trans author, Gretchen Felker-Martins Manhunt (2022), has drawn criticism online. In this novel, a plague transforms men into mindless, cannibalistic monsters who roam the woods, raping and killing. Trans women must stave off transformation by constantly taking hormones they can only get by killing men and eating their testicles. Meanwhile, theyre being hunted by TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists), who see them as man-monsters waiting to happen. The book is written to graphically convey the terror of transphobia. Still its been attacked by some on Twitter for its bioessentialist premise. Although producers of the TV version of Y: The Last Man hired trans writers to make the story more inclusive, it too was considered problematic.
My own book has been the focus of attacks, even before its publication. Once again, it is the premise that matters. In my novel, all male humans disappear inexplicably in a single moment, and the resulting female society has a utopian odour. Its no Whileaway; the plot is largely about the grief of people left behind. But fossil fuel emissions plummet, its easier to elect leftwing politicians, and, yes, lesbian polyamory is the order of the day. In the book, trans women are treated as women, trans men as men, and their problems are viewed sympathetically, but it has the hated premise. The attacks on it escalated to the point that a writer, Lauren Hough, had a prize nomination from an LGBTQ arts organisation rescinded for defending it online.
Critics of the genre make important points, but I wouldnt have written my book if I didnt believe their criticisms were too sweeping. The more thoughtful versions of the narrative dont affirm a gender binary, but try to dismantle it by erasing sex as a category. Russs Whileawayans are better and happier not because they are biologically female, but because they are free from sexism. The premise also interrogates the belief that excluding certain people is a means to a peaceful society. Exclusion as social policy is a time-honoured tradition in America (think mass incarceration and racial segregation) and on the rise worldwide.
Its also the idea behind excluding trans women from womens changing rooms. Making people ask hard questions about it is crucial to all campaigns for justice.
Finally, Russs and Sheldons utopias (and, I hope, mine) are fraught with doubt. They present the reader with impossible choices between accepting abuse and becoming as great a monster as your abusers; between rape and genocide. They are not works of dogmatic certainty like Gilmans. They dont even claim to know the nature of gender. All they know is that patriarchy is killing us, and something has to give.
I believe theres something potently transformative about utopian fiction. Too many of us now are trying to make a political revolution without hope. Our narratives of justice are all about punishment. We squabble about what constitutes punching up or punching down, but are poor in solutions that dont involve punching. In our art, we dont imagine better worlds, only more and grimmer apocalypses, and the people in them only long for the patriarchal world order that gives us supermarkets, indoor plumbing and hormone patches.
When you put down Y: The Last Man or Manhunt (or Station Eleven or World War Z), its with a sigh of gratitude for the status quo. When you put down The Female Man, its with the unsettled, heady feeling that a freer world is just out of reach but also with a consciousness of the violence that lurks behind most promises of freedom. We still have no answers and every utopia is riddled with asterisks. Lets mind the asterisks and listen to the criticisms but lets dream our dreams.
The Men by Sandra Newman is published by Granta Books (14.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
Read more:
The end of men: the controversial new wave of female utopias - The Guardian
- Pagani's New Utopia Is an Ode to Old-School Hypercars With a V-12 and Manual Transmission - Yahoo Canada Shine On - April 20th, 2024 [April 20th, 2024]
- Book Review: Tripping on Utopia, by Benjamin Breen - The New York Times - January 30th, 2024 [January 30th, 2024]
- Cynthia Erivo's Stark New Film Is Already More Relevant Than She ... - Vanity Fair - October 18th, 2023 [October 18th, 2023]
- Why Travis Scott's Utopia is the Album of the Year - Hamilton County Reporter - October 18th, 2023 [October 18th, 2023]
- Vampire Empire and the Toxicity of Leak Culture - 34th Street Magazine - October 18th, 2023 [October 18th, 2023]
- Artist Melissa Joseph Uses an Unsung MediumFeltto Explore ... - Cultured Magazine - October 18th, 2023 [October 18th, 2023]
