The Female Man, Joanna Russ

I think people are wrong when they say this book is out of date. Many of the feminist issues Russ engaged with are still with us today, the double-standards women are held to and the things men expect of them. That part of the book seemed perfectly reasonable to me: a little out-dated, perhaps, as all of this sort of thing will become in just a few decades, but not irrelevant.

The story, however… I found it incomprehensible, buried under the weight of the feminist concerns and issues raised. I would rather have read the story and the examination of the role of women separately, I think. For me, I came to this book expecting a classic of science fiction, and to be honest, it doesn’t seem like there’s much. It’s a thought experiment, which can be done in literary fiction just as well (better?).

I’m a little uncomfortable with it being relegated to the class of science fiction, in a way, instead of being read as a classic in general. So often that’s used as a way to minimise the importance of a work: oh, quaint old genre fiction, rather than oh, social commentary. Those of us in the genre know how powerful a tool it is when used to examine society (and if you don’t, may I introduce you to the works of Ursula Le Guin?), but in academic circles… we’re starting to see more work on genre fiction — part of my MA was on Tolkien, and mainly on his fiction — and there’s been some good work on fantasy and SF, but it’s not as if any of that is even approaching “the canon”.

I almost feel like rereading this in an annotated version, or a Norton Critical Edition, would help me appreciate it more. But just on the merits of it as a story… no, I can’t say it did much for me.