- Customizable Bathroom Fittings With Re-Purposed and Crystal ... - ArchDaily - October 18th, 2023 [October 18th, 2023]
- The grouse, the gamekeepers and the ethics of the shoot - Financial Times - October 18th, 2023 [October 18th, 2023]
- I sort of flippantly say: 'All guitars sound the same and go for ... - Guitar World - October 18th, 2023 [October 18th, 2023]
- How MJM Marine is helping to create a cruise utopia - Cruise and Ferry - October 13th, 2023 [October 13th, 2023]
- Everything You Need to Know About the Solar Eclipse in Central ... - Austin Monthly - October 13th, 2023 [October 13th, 2023]
- Explore Programming for the Inaugural SXSW Sydney: Oct 15-22 - sxsw.com - October 13th, 2023 [October 13th, 2023]
- The Daily Heller: The Art of Invented Scripts, Meaning Optional - PRINT Magazine - October 13th, 2023 [October 13th, 2023]
- Andrea Branzi, visionary architect and designer, 19382023 - ArtReview - October 13th, 2023 [October 13th, 2023]
- Female hotel manager handed a 33 per cent pay cut during Covid ... - People Management Magazine - October 13th, 2023 [October 13th, 2023]
- NAPALM DEATH's SHANE EMBURY Talks New Book And Life In ... - BLABBERMOUTH.NET - October 13th, 2023 [October 13th, 2023]
- A Step-by-Step Guide To British Airways' 49-Year Livery Evolution - Simple Flying - October 13th, 2023 [October 13th, 2023]
- How Constructed Languages Help People Find Community - The New York Times - October 13th, 2023 [October 13th, 2023]
- Royal Caribbean Wows Cruisers With Short Beach Cruise Vacations - Wealth Of Geeks - September 11th, 2023 [September 11th, 2023]
- The Graham and Brown wallpaper of the year 2024 is revealed - Ideal Home - September 11th, 2023 [September 11th, 2023]
- Museum Curators Evaluate A.I. Threat by Giving It the Reins - The New York Times - September 11th, 2023 [September 11th, 2023]
- The Media Store: Does the growth of AI signal utopia or dystopia for ... - Marketing magazine Australia - September 11th, 2023 [September 11th, 2023]
- MIPCOM Cannes to host world premiere screening of Concordia - Prensario Internacional - September 11th, 2023 [September 11th, 2023]
- The Best New Cruise Ships Coming in 2024 - Cruise Critic - September 11th, 2023 [September 11th, 2023]
- Bioshock: 10 Pieces of Important Lore New Players Need to Know - CBR - Comic Book Resources - September 11th, 2023 [September 11th, 2023]
- 8 Best Bagels in New York City - Eat This, Not That - September 11th, 2023 [September 11th, 2023]
- Luxon doubles down on bed tax opposition | Crux - Local News ... - Crux News - September 11th, 2023 [September 11th, 2023]
- Indie Film: Midcoast film festival keeps building on an impressive ... - Press Herald - September 11th, 2023 [September 11th, 2023]
- Dangerous visions: How the quest for utopia could lead to catastrophe - Salon - July 29th, 2023 [July 29th, 2023]
- Travis Scott Spends the Day in NYC Amid the Release of His New ... - Just Jared - July 29th, 2023 [July 29th, 2023]
- The 5 Best New TV Shows of July 2023 - TIME - July 29th, 2023 [July 29th, 2023]
- The influence of Kanye West's 'Yeezus' is clear as day on Travis ... - Yahoo Lifestyle UK - July 29th, 2023 [July 29th, 2023]
- How Utopia shaped the world - BBC Culture - December 28th, 2022 [December 28th, 2022]
- Dystopia - Wikipedia - December 21st, 2022 [December 21st, 2022]
- 17th Amendment Weakened Balance of Power Between States, Federal Government - Heritage.org - October 17th, 2022 [October 17th, 2022]
- Games Of Thrones EP Frank Doelger To Helm Surveillance Thriller Series Concordia For ZDF, MBC, France Tlvisions and Hulu Japan - Deadline - October 17th, 2022 [October 17th, 2022]
- How Mao's Cultural Revolution Made War On The Private Mind - The Federalist - October 17th, 2022 [October 17th, 2022]
- The Russian musical instrument that infiltrated pop culture and aided espionage - Far Out Magazine - October 17th, 2022 [October 17th, 2022]
- The Handmaid's Tale: What Is New Bethlehem? Map & Theories - Post Apocalyptic Media - October 17th, 2022 [October 17th, 2022]
- Wrtsil Oyj : Five ways the Wrtsil 46TS-DF helps you decarbonise now and in the future - Marketscreener.com - October 17th, 2022 [October 17th, 2022]
- Ditching tech is the new tech fad - Rest of World - October 17th, 2022 [October 17th, 2022]
- Martin Scorsese feels that box office obsession is "insulting" to cinema - Yahoo Entertainment - October 17th, 2022 [October 17th, 2022]
- X-Men Monday #175 - X Me Anything With the X-Office AIPT - AIPT - October 17th, 2022 [October 17th, 2022]
- The Difference Between A Supercar And A Hypercar - SlashGear - October 17th, 2022 [October 17th, 2022]
- The Spanish government reactivates the tunnel project to link Morocco with Spain - Atalayar - October 17th, 2022 [October 17th, 2022]
- Why the Wing, a once buzzy womens coworking startup, shut down - Fortune - October 17th, 2022 [October 17th, 2022]
- World's first zero-energy cruise terminal to be opened at Port of Galveston - Offshore Energy - October 17th, 2022 [October 17th, 2022]
- Letters to the editor: On baroclinic instability - Las Cruces Sun-News - October 17th, 2022 [October 17th, 2022]
- Why autumn is the new glamping season | Travel | The Sunday Times - The Times - October 17th, 2022 [October 17th, 2022]
- The East Is ... White? Xi Jinping Is A Cracker? - The American Conservative - October 17th, 2022 [October 17th, 2022]
- Winter Wonderland Vacations- Places You Have To Visit This Year - msnNOW - October 17th, 2022 [October 17th, 2022]
- A new series immerses us in Russias 90s trauma and the human cost of economic shock - The Guardian - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- Why the communal utopia was hard work for its children - Aeon - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- The Best and Coolest New Gadgets of September 2022 - Gear Patrol - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- Here's a list of pumpkin patches in and around Austin - Austin American-Statesman - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- As time for meaningless jobs comes to an end, reinvent to stay relevant - The New Indian Express - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- Layered subsurface in Utopia Basin of Mars revealed by Zhurong rover radar - Nature.com - September 27th, 2022 [September 27th, 2022]
- Conductor is in trouble with his name, and his no-names - Slippedisc - Slipped Disc - September 27th, 2022 [September 27th, 2022]
- Deepak Chopra & Seva.Love Announce "ChopraVerse: House of Enlightenment," the Metaverse for Wellbeing in Collaboration with Utopia -... - September 27th, 2022 [September 27th, 2022]
- New this week: 'Reasonable Doubt,' 'Blonde' and Bjrk - Star Tribune - September 27th, 2022 [September 27th, 2022]
- New movie releases this weekend - ABC4.com - September 27th, 2022 [September 27th, 2022]
- Utopia In The Desert - Cowboys and Indians Magazine - Cowboys & Indians Magazine - September 27th, 2022 [September 27th, 2022]
- Fascism from Italy to Hibbing and back again - Minnesota Reformer - September 27th, 2022 [September 27th, 2022]
- EDITORIAL: Cambodia's Khmer Rouge tribunal a proper model of justice | The Asahi Shimbun: Breaking News, Japan News and Analysis - - September 27th, 2022 [September 27th, 2022]
- Nexi S p A : September 26th 2022 Nexi and Global Blue sign a strategic partnership to provide frictionless omnichannel payment experience for the... - September 27th, 2022 [September 27th, 2022]
- Pagani thumbs its nose at electrification, unveiling all-new V12 Utopia - September 15th, 2022 [September 15th, 2022]
- Paganis New Utopia Is an Ode to Old-School Hypercars With a V-12 and Manual Transmission - Robb Report - September 15th, 2022 [September 15th, 2022]
- Whats That Shiny New Marketing Toy Youve Got There? || Googles Out Of Home Ads - Legal Talk Network - September 15th, 2022 [September 15th, 2022]
- The future of New England Republicanism is... - POLITICO - September 15th, 2022 [September 15th, 2022]
- Disney continues to botch their animated classics with Pinocchio - Shield - September 15th, 2022 [September 15th, 2022]
- Inside the Experimental Town That King Charles III Created - VICE - September 15th, 2022 [September 15th, 2022]
- Ian Cheng imagines a world where the internet inhabits our nervous systems - Dazed - September 15th, 2022 [September 15th, 2022]
- The aura of Shakers, the influencers of good design - Domus - September 15th, 2022 [September 15th, 2022]
- Utopia Revisited: Residents Reunite to Share Stories of 12th Street Childhood - Jewish Exponent - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- 'Wonder' Playlist: The sounds that inspired our new issue - RUSSH - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- "This Building Belongs to the People": Cape Verde's New Centre for Art, Crafts and Design - ArchDaily - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- Bjrk Parties at a Mushroom Rave in Video for New Song Atopos: Watch - Pitchfork - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- The girlbosses who girlbossed too close to the sun: The demise of womens utopia The Wing was long overdue - The Independent - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- Technology Is the Only Thing That Can Potentially Save Us: A Conversation with Brad DeLong - Observer - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]
- Cant We Come Up with Something Better Than Liberal Democracy? - The New Yorker - September 7th, 2022 [September 7th, 2022]